Our FIRST vacation in 1794 days!

For those of you doing the math...that amounts to 4 years and 31 days!!! We hadn't had a vacation since we were first married, and it was well overdue! It's been nearly impossible to leave Carissa, because every time we walk in the other room, she would go into hysterics until we came back. It wasn't until very recently that she started to allow us to be in another room, and she would be fine playing somewhere else as well. She also was starting to interact with her teachers and even people walking by the house. So when we had a choice between doing a "reception" after our sealing OR going on a vacation....we were quick to jump on the vacation idea! (and I wasn't too keen on planning a reception in about 3 weeks!)

I left where we would go up to Andrew, but it didn't really surprise me that he wanted to go to L.A. And even less, when he said we were going to DisneyLand for a day! Don't get me wrong, that was exactly where I wanted to go too!

So we booked our flight and left early sunday morning, arriving early enough that we could hit Universal Studios for the day.



Thinking of course that it would be less busy than Disney, since it was the weekend. Boy were we WRONG! Apparently, it was the busiest (and hottest) day they'd had since summer began. But we made one good choice. We bought the V.I.P. passes that got us to the front of EVERY ride AND EVERY show! It was totally worth the extra money for that, since we only stood in line.....no longer than 5 minutes! And that was only because we had to wait for the previous show to get out! We had front row seats at EVERY show (except we didn't want front row seats at WaterWorld!!).

*One thing we learned while talking to someone who works at Universal, is that when the weather is HOT, and it's pretty crowded, they DO increase the water pressure on the water rides, so you WILL get wet! Trust me....you can't avoid it! Thought you might like to know that!

One of our favorite shows was the Shrek 4D show! It was really cute! And the graphics were amazing! Here's a picture of a sign that was above the line area (which, had I not stopped to take a picture, we probably wouldn't have ever noticed!)


We'd been eyeing the "Fast and the Furious" cars all through the park, but during the day, they were WAY too hot to touch, so after it had cooled off a bit (and we were SUPER wet from going on the Jurasic Park ride....TWICE!!!) I got to pose with the cool car from the movie! (don't mind the out of focus picture...that's just Andrew taking it...and he NEVEr takes back-up shots!)

And of course he had to get a picture with the Terminator bike!


Then because I had taken my smaller camera, my battery was dying, and of course I didn't think to bring my charger, not knowing that the battery would only last for a day! So I didn't get any more pictures, and tried not taking too many the next day. *(Sorry)

So on Monday, we ventured over to Disney, and found out it was also the busiest day of the year. But unfortunatley, there were NO V.I.P. passes to be bought, and we were forced to hunt out the fast passes like everyone else! But it wasn't too bad....just HOT! So we tried to stay inside for as much as we could. But soon found out that there were much fewer shows at Disney than we remembered. And the one show we were excited to see over in California Adventure doesn't run shows on Mondays. (and that's really the ONLY reason that we bought a park hopper ticket)

So before my camera completely died....we managed to get a nice couple to take our picture while riding on the train.


So hopefully we will be able to sneak away sooner than 1794 days, because now I've had a taste of life without kids! It was really nice to just be a couple. Not to worry about bedtimes or temper tantrums, or back talking! What a nice break! Now the tricky part is coming back and getting back to the not so pleasant things of life!

Stay tuned for the temple updates! (Be patient....I don't have the pictures yet!)