Home for Christmas

And by "home" I mean "Disneyland", of course.

This was a very different Disneyland trip for us. First of all, it was an absolute madhouse--it seemed like every human in the free world had gone to Disneyland. I don't blame them, but it would've been nice to have a little more breathing room. But we are early risers at Disneyland anyway, so we always had a few good hours in the morning while everyone else was sleeping in after being in the park till midnight. That was another weird thing, I couldn't make myself stay in the park past about ten. I was just too tired! (I think Brian secretly LOVED this new part of me.)

The hardest part though was the things I had to say no to. No Indy, no mountains, and (gasp) no new Star Tours. That was pretty sad. But I did get to ride the new Little Mermaid ride, Pirates, Soarin' (my favorite I think) and eat lots of yummy food. As an added bonus, my cousin Nicole was proposed to by her curly-haired boyfriend on this trip, which was very fun! It is, after all, not a bad place to propose in my opinion.

After preparing so much to go on this trip (vacationing the week before Christmas isn't easy and we DO NOT recommend it!) it was such a relief to get somewhere that really felt like Christmas. This trip held a lot of firsts, but mostly it was fun to take in all the decorations and atmosphere while we imagined the first trip we'll take with the kiddo when he arrives! (Thank goodness he's a boy, I can put off that huge line to meet the princesses for a few more years.)

I think the little dude already likes Disneyland, by the end of the trip I could feel him wiggling around in approval. Probably too many sugary churros!

New Phone, Old Pictures

After the mandatory 2 years on our cell contract (which is now history, but that's another story) we finally got new cell phones. In between transferring phone numbers, a task which I detest, I took all the pictures off my old phone and thought I better document them somewhere. You may notice somewhat of a theme...well, cell phone cameras are handy and my kitten was extra cute when he was tiny. Please note, these are not chronological in any way. 

 

Mailing a postcard to my brother while at Disneyland. I had to prove that I did it--and it's a good thing I did, since he never got it. But see? I did send it! As a side note, I think I'm ready to have my long hair back now...

This is me and Crush when I came  home from a vacation. I missed him just a little.

Why yes, this IS a terrible picture of me! But it's the best picture we have showing one of Crush's favorite napping spots. 

This was when we first brought Crush home. Brian still likes to wrestle with Crush, but Crush puts up a much better fight now. 

He did wear him out a lot though!

Doesn't he look just like a little toy?

I'm always amazed at how tiny he can be when he curls up tight. 

A very random post, but all happy moments!

101.9 The End

So when we are driving to work in the morning Brian and I always listen to the Chunga Show on 101.9. It’s hysterical! They do ‘Stupid News’, make fun of celebrities, review movies and ramble like only radio DJs (and teenage girls) can. But my favorite thing about them is that they are huge Disney fans. A couple weeks ago they were broadcasting while they were RIDING on Space Mountain. It was sweet.

Halloween is a pretty big deal at Disney, so the Chunga Show decided to give away Disneyland passes for two weeks during October in celebration of pumpkin time. Three times a day they would play a clip of a Disney villain from a movie and people would call in to tell them who it was. Some were very easy (seriously, couldn’t anyone guess ‘evil queen’ or ‘evil stepmother’?) others were harder (I don't remember ever watching The Black Cauldron, but still knew the villain) but there was one that downright stumped me.

Of course, that was the one I got through on.

You see, to win this thing you had to be calling before the clip even played to have a shot at getting through, not to mention that you had to be the first caller to get it right. So last week I’m thrilled, because the phone is ringing, and this is the clip that plays:

“You’re all gonna get it, starting with that cat!”

Um…what? Cat…the only Disney movie I can think of with cats is Aristocats…that villain is Edgar…ummmm….

“101.9, can you name that Disney Villain?”

“Is it Edgar?”

“Nope, thanks for calling.”

Oh for the love. Are you kidding me? Turns out it was one of the Dobermans, named Roscoe, from Oliver and Company, a movie which I’m not even entirely sure we owned. All I remember is Billy Joel was one of the voices. It took them over 20 callers to find someone who got it. Mickey Mouse is going to disown me now. At least it wasn’t live on the radio. They took calls during a song and just played the right one when the song was over.

That day I flew out to California on business, missing the next two days of villains. Brian did an awesome job at calling in, but never got through (boy does he know his Disney villains now). By week two of the contest I’m getting kind of annoyed. The DJs are giving out hints before they play the clip, or playing such easy lines that I’m sure everyone at a desk is just typing them into Google while the phone rings. I told Brian they should be struck by lightning for doing this, but he thought that was a little harsh.

Can you tell I haven’t been to Disneyland in a while?

On Tuesday I was listening for the noon clip, which is consistently played at least ten minutes late (thanks, DJ Grant). Finally the DJ comes on and starts talking about the contest.

*Amanda madly dialing*

“…winner will get park hopper passes…”

*Amanda dialing some more*

“…name this Disney villain…”

*Amanda almost falling out of her chair because the phone is ringing now and she hasn’t heard the clip yet…if it’s from Oliver and Company I swear I WILL find this DJ and…*

“The Beast will make off with your children!”

Seriously, could they pick an easier one?

“101.9 The End, can you name that Disney villain?”

*Amanda’s pulse is now off the charts*

“I can, it’s Gaston!”

“That’s right! Who’s the radio station hooking you up with Disneyland passes?”

“101.9 The End!”

*Amanda manages to give her information to constantly late DJ Grant and refrains from screaming in her workplace. She hangs up, and Brian calls*

“You little stinker!”

Yes, yes I am. And proud of it!

Spring Fever

First off, thanks to those of you who have already donated to the Relay for Life! We are so excited to go do that. If you haven't yet it's not too late! Check out our nephew, Eli, and our team page for the Relay for Life to donate! Thank you!

Well, my Valentine's Day daisies are finally giving up...which means it's time for spring. Thankfully we are now just one week away from our spring break, even if Weber State is out already. Oh well. Utah is taunting us as it always does this time of year with warm, sunny days quickly followed by scraping snow off my car.

This is the time of year I really wonder why people think it's so great to live here.

Normally we'd run away during spring break but I'm about this close --> <--- to finishing my senior project so we'll be sticking around this time. Since we'll be here I decided it was time to do something for our apartment; the beige invasion is starting to get to me. What's worse than beige paint? Beige paint on cinder blocks. Yeah. So tonight B and I went to Home Depot and picked so many paint chips that I wasn't sure they were going to let us out of there with them all; the number was partially due to the fact that Bher makes DISNEY paint and so they were named things like 'Tigger's Tummy" and "Donald Orange" which I obviously had to take home regardless of how irrelevant the actual color was. The Home Depot gal was probably hoping that we'll come back to buy gallons of paint to do a whole house, but we have two words for her:

"Accent Wall"

You see, evidently the U is very attached to the, er, lovely color that they've painted all the apartments. Consequently, no matter how awesome we make it look we have to paint it back before we leave or pay the maintenance guys to do it which, rumor is, isn't cheap. So we're going to at least start with one wall. For the few of you that have been here, it's the wall on the east side, where our entry door is. We're considering doing some kind of texture, two-color deal. Apparently B helped do something like this for one of his sisters a long time ago. Times like this make me glad B is so artistic, yet wishful that the artistic-ness wasn't quite so time consuming and messy. Anyway, when I get some daylight in here tomorrow I'll try to post a picture of our paint finalists so everyone can vote or something. I know you're all just dying to see what "Love's First Kiss" looks like, but sadly it has already been deemed too pink by Bri. He said that about several, actually.

I know, I was shocked too!

So...here are our finalists! The numbers match the pole on the right -->
Remember, we're probably going to use two that are kinda similar to do some textured stuff.


Speaking of the hubby, it's almost his birthday! He's going to be 25 in less than two weeks. Scary, is it not? I'm thoroughly enjoying the teasing, but have also told him he needs to decide on his "quarter life crisis" so we can do something fun. We decided mid life is too far away, so we'll do quarter life crisies. Besides, then we get to have more! He's a lucky duck, his birthday is always on spring break, so we'll get to play for his big day. After that we are officially on the good side of the semester!

Yay!

Imagineering and the Cosmic Payback

Ok, so the last seven days have been quite the adventure. We'll start with last Friday: I got to meet a real Imagineer! Thanks to my awesome Daddy and some good connections I got to spend two happy hours looking at solid models of roller coaster parts, talking about open channel flow and smiling in general. SO awesome. Seriously, that should be my job. This visit was to help me get in the right mindset for the competition Brian and I are going to enter next year with our very own idea for a Disney attraction. AND Daddy took me to get onion rings. Life just doesn't get much better than that.

So I had a fabulous Friday, followed by an equally great weekend. And then Monday decided that I was simply too happy and therefore had to bring balance to the universe.

I've never been particularly fond of Mondays. My worst classes always seem to happen then, they're the longest work days and I have a very short attention span. The weekend is a tough act to follow. Anyway, on Monday the following happened, in this order:

1. My laptop had a heart attack
2. Choir was lame to the extreme
3. Brian had a bad day at work/school
4. A Pyrex dish fell out of the freezer
5. Part of the Pyrex ended up in my heel

Yup. Monday's only redeeming quality was that we got to go watch our friends in Thoroughly Modern Millie. That was way fun, and even distracted me from the glass in my foot! Obviously from Monday things could only improve. Right?

Right?

Yeah. Whew. It's Thursday and I think we've finally recovered. I managed to extract the glass the size of a grain of rice out of my foot, granted that was probably not an improvement on Monday until I was done and required flexibility that I didn't know I still had. School and work have both shaped up, helped along by the presence of Easter candy (mmm Cadbury eggs). Finally, today the nice Dell man came and fixed my computer...and it worked. This is a new concept between Dell and I. Usually it takes a few tries to figure out why my computer has lost its mind, but not this time! Yay!

So as the week winds down I'm slightly shocked to see that our apartment has retained its cleanliness quite well and the hard stuff for the week is pretty much done.

And don't worry, there's no more Pyrex in the freezer to try to kill us.

Disneyland...Plus a 3 Hour Tour

This last weekend I was profoundly grateful to my parents for never making us drive to Disneyland. Granted, we had never gone in the winter before so thiswe probably would not have had the problems we did this last week.

So, on Wednesday last week our buddy Drew finished his last final ever (yay!) and we piled in the car to book it to Disneyland. We had every intention of driving straight through, arriving around ten at night. Oh, how very wrong we were. Over the next 36 hours we found the three deadly events of driving:

1. Fog
2. Snow
3. Idiots

In Southern Utah we found the fog. And we're talking an absolute wall here. A pain, but easily dealt with once we convinced Taylor that she just shouldn't look out the window any more. Way too stressful. Next we found the snow...in Las Vegas. Seriously. Vegas. My first thought was 'you have got to be kidding', which was quickly followed by 'we are in SO much trouble'. Sure enough, the freeway marquis were advertising the happy news that I-15 was closed at the state line. Sigh. Ok, well I had a solution for that. My brother and cousins were traveling a few hours behind us with the intent of staying at our aunt and uncle's place in Vegas, so we surprised them by doubling their body count for the evening. They were so great about it though, and even their sweet kitties adopted B and I when it was bedtime. Thanks, Pascal and Angie!


We got out of Vegas the next morning with the hope that the state line would be open by the time we got there. This brings us to item number three on that list of driving catastrophes...and we were the first ones. We seriously underestimated the ability of life to end at the sight of snow. Being from Utah we have a very high tolerance for snow--Nevada and California do not share this ability. So we were kicked off I-15 in a very sunny Primm, Nevada. After seeing more semi trucks than I ever have before and realizing that everything in the casino we were parked at was closed (explain that one...no video games, no food, no gift shops) B decided to be the superhero he is and found a highway patrolman. He informed Bri that, while they planned to open the first 'mountain pass' we needed to travel in a few hours, the second wouldn't be opened till the next day. Side note: these people have NO IDEA what an actual mountain pass is. So, we opted for the 'detour' and headed back towards Vegas. The idiots made another appearance at this point as a car driving the wrong direction on the freeway. Brilliant.

A detour in my mind is a 30 minute or hour trip out of your way. But this was the mother of all detours. Observe the map. The happy green dots going on I-15 from St. George to California are the ones we wanted...the red ones are what we ended up with.

Yes, that is an extra three hours of chasing the Arizona/California border. Ok, fine. As long as we were driving I was substantially happier. We found my brother and cousins and had them follow us back to Vegas and then down on the most depressing stretch of uninhabited highway we have ever seen. But wait, more idiots! During our oh so scenic tour of the desert we were suddenly parked along a snowy highway again. Apparently in a construction zone a couple miles ahead of us some car had decided he just HAD to cut in front of a semi. Obvious to most coherent humans this is not a good idea. So, with no exit in sight, both directions of the freeway were stopped once again. B's face there basically sums up our reaction. I found myself wondering how far his sister, Cyndee, lived from where we were. Maybe they could rescue us next.


But patience (and the fact that we were literally trapped) prevailed. 45 minutes, one snow angel, a 30 minute snowball fight across cars, one push out of the snowy median for someone who tried to escape and several snowmen later everyone was on the move again. I'm quite sure that this area has never seen quite so many snowmen, outfitted with water bottles, sticks, garbage and actual items of clothing that people saw fit to leave behind as their mark on this desolate stretch of road.

After that it was simply a matter of driving the extra distance. Oh, you say, is that all? By the time we made it to Anaheim at 8:00 pm we had been on the road for roughly 20 hours, away from home for 36. Sigh. Needless to say, we were pretty set on going into the park when we got there. We needed some stress relief.

Ta Da!

Real food and Indiana Jones did wonders for everyone. A seemingly endless day actually ended very well, proof that Disneyland can fix almost anything. The next morning we were determined to open the park and justly rewarded--we won Dream Fastpasses about two minutes after we walked in. So we waited in no lines more than 20 minutes, walked on to several rides in Fantasyland that are notorious for long waits, hugged Mickey with NO line (my trademark Disneyland karma moment) and had a fabulous day. The Christmas Parade was so fun, especially since the little guy sitting next to me decided that he wanted to keep me posted on who each character was. "Look, Mickey!" My thoughts exactly.

We finished with fireworks, awesome snow that we didn't have to drive in (aka soap bubbles) and a visit to where Brian proposed 14 months ago. Pretty fabulous day!

Saturday was equally good in Disney's California Adventure. We walked on everything, apparently everyone was in Disneyland. Ok by me! We even learned to draw Winnie the Pooh and I wasn't too bad! We also learned what characters we are most like--Ariel and Tarzan. The newest addition over there is Toy Story Mania, which we played many times. What a blast! It's like being inside a video game with one major difference: I'm good at it. We also watched the Electrical Parade, which I hadn't seen since it left Disneyland in 1996. It was pretty fun to watch something I loved so much as a kid 12 years later with Brian.

Sunday morning we hung out with Drew's family before heading out on a much less eventful drive. We were so glad to get home in one piece! Next time we are going when there is NO snow whatsoever. But we have fun pictures, lots more Christmas ornaments and my Disney craving is satisfied...for now. We also discovered that all the Christmas decorations were on sale (add Drew's cast discount to that and you get some happy people) so our tree is substantially more populated now. So it's back to real life, wrapping presents and more snow. Plus the after vacation damage control laundry and cleaning. Here comes Christmas!

Check out our pictures of the castle at the bottom of my blog page. You'll have to click to download the program, but I promise it's a good one. You can see all around the castle. It'll be like you were there!

And We're Done!

Ok, NOW we are done.

Whew! Brian gave his final presentation yesterday, so we went to dinner to celebrate. When we got home (at seven o'clock) he promptly went to bed. Thank goodness our nephews called and agreed to play Mario Kart on the Wii with me. I would've been so bored! However, I was justly punished for my idleness--those guys beat me thoroughly. They have a knack for being sneaky and choosing the courses with no walls, so that I fall off the course multiple times in a lap. Eli (nephew) always says to go easy on him...little does he know that I am so very bad at it that I should be the one looking for a handicap!

It's that time again...Disneyland! My brother and cousins are actually going to drive to Disneyland the same time we are, so we might bump into them. Obviously they have learned from my great example that college fun means driving to Disneyland as often as possible. I'm excited for them to get to make this trip. None of us have ever been at Christmas time, so we're all pretty excited.

I'm very curious about who decided that this time off from school was a 'break' or 'vacation'. After we speed back from Disneyland we'll be five days away from Christmas! That means cleaning, wrapping and lots of driving between Ogden and SLC. Last year I felt like I needed a break because Christmas made me tired, not school! Hopefully we will deal with fewer blizzards this year...last time around I spent about twice as many hours driving as I should have thanks to Utah's uncanny ability to dump snow exactly where I need to be. Cute, huh?

About the time we're driving home this weekend the rest of our family will be following us in. My out of towner aunts and uncles as well as B's older sisters. We're so excited to get to see everyone over the next month!

For now, I'm going to go wait in the car. We're only 10 hours away from leaving. I need to be ready.

Mele Kalikimaka!

I can't believe how fast November has gone!

We celebrated my birthday a few weeks ago. My cute family was so much fun! One of the more unique presents I got was food--Dole Whip Mix (Warning! Disneyland tangent coming!). For those of you who don't know what this is, I'm very sorry. I know two places in the world where you can find this fantastic substance: Hawaii and Disney Parks. Seriously, it's the best. It's pineapple ice cream, but it's not really ice cream. It's so much better. The best way to have it is at the Tiki Room at Disneyland, drenched in pineapple juice to make a float. Mmmmm!

So, in an effort to enjoy our Dole Whip authentically we used some wedding gift cards we still had to get our own little soft serve at home machine. It's pretty dang cute. Being an engineer I'm not one to jump on the instructions to put something together, so I missed the part in the book where it said to chill the liquid before putting it in the ice cream maker. Alright, fine. So we had Dole Whip slushies the first time. They still tasted amazing!

The second time around we did better--I'm grudgingly giving the instructions the credit here. Oh well. See for yourself!


Needless to say, I was a pretty happy camper. The best part is that the bag of mix is huge! :)

B and I spent the weekend house/babysitting for his brother's three cute girls. We had a great time going to the zoo, although the night was a little rougher than we would have hoped for! I'm sure the people at the zoo thought we were crazy with three kids, but it was fun. Abby really wanted to see the penguins.


Kate and Ella enjoyed the crazy ride that is their Uncle B behind the wheel of a stroller! Ella pointed and waved at all the animals, it was so cute!

The downside of that weekend was that I got sick afterwards and missed out on a wine-and-dine trip to California for a job interview. But boy was I glad I got sick before I got on an airplane! So after about three days in bed I finally caught up on the sleep I'd missed when the girls had been left without their mom the first night. A blessing in disguise!

As November brought Christmas music to the radio and movies on tv I promised myself that I'd wait till after Thanksgiving to put our tree up. But, when I couldn't think of a reason for such a promise, I broke it out. Yesterday we finally got some more decorations for it so it isn't so naked. We also decided we'd try out LED lights for our windows, which we're liking a lot. Here's our sweet little tree!


Brian has been very tolerant of the lights, sparkles, and Mickey-shaped ornaments. He's the best! We're excited for our month off of school that is in just a couple weeks, as well as our next Disneyland adventure! I can wait a couple more weeks though--I have enough Dole Whip mix to last that long!

The Mouse

After seeing my last post B suggested that I might try to explain my Disney, uh, preference. I suppose this really started before I was even born. My sweet dad decided to take my mom (and his little sister, as the supervision) on a date to Disneyland. She had never been, which my dad seemed to think was just inhuman. So off they went, starting a tradition that I would refuse to let them outgrow.

I believe (and someone will correct me, I'm sure) I was in the 2-year-old range when I was first happily taken to see Mickey. I love those pictures; pictures of a little person with blond pigtails and a Minnie Mouse shirt smiling and waving at...well, I don't really remember. But I'm sure it was good. And I must have been pretty darn cute, because they kept taking me back!

I went to Disneyland to find my family--aunts, uncles and cousins met us there almost every vacation. For a while I was an only child for these trips, but soon I was flying my unimpressed pregnant aunt up and down and up and down and up and down on the spinning rockets. It didn't bother my little, toddler self but she was kind of unimpressed.

So before you know it I'd gone from being the lone toddler to the ring leader of my hysterical cousins. Soon we were even getting our California cousins in on the mix. Somehow we (almost) always got along when we'd go off on our own. One trip we rode Indiana Jones 18 times in four days. Yup, we thought we were pretty darn awesome. It was always great bonding time for our families. On our peak days we'd have maybe 15 people in our party, which truly begins to define the meaning of the word 'party'. We had some pretty spectacular experiences, too. Things like watching Fantasmic (fireworks multiplied by about fifty) from the balcony of the Disney Gallery, lunch in Club 33 (twice!) and more 12+ hour days in the park than I ever would have thought humanly possible. I can only assume that Dole Whips and churros have some unknown power to inspire someone to keep going. I know it wasn't the french fries...we always fed those to the ducks.

Our parents basically ingrained in us the endless need to go to Disneyland. Annually, if not more. Some would say this is a slightly irrational need--my cousins and I agree that it's absolutely mandatory. I thought I would certainly never find anyone else with this viewpoint on life, but my second year of college I happened upon a group of friends in a show choir that did this very thing. Drew, my buddy who got married in my last post, appears to be the instigator of this operation. Between he and I we've pretty much got it down to a science.

I really don't know what happens to me when we go. Ask B, something is different. Traits of that 2-year-old in pigtails start to resurface...giggles, sugar tolerances and a new, almost inhumane ability to walk for 14 hours straight under proper motivation. Brian thinks I'm crazy, but he only added fuel to the flames by proposing during the finale of the fireworks. Mostly, I think it's just a place I associate with being incredibly happy. It's where we went to find family and escape from school and work. It is my dad's favorite engineering example, as we now bend dangerously over railings to watch hydraulic systems and debate how rides work. The piano player guy on Main Street recognizes my brother when we go, letting him play the piano every time. And somehow, before we leave, Mickey always finds me to give my my hug. I go there and feel totally separated from everything else. As an engineering student I can tell you that this is a VERY good thing in life.

Some people love to camp, some love to ski, some (for some unknown reason) like to go to Knott's Berry Farm. Me? I want to go home. I miss the mouse. It's still startling to be on eye level with him after so many years of being picked up to kiss his nose. But I love it just the same. So to everyone out there, here is my advice: prime your kids for the vacation you're going to want to take. Because if you go enough times they won't let you stop. Mom and Dad, thanks for priming me to be a Disney nut. Thanks for teaching me about 'E' ticket rides, sitting for hours to save the best fireworks spot and waiting in the always endless line for Peter Pan. I know we didn't always make it easy. :)

And thanks for only making us go to Knott's Berry Farm once. We'll never make that mistake again!

Day to day...

So I suppose the purpose of a blog is to actually talk about everyday life, not relive things I should've written down months ago. Lets take a stab at that, shall we?

It's Monday...also known as marathon school days. B and I get to school around nine, and leave together no less than 12 hours later thanks to his late class. Ugh. So now I find myself at his desk with 23 minutes of his last class left. But who's counting?

This last weekend we got to spend a day with Drew, my Disneyland buddy, for his wedding. He and his new wife are--brace yourselves--even more Disney-crazy than I am. That's right, they exist! They got married at the Timpanogos LDS temple, which I had never been to, so that was fun. I met Drew a couple of years ago in the monstrosity known as 'Encore' choir here at the U. This, my Ben Lomond buddies, is Chamber Choir on steroids. Yes, there are still sparkly outfits; but now you must run into the wings to put on different ones every few numbers. Yeah. Needless to say, Drew is a highly-tolerant human being. He was also my stunting partner for the choir, which means he has now had more chances to break my neck than the entire BLHS cheerleading team combined (and this was a LOT) and he never took any of them. So he's pretty much one of my favorite people.

And he gets into Disneyland for free.

No, this is not the only reason we keep Drew. But it is a perk! Our final trip with his Cast Member status will be just before Christmas. I have never seen the Christmas decorations at Disneyland (except for one morning, the day after HALLOWEEN for crying out loud) so I said 'Pleeeeeeease' and he caved in. But let there be no confusion: this did not take much persuasion.

So we had a blast hanging out at his wedding. Disney was obviously the predominant theme, from the quilt with Mickey silhouettes (that I seriously want!) to Taylor's sparkly, Enchanted-worthy dress. Such a pretty party! Thanks for keeping us around, guys, and congratulations!