Alive!!

Greetings from the Happiest Place on Earth!!

It's been a couple long days and more than one wrong turn, but we've made it to Anaheim and our hotel. It was an adventure getting here:

The first day of driving was the long day. We drove from our home to Mesquite, Nevada (which is longer than 4 hours). The hard part about that was the rain. It rained the entire day!!! It was irritating, annoying and down right obnoxious. I was driving when we went through Salt Lake and it was so hard to see the road in front and behind us. Add to that the large amounts of traffic (much larger amounts than what I'm used to driving in) and I was "white knuckle driving." Add to that the fact that we put Mr. Jabber-box in the far back seat of the Tahoe and I couldn't hear a word he was trying to say to me because of the amount of water hitting the top of the car and running beneath the car. Aly wanted music on, and Adam wanted to talk and I couldn't hear a darn thing. That made my knuckles a bit more white and I'm sure I gained more than a few more white hairs on my head

*Note to self: Call hair dresser when we get back for a touch-up of my highlights.

The highlight of the day was being able to talk to my friend, Kristi, for about 20 minutes as we were driving through Arm-Pit, Utah (which is about an hour north of St. George). I was amazed that we had coverage the entire time and we had a nice conversation. I'm looking forward to her visit in two weeks.

It was also nice bringing our next-door neighbor and friend, Maddie along on the trip. Her sister, lives 20 minutes from Disneyland and we decided it would be fun to bring Maddie along as a surprise. Maddie is naturally cheerful and happy and things were quite positive while she was in the car.... it's hard to fight when she's around.

(The surprise was perfect!! A. had no idea that Maddie was coming! A's hubby, B, was so good at keeping her in the dark. He had A. cook us dinner (which was delicious) but told her she was cooking for some of their friends. Unfortunately, those friends "cancelled" and they couldn't find someone else to come eat the copious amounts of food she had prepared. When we knocked on the door (with Maddie staying behind to come in a couple minutes after us), she was so excited because she had the right amount of food to feed us. She was so gracious because after greeting us, she said, "Have you had dinner? Do you want to eat with us?" The surprise was made even better when Maddie knocked on the door and came in. I will treasure the memories of that for a LONG time!)

We gave Maddie her first experience at a casino. I didn't fully realize that the hotel I booked in Mesquite was a full-on casino (it said resort, and that made me think of swimming pools and spas. I never dreamed that the resort was a casino. Oh well.) It was quite disgusting. My non-smoking room was -- of course -- full of stinky walls, bedding and ashtrays. Of course, there was no where we could be moved to! "It's Expedia's fault!" was the line Calvin got when he called to complain.

Traffic between Vegas and LA was intense. I've heard that it gets worse later on Sunday and that boggles my mind. Calvin handled it perfectly, though. I'm grateful that he is so cool under vehicular pressure. (I probably would have had a vehicular aneurysm.)

The two times we got lost was coming into Anaheim. We made our map with Google and they weren't as thorough as we expected them to be. Thankfully, there was a very nice lady in a gas station in Ontario (two things: yes, Calvin stopped and asked for directions and who knew there was an Ontario California?)
The second time we got lost was after leaving A & B's apartment. We thought we'd go on an adventure and try to find the Newport Beach Temple (I didn't know there was one!). We didn't find it, but missed our turn coming back. We ended too far east than where we were supposed to be, but thanks to a beautiful map Calvin bought at the first gas station, we figured it out.

We've seen a lot more of Southern California than we ever thought we would. It's great!! And now we're looking forward to our first day in Disneyland tomorrow.

Our goals:
to not lose Adam
to have fun
to keep Adam with us
experience as much as Disneyland as possible
whatever we do, try not to lose Adam