the Disneyland Blog… finally! ...DaY 1...

Oh so much to talk about. Well, after we stayed up all night talking to Barry, we decided we deserved to sleep in on Wednesday. After breakfast, we finally headed to Anaheim for our ultimate Disneyland experience. As we entered, we got pins that showed what we were celebrating at Disneyland. It was my first visit, my birthday, and our honeymoon! Everywhere we went people were saying “Happy Birthday!” and “Congratulations!” As we had been anticipating this vacation for months, Derek asked me almost daily what I wanted to do when we first entered Disneyland, and the answered always had to be different. But secretly I couldn’t keep myself from wanting to explore the Temple of the Forbidden Eye with Indiana Jones, so after trying to take in all of Main Street we entered Adventureland and went straight to the “Temple.” The ride was a lot scarier, cooler, and more exciting than I ever thought it would be. It was awesome. We had a reservation at the Blue Bayou restaurant that sits next to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but before we ate some Louisiana style cuisine, we met up with Millie and Robert Lewis (Derek’s high school friends who just so happened to be there at the same time!) and went on a Jungle Cruise, rode through Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and experienced Jack Sparrow and his pirate mates beyond the DVD.

The Blue Bayou was amazing. We instantly transcended from the sunny afternoon to a summer night just at dusk as the fireflies come out on a deck overlooking the river of the Pirates ride. It was so awesome. It felt like home. We ate Gumbo and the infamous Monte Cristo which cannot be described well enough for you to appreciate the awesome tastes. I did not want to leave, but alas we had to. I wish the pictures turned out well enough for you to see, but even if the lighting was better for the pictures, they wouldn’t do a good job at expressing the awesome feeling of the room.

We have pictures to show what we saw, so I’ll be sure to post those instead of talking more. That was the highlight of the first day. But we also went on the Hollywood Tower of Terror!! It was pretty dang freaky… I’m not lying. But it was SO FUN! To top off the evening and the exciting day, we shared a Mint Julup (which I can’t spell) is a minty lemonade drink, and it’s GOOD! I loved it… I think I liked it more than Derek. All right… so here are the pictures of my first magical day!

More Pictures...

from our California adventures on Monday and Tuesday.

Adventures to California

Our sojourn to the beautiful California country was exciting and relaxing.  Monday we drove, ate at IN-N-OUT for my first time ever, and slept pretty dang close to the beach.  Tuesday we cruised around California, went to the beach, ate at Nancy's (Derek's Peruvian grandmother), and slept over at Barry's (guy that Derek taught and baptized).

MONDAY:  

Unfortunately f

or Derek, I have to pee... a lot.  So we stopped a good bit.  We started reading the Hobbit.  The view through Utah was really pretty, but once we hit Nevada, nothing.  There's nothing too special to Las Vegas.  It's just a big city in the middle of no where full of traffic.

Ventura County (where Derek spent the most of his mission) was beautiful.  Orange grove

s, beaches, mountains, awesome views, wonderful scents (at least through the orange groves).  

IN-N-OUT Burger was really good.  For those who don't know what it's about:  The menu is very simple, but you can dress up your sandwich in an

y creative ways you want.  Derek and I had ours "Animal Style"- with grilled onions and pickles.  Mmm.

Sleeping on the "beach" was an adventure.  Not much privacy.  Cold.  Full of rabbits who wanted our chocolate.  It was fun.  Putting the tent up in the dark was exciting and slightly scary, but luckily I have my big, strong, fearless husband to protect me.

(just to let you know, at the moment, Derek is running around the living room pretending like he's Wolverine.)

TUESDAY: 

Tuesday morning as we woke up in our never-so-private camp

 spot, we decided a nice, warm shower would be awesome.  Luckily they had running water, but unluckily, the warm 

water costed us some quarters of which we did not have.  Let's just say our showers were really short.  Once we got packed up

, we headed up to Santa Barbara, California to see a missionary who Derek was close to...Elder Stowell (Stippert, if you will).  
After the visit, we stopped to walk around through downtown at the outdoors mall that was awesome and would have been even more awesome if I had a lot of money to waste on expensive things.  Mom would have had so much fun.  We actually went to find some sunglasses for Derek but had no luck.  

Carpinteria BEACH!  How fun and beautiful.  And we only saw one woman whose swim suit was appalling.  We walked on the beach a lot, then drove around beautiful Ventura, Derek pointing out significant places from the mission, and ate lunch on the beach.  It was so cool to see ocean on one side of the interstate and mountain on the other.

On the way to Nancy's for dinner, we drove through some 

orange groves, strawberry fields, and flower fields.  It was so pretty and it smelled wonderful.  So we stopped on the side of the road and bought some fresh strawberries, and let me tell you, they were the most incredible strawberries I've ever tasted.  I didn't

 know strawberries could taste so good.

Dinner was wonderful!  It was Peruvian, of course, and it was so good.  I though it was going to be spicy, but it wasn't at all.  I want a recipe.  Visiting with Nancy and her family was really fun.  We learned a lot about some new finds in South America which was cool to learn about.

I'm sure there was a lot of stuff in between that was fun, but it was about all the same.  We drove and walked and looked a lot.  It was fun to just take in all the beauty.  So, we spent the night at Barry's and stayed up until late talking to him.  That was fun.  :) It was nice to sleep in the next morning also.

So, this is all we'll meniton right now.  I'll type up our adventures in Disneyland soon.