Disneyland!

This weekend I went to Disneyland! My husband and two of our friends went to California. The boys went to BlizzCon and the girls went to Disneyland.

My husband and I went up to their place after work on Wednesday. We spent the night, and on Thursday morning, we waited for them to gather a bunch of last minute things and then we were off... to fill up their car with gas. And then we were really off to Cali.

Then, just a couple hours into our drive, the car's AC broke. Yes, every car traveler's worst nightmare on a summer journey. It was roughly 2 hours into an 11 hour trip through the desert that we were a lot warmer than we anticipated. We stopped at the nearest town and talked to a gas station mechanic about the freon. Apparently, you need a special license and equipment to do whatever it is that needed doing. He gave us directions, but not the name of the place. He said the place had big windows. Well, all the car places we passed had big windows, and we had to stop for directions again. We were told it was the place that used to be a Ford dealership, but it didn't have any Ford signs anymore... Why that was relevant, I do not know. Anyway, we found the place and they spent just over an hour doing their car-stuff. We walked to a grocery store, making fun of how small town-folk gave directions. "It's the third house from the tree stump that was hit by lightning last year." I'm sure they thought stuff about us city-folk not knowing how to follow simple directions without GPS.

Anyway, when we got back the car-guy said that the compressor wasn't working even with the freon refilled. So he took the freon back out to reduce the price for us. I don't know if removing freon from a broken AC-device is normal procedure or not, but we thought it was odd.

We went for 1.5 hours and stopped at a Wal-Mart. We got sun screens to put in the windows and a little oscillating fan. It helped out a lot, but it was still horribly hot. 111 degrees outside (with windchill). Yuck!

After we passed Las Vegas I saw billboards with advertisements for "Alien Energy Jerky." It was jerky with caffeine in it. I kid you not, caffeinated jerky. And other than that, there was nothing between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area except lots of desert and a few tiny towns (ghost towns, maybe).

The next day the boys and girls went their separate ways. The boys to their geek convention, and the girls to Disneyland.

Us girls went to the California Adventure park first. We saw Muppets in 3D and a live stage version of Aladdin, which were both really cute.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was one of my favorite rides in this park. The story was that the Hollywood Tower Hotel was hit by lightning several decades ago and created some kind of time-warp, different dimension, twilight-zoney thing. The ride shot us upward, the windows opened so that we could see the whole park, then there was a flash of lightning and we dropped! We dropped a lot of the way in the dark with lightning and some ghosts, then shot up again. We bounced like this a couple times, looking outside sometimes and inside the spooky building other times. It was awesome, though I didn't want to go on it again. Here is a picture of the outside. On the left side there are some large open windows that people on the ride can see out before falling to their doom.



My second favorite on this side was the Grizzly River Run.

The next day we went to the regular Disneyland park. This one had the classic rides like the Mad Tea Party, where you sit in tea cups that spin around. We tried to spin fast, and we did once we started turning the wheel the right way, then we got too dizzy and stopped. We went on the "It's a Small World" ride, and got annoyed by the end because of the repetition. Here's a pic of the castle surrounding the small world:



My favorite by far was Space Mountain. This is an indoor roller coaster that's designed to make it feel like you're flying through space. It was so cool! You couldn't see the track in front of you so you never knew where you were going next. We also went on Splash Mountain and got really wet. More wet than the Grizzly River Run. I was the unfortunate person in the very front, and I think my knees were the only part that made it out dry because they were covered by the front of the "log" we were seated in. I don't think I was properly dry the rest of the day.

Another favorite, maybe in second place, was the Haunted Mansion. This was just lots of spookiness. The effects for the ghosts were amazing and the music was fun and creepy. We picked up an old man ghost hitchhiker O.O.

We went through the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walk Through. There was some story books open so you could read the story as you walked through and some little scenes you could see through windows. Here's a pic of the castle from the outside:



And here's a pic of me interrupting Princess Aurora and Prince Philip as they dance:



At the end of both days in Disneyland, my feet were very sore, and I got blisters. But it was a lot of fun nonetheless. Even the trip back was ok because the AC got fixed. Phew!

More Kitten Photos

Just some more kitty pics.

Here is Saf after doing something she wasn't supposed to, but didn't stop with the first water squirt. I don't remember what she did.



Here is Saf playing a game on my brother's computer. My husband is excited that she may very well become a gamer.



Here is Saf and Scout looking at Scout's ball.

Meow!

We got a kitten! She's so adorable! Happy birthday me! She's a Siamese mix, lynx tip or something or other. We got her today from the Humane Society. Here are pics:



Here's a pic of her back:



Playing:



Playing with her puff ball on a string. She was really jumping at it but I couldn't get a good pic of that.



EDIT: We've named her Saf.

The Zoo

Yay! We got to go to the zoo! It was very crowded, being Memorial Day. We had a lot of fun wandering around and trying not to step on people's kids. We didn't see everything there, but we saw most of it, and I think it must have been nap time. For the whole 3 hours we were there. Well, the last half hour or so it was lunch time, and we got to see some of the animals eating instead of sleeping. We went with some friends and their adorable, energetic little 2-year-old girl.

Here are the elephants eating their lunch:



Here is the ball the 3-year-old saw instead of the elephants. She was upset that she wasn't allowed to play with it. She cried a bit.



One of the rhinos. See the red ball in the back? That's what the 3-year-old liked the best about this exhibit.



A peccary. They're like pigs, only their peccarys. This one kept pushing the food dish up with its nose, the dish would fall back down, and the piggy would repeat it.



We saw some turkeys wandering around, and then we saw this sign. You can click on it for a larger version.



This isn't one of the wanted turkeys. This one was in an enclosure, but I couldn't tell a difference. All turkeys look alike.



While we were in the primate house, one of the enclosures stated that the occupants were in the outdoor habitat. And it was true, she was standing behind me!



That's one of my friends. She was one of my old roommates, but I escaped first.

It was a fun day. My husband and I got a bit dehydrated and maybe had a bit of heat stroke, but we're ok. On our way home, we went to Five Guys Burgers and Fries. Their burgers are freaking huge. I thought they were pretty yummy, but I don't know that they were worth the price. I think I prefer Carl's Jr.

Random Quote:
"Everything I need to know I learned from blogs."
On the T-shirt of a guy crossing the street while we were on our way to get food.

My Husband's Hat

As any of you who know my husband know, he almost always wears a baseball hat. He used to have a white one with the BYU logo on it, but it got lost on a ride at Lagoon. Since then, he's worn his old work hat, tan, with BYU Vending written on it. This is a very old hat. It is falling apart. And it's kinda yucky (it's been a while since he's washed it).

We went to Wal*Mart tonight to get some stuff, and I finally remembered to get him a new hat. We got him a dark blue one with no logo, but he refuses to throw the old hat away. He wants to keep it because he's had it for a long time, which was my reasoning for why he should throw it away. He told me, however, that if I can throw it away without him noticing, that it would be fine. So, when he put it in the closet, I stood there waiting for him to leave so I could finally chuck the nasty thing. Unfortunately, he saw right through my indiscreet plan, so I just grabbed the hat. He won the ensuing struggle (he has long arms and tickled me, how can I defend against that?) and retook the prize. Now, he won't even wash it because he knows it will never make it to the soapy waters (I told him he could solve the problem by doing the laundry, but that didn't seem to be a viable alternative).

And so, I plot. Soon, very soon, I shall put a plan in motion that will finally see the end of that odious garment.

Here is a pic of Tyson wearing his old hat. He also hasn't shaved in months. We went to Wal*Mart to get a hair trimmer since his razors weren't meant for beards of this magnitude.



Here is a pic with his new hat and after his shave. I told him he should be hugging his old hat in the pic, but he didn't want to.

Haircut!

I got my hair cut last Tuesday. 13 inches! It turned out shorter than I expected it to be. Also, I was able to donate it to the Make a Wig Foundation... or Locks of Love... Anyway, here is a before pic:



Ok ok ok that's the family dog, Scout, wearing my husbands very old work hat. Scout put up with it because he was being offered some sort of food. Here's the real before pic:



Here is an after pic. Somewhere in that 13 inches of hair must have been part of my brain...



And here is a nice after picture for the in-laws: