California Trip...again

Yes, we went to California, yet again. This time we went to visit Julia and Steve and take Becca to Disneyland! We love Disneyland and she hadn't been since she was really young, so we decided to take her with us and show her how great it is! While I was there I also managed to "work" for a day...which entailed going to lunch at Malibu beach with a school psychologist that I work with a lot over the telephone, but had never met in person. I won't bore you with a lot of details...but here were some of the higlights along with lots of pictures!

While Julia and I were in Malibu, we saw Dean Cain! For those of you too young or disinterested in TV to remember, he was Clark/Superman in the TV show Lois and Clark. My family was faithful watchers of this show when I was growing up, so we were pretty excited. He did have some paparazzi talking to him...and seemed a bit annoyed...so we didn't ask for a picture. But when he was pulling out of the parking lot, I gave him a wave and he smiled and waved back. We were pretty excited.

We also got some famous and fancy chocolate from Malibu. Supposedly they used to make truffles for Jackie Kennedy. We bought a little bit for my dad (too dark for our liking) and they ended up giving us lots of free samples (I think they could tell we were too poor to afford most things because we kept asking prices and then putting things back down because they were too expensive).

At Disneyland we won Dream Fastpasses again! Well, my mom and Julia did, but they scored some for us too. This is now the 5th time we have won either a Dream Fastpass or after hours party pass. We must have unbelievable luck when it comes to Disneyland and I definitely think we have taken more than our share of the million dreams they are giving away...but we won't complain.

The highlight of Disneyland was the new Toy Story Midway Mania ride. It was awesome! It's hard to explain, but it is is somewhat similar to the idea of Buzz Lightyear, but the carts move more, there are different shooting games along the way, and it is all in 3-D...which makes it extra cool.

Since getting our annual passes we have tried to ride all of the rides in Disneyland at least once. Even the less popular or well known rides. So, this time we got to ride the Canoes. These are only open in the summer and our passes are blocked out for much of the summer, so this is the first chance we've had to ride them. I've wondered why anyone would stand in line to paddle their own canoe...but we did it to cross it off our list.

And as always, I loved Fantasmic! We got a front row spot and finished off our Disney days with my favorite disney show.

On Friday we swam in the Ocean with the dolphins (really, we saw four real dolphins swim by really close to us). On Saturday we searched for good deals at the swap meet and ate lunch at one of our California favorites, Claim Jumper. They have the hugest most delicious desserts.

Those are the higlights. Another successful trip. And now it's back to work. Happy Independence Day on Friday!