Driving down to LA

For our 5th anniversary, we drove down with no plans other than to leave Saturday night from San Diego.  Andy had this plan and didn't tell me until a couple days before.  We left Sunday morning in a rental car (we would leave it down there and fly home).

Our first day was just a lot of driving.  We were staying at his mom's house in Sacramento over night (which is funny because we never saw her since she was flying up to stay with the boys all week.)  We had made this drive a few times so we just did a straight show down.

We had to stop at Dutch Bros.  It is so good and there aren't any close by.  I think they are creeping up, but they are mainly OR area.

Welcome to CA!

 We made it to Sacramento around midnight.

The next morning we had a healthy breakfast: double-doubles and fries (Andy's animal style)

We headed out of town and got a little lost.  We ended up on the opposite side of the Golden Gate Bridge than we normally go to, which was cool because you see the whole city of San Francisco behind it.

We even drove over the bridge.

We drove for awhile over to Monterey Bay, then hopped on highway 1.  Andy thought it would be a cool time driving along the ocean cliffs.  It was...for about 20 minutes.  Then it was just like 3 hours of slow driving down VERY windy roads through cliffs.  We drove through Big Sur and some other not very interesting spots.  I felt SO sick, that I forced myself to fall asleep.  The problem was that there was no escape to the main highways the whole time.  We had no idea when we started that road that we were stuck.  It was such a waste of time!  However, we DID see whales jumping out of the water flipping like in the movies!  Here is one in the middle of the picture but he isn't flipping.

The cliffs were pretty.

Andy ended up back on the freeway as it was getting dark and we saw an AWESOME super moon reflecting in the water.  We needed to find a hotel, so we ended up in Santa Barbara.  It is SUPER cute!  They had an awesome touristy block too, but we were so tired and didn't want to hit up the bar scene so we ended up at Denny's after checking into a Motel 6.

When we woke up, we saw how cool of a place we ended up.  Here was from our hotel parking lot.

We walked along the beach really quick in Santa Barbara and set off again.  We were trying to find food.  We ended up in Ventura.  It is funny because all these cities are where I have AT&T stores for work, so it was cool to put pictures in my head to the places I talk to on a daily basis.  We decided to stop at the Ventura pier.

 It was a good thing we did, because we had the best fish tacos ever!  Mine had pineapple salsa!

We hopped back on the road after eating and ended up at the Santa Monica pier.

We ended up walking down to Venice Beach.  We saw all sorts of crazy art, about 10 shops selling medical marijuana cards, and the famous muscle beach.

We walked back and realized we had walked about 5 miles.  It was very pretty though, even though my feet were sore.

Under the Santa Monica Pier

I had called my friend Jiavani (we grew up together) and let her know we were going to be in the area.  Lucky for us, she invited us to stay at our house while we were in LA, so we only had to pay one hotel the entire time (and it was only $100!)  We got really lucky there.  After a few hours in Santa Monica, we decided to head to Hollywood to wait for Jia to get off work.

Disneyland and CA adventures

For our anniversary trip, one place I definitely wanted to stop was Disneyland.  I had only been once when I was 11 (I have been to Disney in FL when I was 16 since though) but they hadn't even built California Adventures yet.

We woke up at my friend's house in Hollywood pretty early, and made it to Disney before it opened.  We got the park hopper and waited for them to let us in.  We had gone to the side (they rope off all the areas that lead out of Main Street until the official open time) because we wanted to go to some of my favorite rides that tend to get long lines and planned to go to Splash Mountain.  I was excited to wear my Minnie Mouse bow that one of my best friends Ashley made ( you can view her shop, Carol and Grace here)

We got to Splash Mountain and it was CLOSED! UGH! We were annoyed and so were a lot of people that they didn't warn anyone since it was so far back and we could have gone to other lines first.  We jumped over to Pirates of the Caribbean instead since there was no line.  We wanted to get popular rides done early.  I'm glad they display the wait times for rides!  We decided we would be willing to stand in line for Indiana Jones since the line is actually cool so it wasn't a priority.

We went to Space Mountain next.  I do not like it much- I get so motion sick and those stars and the fact you can't tell when it is going to turn you make me feel awful.  It was still fun apart from that.

Next we did the Buzz Lightyear ride and I got way more points than Andy.  I was a level above him :P

We then hopped over to CA Adventures because I heard the Cars ride gets super backed up and wanted to get a fast pass.  We started at tower of terror though.  I loved it (I used to be a big fan of Twilight Zone).

Afterwards while headed to Cars Land, we ran into Flick :)

We got to Cars Land and I was SOOOO excited.  If you have a little boy, you've probably seen Cars 150+ times.  I love the movies and was nearly as excited as a little boy would be to see an actual Radiator Springs.

We went to look at fast passes.  It was 10-10:30am by the time we got to the fast pass place.  They were on 8:05-9:00 PM fast passes for THAT NIGHT already!  That is how popular that ride was.  THE PLACE CLOSES AT 10!  We barely got them, but I was really excited because I heard that ride is better at night and now we were guaranteed a ride then :)

Next we walked around looking for food

We found delicious food at a hangar place in the airplane area.  My chicken sandwich was delicious.

We headed back to Disneyland to try for Indiana Jones after the CA hang glider ride.  We couldn't get another fast pass for 2 hours since we had got the Cars one.  We got there and in line, and Indiana Jones broke down after a few minutes.  They told us we could wait in line if we wanted.  We decided to wait while MANY people left.  It got us way closer in the line.  There was a boys and girls club behind us that was messing with Andy the whole time.  The ride opened back up!  He joked with the little boys that the ride would break down right in front of them.  We got up to the part of the line right before you go in the caves and that is where they counted people and let the fast pass people through.  They went back and forth between our line and the fast passers and asked us how many.  Andy said "Two.  And don't let those boys through" joking with the kids.  They stopped the line behind us (probably because there were like 15 of them and not because Andy said so) and the kids yelled "WE HATE YOU!"  We got up and on to the ride.  We had not yet seen the boys, so they must have let a lot of fast passers on.  We made it all the way through the ride, after that rolling boulder.  We were just about to turn the corner where you get off, and BOOM.  Lights out.  The ride broke again.  We were told to wait.  After awhile, they told us they were coming to get us off with a ladder.  I was thankful we weren't in a creepy part of the ride.  After we got off with the ladder, they handed us all free fast passes to ANY RIDE (except Radiator Springs).  It was SO worth breaking down since we got to pass an hour and 20 minute wait to Splash Mountain, which had finally opened up!

Haha, my arm blocked Andy on the photo.

Next we went to eat the most delicious thing ever. Dole Whip!  OHHH MYYYYYY GOOODNESSSS.  I want to eat that daily.  The line was kind of long but they went through quickly.

We got a fast pass for Splash Mtn because I wanted to go again. It is my favorite because it is slow but has a big drop.  No sick feeling there :)

It was right after that, we saw a celebrity.  We saw a bunch of the Browns from Sister Wives!  I LOVE sister wives.  I am pretty sure I have seen most of the episodes.  We saw Cody (the dad) standing waiting for his other wives (we saw them too later Robin, Meri, and Christine...didn't see Janelle...saw a lot of the kids too) and we went over and talked to him.  He was really nice and said thanks for saying hi.  That was really cool :)  We heard a lot of people whispering when they went by throughout the day but I didn't see anyone else talking to them.

We made it on all of the major rides before it was time for Radiator Springs.  We had World of Color tickets for after that.

Going back to Radiator Springs at night was AWESOME!  It was just like on the movie, it was completely different and lit up!

DJ was there playing music!

We got to the ride and my pics can't do it justice.  It was SO cool lit up.  We got on- passing a HUGE line and we got to ride in Sally (most of the cars were just generic cars with eyes).

I LOVED seeing all the cars.  The ride was so cool.  There was a part of the ride you race really fast, and we beat the other car!  Andy had been making a face at a kid in the other car so I'm glad we didn't have to hear the kid making fun of us later haha.  It was my favorite ride of the whole day!!!  I'm glad we did it at night.

We met McQueen and Mater (Mater told us we look like McQueen and Sally) and drank coke from Cozy Cones we bought for the kids.

Next we went to watch World of Color, which was really cool.

After getting a couple souvenirs, we finally went home to Jiavani's.  It was an AWESOME day!  There was an issue though, unfortunately I hadn't washed my shoes after Mt. Rainier and the dust caused so many blisters (I had about 6) and that along with my foot injury I already had was the most pain I had been in apart from having the kids.  I was waddling at the end of the night and biting my lip to try to distract me.  It was AWFUL.  If it had been that bad all day, I would have needed a wheel chair.  Next time, I will wash my shoes first!