A Quick California Trip

Last weekend we made a quick trip to California to hear our niece, Briana's, mission report.  We loaded the kids up after they got home from school on Thursday, and ended up driving all the way to California that night.  We rolled into a hotel around 3 AM, slept for a few hours, and then got up and drove a few more minutes to Universal Studios.  We planned it this way so that we could be there on a Friday, which, in theory, would be less busy than Saturday.  But it was pretty busy anyway.

 Harry Potter World was pretty cool.  All of our kids have read the first book now, and so we watched the movie on the way to California.  It made it a little more exciting when we got there.

 We hurried right to the main attraction at Harry Potter World, hoping to get it done before the line got too long, but we ended up waiting 2 hours, after the ride was having problems.  We finally left the line and went to get food, where we waited in another long line for expensive, mediocre chicken fingers with no BBQ sauce!  I think we (I) may have been a little hangry by then...

We were so close to being to the front of the Harry Potter ride line!

 The butter beer was delicious, and redeemed Harry Potter World after a 2 hour line wait that ended in nothing.

After lunch we found the attraction with the shortest wait time, so that we could at least say we had seen something!  Minion World won out.

 The really steep escalators on the way down to Jurassic Park, were like a ride.  Since it was 2:00 and we had only gone on the Minion ride, let's count it.

 Only an hour left in the line, kids!

 Finally on the Jurassic Park ride!  We loved this one.

 By this time it was 4:00, and the park was supposed to close at 6:00.  Every other attraction had at least an hour wait, so we thought we would only be able to do one more ride.  Grant had really wanted to buy a wand in Harry Potter World, so we headed back up there, bought the wand, and Dustin and the boys went on another little roller coaster in Harry Potter World, while the girls and I tried out the wand and gave Maren's stomach a break (she didn't do so well with Jurassic Park.  Poor weak stomach!)

 Matthew and Briana and their aunts were also at the park, and we finally met up with them to take the Universal Studios Tour.  Our tour guide was super funny and this ended up being our favorite ride!

 As we got off the bus, they announced that the park was going to stay open until 8:00, so we hurried back to Harry Potter World, so we could finally ride the fixed ride!  And, we didn't have very much wait time at all.

Here we are touching the nose of the lion (and our own) for good luck.  You've never heard of that tradition?  Strange.

 We are very exhausted, and watching for ourselves on the Jumbo Tron.

The next morning the kids jumped in Arie and Isabel's freezing pool, and then hurried over to the hot tub.

 This was a torture game.  They put their feet in the freezing water, and the first one to take them out, had to have the last shower.

 We took a quick walk with Arie's family.

And then we took our kids and Matthew to Hollywood to see the Walk of Stars and the Chinese Theater.

 We got to the beach after the sun had set, but that didn't stop our kids from getting their feet wet.

As we drove back to Arie's house, we decided to make a quick detour to the LA Temple Visitor's Center to see if we could find our friend's Conrad and Carolyn Jacobsen, who are serving a mission there.  We found them right as we walked in the door!  It was fun to see them for a few minutes.

 A cool reflection from the front window.

The next day was Briana's mission report.  She did such an amazing job!  It was so fun to hear her experiences and see her all grown up!

The next morning we left bright and early to start back home.  We met up in Las Vegas with our friends, Greg and Amber Severts.  Greg was in Dustin's ward growing up, he served in the same mission, and he and Amber lived in our same apartment complex right after we all got married.  It was so much fun to see them and reconnect for a few minutes!  Our kids are all the same ages (except for their 5th).  Here they are in order of age.

We ended up driving as far as Cedar City that night.  Apparently while we were enjoying California's beautiful weather, Utah was getting a major snowstorm.  We stayed over at my parent's house to avoid the icy, snowy roads of Utah, and we finished out our drive the next day.  It was a lot of driving in a few days, but worth it!