nice trip to CA

We took a trip this weekend to Southern California for a friend's 30th birthday.  It was a great reason to go down, even though I do usually try to avoid going in the summer months during the heat! 

E took off Friday and Monday so we had a little more time to be down, and it really did make for a nicer trip instead of rushing.  It let us be a little more relaxed on friday for the flying (I'm always pretty nervous, this time was no exception, but once I get through security, I get a little more relaxed)  Security wasn't too bad, in the past I seem to have been flagged as someone who looks dangerous and needing a pat-down, but today they put me through a fluffing machine.  I have no idea what it was for, but it burst air from the feet upwards for a few seconds and then I had to stand still for 15 seconds while it did something. (I searched google to see if I could link to something about it, but I can't find anything.  bizarro!)

We went out to dinner with the whole family once we got down there, at a place called Isabellas (or was it Isabelles?), a really nice italian restaurant, and that was fun.  E's mom made some delicious orange cake out of fresh oranges that we had to try at home for desert.

Then on Saturday, we watched sabbath school and some of church on TV.  That's always a nice alternative to going to the huge church. :)  Plus, I could knit while watching that way, hee hee.  E's aunt and cousins came over for lunch and we had a nice big family meal.  I always like getting to see them, they are such nice girls.

Then we headed out for Gabe's birthday party and drove a few other friends (Robert and Sarah - Bert was in our wedding and E was in theirs) with us.  They are always trying to get us to play World of Warcraft.  My general excuse on that is that that "yes, I'm sure I would like it a lot.  I think I'd like it too much and get too addicted" :P  We laugh a lot when we are with them and that's really nice.  The party was great, they came up with little rebus's for everybody was was attending and had them on poster board on the various walls for people to figure out (I wish I had taken a picture of the one for E and me, it was quite fun).  They did some other trivia quizzes too, and we had fun trying to figure out the answers.  There was a ton of greek food, but I didn't really know what much was!  It was really nice to sit and chat with friends all evening.  I'll share pictures once I get them uploaded.  Once it got late, we moved the party over to E's house - and actually had ALL of Gabe's many games (like 5 gigantic bins and 2 smaller ones).  These are the awesome kinds of games you'd find at boardgamegeek, so it was a bigger selection than our local game store has!  The guys stayed up most of the night playing, I only made it to like 2:30 :)

The next morning, the games were all still there and so I did some looking for ones I might want to own (I'll have to do a geeky post about games sometime later) and played some with E and Craig before brunch... and most everybody showed up again for the day/evening of playing and visiting and even working on the Portland puzzle we got E's dad for father's day.  We hung out and ate together again (E's mom is so cool, letting everyone hang out at the house and then feeding us all too!).

Then Monday morning, we got up and ready to go and played a little more with Craig while waiting.  We made it to the airport in plenty of time (phew! we've missed our flight before, but traffic wasn't bad this time).  We finally decided to get some food at Carl's Jr/Green Burrito so that they we wouldn't stuff ourselves before the flight and could sit down to dinner when we got home.  When we got back down to our end of the terminal (still like 1 1/2 hours until take off time), they informed us that our flight was grounded due to communication errors in Portland still (later we heard there was a power outage at the Portland airport that caused this) and we'd have to wait for several extra hours.  So almost 3 hours late, we left Ontario.  Ugh, we've had the worst luck at this airport, definitely spent too much time waiting around.  But I had knitting, we played Mario minigames on DS, E read, we walked through all the little shops (there's like 4 in this terminal, not *too* exciting).  They gave us $6 vouchers because we had to wait and we went and picked out a fun selection of candy and nuts and magazines and then the lady said that they were only for food.  Well doh, it said "magazine concessions", that's retarded.   So we went and got danishes and muffins we didn't really need (the blueberry muffin is on the counter here, all squished in a funny shape from being in my bag!)

But we made it back on the ground, found our car in the lot, and went home.  And rested and watched some TV and went to bed.  It was a good trip, and even though I'll do more resting for a few days to make up for the late nights and walking, it was super, and we have great memories!