Author: jesser

 

Friday was our final full day in California and our final day at Disney. We had innumerable last things to finish up and we did them all justice. Lunch was a fun highlight, the Thunder Mountain Ranch with really tasty all-you-care-to-eat BBQ and a fun musical show. Nearby there was one of Ben’s favorite attractions, a petting zoo with the most docile goats and sheep I’ve ever seen. Both kids enjoyed it a lot. We also got to check out some more of California Adventure and Ben was particularly fond of the Bugs Life sprayground, where he played for at least 30 minutes.

 

Later that evening, my parents took the kids home and Matt, Kelly, Donna and Ed and I stayed at the park to ride some “big kid” rides. Matt and Kelly raved about Screaming California and everyone enjoyed the Symphony Swings and the Mini Coaster. I was suckered into doing the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which I am not keen to ever do again (being as I am about 75% chicken). After all of that, we tried to get back to Disneyland to do Indiana Jones and Space Mountain, but we were plagued by broken rides and long lines and finally EXHAUSTION.

We loved Disney and the trip overall, but it will be a long time before I’m much interested in a theme park.

 

We made the longish journey to San Diego on Thursday to see the Zoo. It is a pretty large zoo with some really incredible animals, including pandas and koala bears. The pandas were by far my favorite, but Tabby preferred the giraffes and flamingos.

 

After the zoo, we had dinner at Bo’s Seafood market, which was quite tasty and had a little more frozen yogurt, this time at Fuji Yogurt. The drive home was easy since we were after rush hour, save a fun little immigration checkpoint, probably about 80 miles from the border. Somewhat strange.

 

On Wednesday, our group of 7 grew to 9 when we picked up our family friends, Donna and Eddie from the airport so they could join in on all the fun. The first day with them we drug them to Disneyland for a full day. The day was cooler again and relatively uncrowded and nice. The kids got to meet some of their faves and we rode on plenty of rides.

 

We planned to do the World of Color Picnic in the evening, so we spent some time there. Unfortunately, the World of Color Picnic was very little picnic and much more about a cattle-call style seating arrangement and we were none too pleased with this. The show itself was cool, but our “Preferred Seating” kind of sucked and we were pretty displeased with this experience to say the least.

 

We had planned to have a relaxing morning on Tuesday, but Matt had other ideas. So we left Papa and Ben at home and took a spin around Disneyland for a few rides. It was a chilly day with short lines and we had nice soup for lunch in Frontier Land.

 

After lunch, we collected my dad and Ben and met up with Kjersten and her little ones again for beach time! We went to Aliso State Beach and it was a really nice, super pretty beach that wasn’t too crowded. It was a bit too cold to swim, but we had a great time chatting and the kids played in the sand.

 

So after the half marathon, we chilled just a bit. We slept in (ish) and did not-a-lot. In the AM we went to IKEA. There still isn’t one near us and we all wanted to pick up a few things. Surprisingly, Tabby and my dad had a really great time. Tabby played “house” in their design setups and served my dad tea.

 

After IKEA, we went to Ruby’s in Huntington Beach and had a sinfully yummy diner lunch on the pier. After lunch, we went to the Crystal Cove State Park tide pools and checked out cute little hermit crabs and anemones or urchins or something. Super cool, other than the 10 minute walk back so somebody could pee.

 

Day 3 of our S Cal adventure we did … a whole lotta nothing. Our primary outing was to LA’s Little Tokyo. I always like to visit the local Japanese district and LA’s is not much bigger than Denver’s, but nice nonetheless. We went and had awesome Japanese food and checked out their dessert shops: Beard Papa, Paulette (specializing in macarons) and Cherry on Top, a serve-yourself yogurt shop. We loved Cherry on Top, especially the kiddos.

 

The rest of the day, we laid low, resting up for our big race. We had to be up SUPER EARLY so we were in bed by … 8:30 PM. Seriously.

 

On the second day in S Cal, we got to go to DISNEYLAND. We started out with a character breakfast at Storyteller’s Cafe (great food, fun characters none of whom I could recognize except Chip ‘n’ Dale). Then the day got even better because not only did we get to go to the Happiest Place on Earth, but we also got to meet up with my longtime blog friend, Kjersten and her darling children and wonderful friends. It was a really lovely time.

 

After we were done at Disneyland, we headed over to the Disneyland Hotel to do packet pickup for our race …

 

We spent most of our first day in S. Cal going to … grocery stores! No foolin’! We have a big group to feed and we got to check out the local Costco, Trader Joe’s, Fresh & Easy and of course … Target! Last but not least, we went to the Anaheim Farmers’ Market and picked up tons of beautiful local produce, including berries, peaches, plums, tomatoes, grapes and PEARS. The kids loved it and went crazy.