Winter Fun

As promised, here is a post that is NOT about Disneyland! My friends and I decided we needed a girl's night out/sleepover in January to help us get through the January blahs.

We had a great time eating lots of fried food thanks to Wendy and her deep fryer (we liked the pickles the best).

Maggie enjoyed my little red wagon.

And we got to try on each other's hand me downs. It was a great night, just what we needed in dreary January.

In March I convinced Julie and Dan to go snowshoeing with me.

I didn't want to go with a bunch of pros for my first time and none of us had ever gone so it was perfect. We went up to the Spruces campground and had a blast. I can't wait to go again this year! Dan enjoyed going over all the natural snow bridges, Julie and I were a little bit more nervous about falling in the stream below.

It did backfire on him once, when he didn't quite make it over the bridge and got stuck, I had to go running up the hill to find a better place to cross over and help him (after we got pictures of course!My family fell in love with the newest Les Miz Anniversary special that aired on PBS, especially Alfie Boe. Julie joined his fan club and found out he was performing with the BYU-Idaho Symphonia, so she convinced us all to drive up to Rexburg to see him perform live.

We took the long way on the ride up and drove through Logan to stop at the Cox Honey farm, the cheese factory, and the Pepperidge Farms factory. We thought this Visiting Teaching bag was hilarious, it has the lesson and the treat all together, no need to visit, just drop it on the porch. When we got to Rexburg, we went to dinner at our all time favorite Chinese restaraunt - Fongs. One of my roommates from my first year at Ricks is living in Rexburg, so she and her husband and her little boy came to dinner with us, it was so fabulous to see Melissa!

Dan made the supreme sacrifice to come with us since it was in the middle of March Madness, luckily Julie had just bought an iphone, and there was an app to watch the games, so he didn't miss too much.

Is anyone tired of Disneyland yet?

I promise this is the last Disneyland post for awhile (Candice you can start reading again)!

Our Disneyland Annual Passes expired the third week of January. The first week in January we started getting emails about renewing our passes, and it was KILLING us that our year of Disneyland fun was coming to an end. So, we jokingly started saying that we needed to go one last time, that joke turned into more serious discussion, and finally less than a week before our passes expired, we decided to get out of the inversion in Utah and head for sunny California.

Lauren had work and class our first day there, so we had to muddle through without her for awhile.

Things got a lot more fun once she and Morgan arrived.

Swan Lake anyone?

For our last ride of the night we went over to Splash Mountain, since we were just going home and wouldn't mind getting wet. The first time through, none of us got wet. Since it was the end of the night, the ride operators just let us stay on and go through one more time. Lauren got SOAKED!! She was not pleased.

Dan and Lauren both got to do what they wanted, Dan got Bengal BBQ ...

and Lauren got to ride on the canoes.

One last ride on our favorite Matterhorn...

...and on the wheelchair (Julie was still recovering from pneumonia), and it was time to go.

Disneyland annual passes are the best!

I have no clue what we are trying to do in this picture, but I had to include it!

Christmas at Disneyland

After seeing Disneyland all decorated for Halloween, how could we not go back and see how Disneyland does Christmas? We convinced mom and dad to join with their crazy children for this trip, so we could all experience a Disneyland Christmas together. There was just one problem, about a week before we left, Julie got pneumonia. After a lot of thought, she decided to come with us and do what she could and enjoy the cable TV in the hotel room the rest of the time.

Lauren had a choir concert the first night we got there, Dan enjoyed helping her get ready. While we were waiting for the concert, we did a little shopping in downtown Claremont. Lauren's boyfriend, Morgan, bought a fake mustache to wear to the concert. Her reaction when she came onstage and saw him was priceless!!

She was so not amused.

And was mostly definitely not ready to kiss and make up after the concert.

Our first stop in Disneyland was California Adventures to get tickets to "World of Color" and go on the Toy Story ride.

Then it was on to the Animation Studio for Lauren's favorite, the drawing class.

Dad really enjoyed it as well.

We got a wheelchair for Julie, but we all enjoyed using it when she wasn't there.

When Julie was using the wheelchair, Lauren was pretty willing to give us a ride. :)

Julie was also pretty willing to share her wheelchair while we were waiting for "World of Color" to start.

We were able to talk mom into giving Tower of Terror a try, she LOVED it!

Mom and Dad were both brave and went on California Screamin', it was a hit, except for the upside down part.

Everyone made me go in the front for Splash Mountain - even with the rain poncho I was SOAKED!

The second night we were there we were excited to watch the Candlelight Processional, after standing around for hours reserving places for everyone, it started raining, and then raining harder, and then raining some more. The processional was cancelled because of rain and we were SOAKED. Once again we were glad for our ponchos. We decided to call it a night because we didn't want Julie out in the rain with pneumonia.

So after quick stop at Small World so she could see all the lights, we caught the shuttle to go dry out at our hotel.

After drying out in the hotel for a bit, we found a fabulous little German restaurant to celebrate First Advent and have some dinner.

The next day we had some extra time before our flight home, so Dan got more ice cream (and immediately dropped it on himself).

Mom went on Screamin' and Tower of Terror one more time

and we all had one last trip on the Matterhorn.

Lauren had to work, so our family Christmas picture as we left the park is missing one person.

It was a fabulous trip - even with the rain and the illness, we were so sad to leave.