Graceland: Summer Vacation

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Summer Vacation

Rick's sister invited their dad to come live with her in California. We helped with the move and decided to make it an excuse for a family vacation.

This is the cute house where they are moving.

Oh look, no computers around and the boys found something to do outside. They had a blast on Cameron's long boards.

At the end of Lisa and Cameron's street they have a fun nature park. There is this huge Eucalyptus tree with multiple swings. This is me doing underdog to Isaac. We walked around the park and saw an owl and a few kites.

Cameron and the kids climbing the tree.

This was Zane's birthday week. The big 16. Moving grandpa probably isn't the ideal birthday, so I tried to think of fun things we could do that we couldn't do elsewhere. My 16th birthday was spent on family trip to California as well. We went for the BYU football game. It probably wasn't my ideal birthday at the time, but since, I've loved how memorable it is that BYU won the national championship on my birthday and I was there. So, I searched for some uniquely California things to create some fun birthday memories for Zane.

Monday evening we headed for Hollywood. My friend, "Pinky", blogs about famous people, and is the queen of knowing how to get photos with stars. (See Pinky's blog here) She suggested we attend the premier of The Watch.

Zane and Isaac waiting in the crowd before the red carpet. Rick and I weren't too excited about going, but once we got there, the energy of the crowd was really fun.

A guy from The Lonely Island

Ben Stiller

Christine Taylor-Stiller

Jonah Hill

Vince Vaughn- walking away. I've never liked him as an actor and apparently he doesn't like me as a fan. While the other actors signed autographs and took photos, he just did a pass by of all the fans without even acknowledging anyone. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was headed down the street to greet the fans there, but I don't think that was case.

Tuesday afternoon, after we got Rick's dad's house settled, we headed down to Fountain Valley to hang with the Ziebarth's and Holbrooks. Sean took us to a yummy Japanese restaurant for dinner.

Wednesday we spent a Disneyland. Here we are in Cars Land. Our first ride of the day, Luigi's Tires.

Waiting in line- we did a lot of this. Although, with fast passes and a good iphone app, we worked the park pretty well that day.

My favorite ride of all time- Tower of Terror. That's us on the back row left side. My hair was in my face the whole ride but I was too scared to let go and move it.

We scored on the Radiator Springs Racers ride. This is the big ride right now. We heard stories of people waiting 5 hours in line. We thought we'd run there first thing when the park opened. However, when we got there, we were told the ride was closed until noon. There was a half hour line just to get a fast pass. We decided to skip it and try later. At 10:30, we heard the ride had just opened, so we hurried over. The regular line was already insane, but we opted for the single rider line. It was perfect. We were all on the ride within 10 minutes. Rick was the first one on - he didn't know I took the pic. By the time we were out the single rider line was almost as long as the regular line. This will forever be one of our great Disneyland stories.

I love this pic. Cute boys enjoying a simple ride.

Bug's life 4D show.

Everyone loves Mr Toad's Wild Ride. We also scored in Fantasyland by heading over right after the fireworks show. We did all 4 major rides there in 1 hour.

This was the end of the day. Can you tell how tired we all are!

Thursday was Zane's birthday. We started it off by meeting the gang at Papa Z's for breakfast.

We spent the morning/afternoon at the Ziebarth's pool.

We bought pizza for the group.

And of course, birthday cake.

Happy Birthday Zane!

We headed home Thursday evening, thinking we'd spend the night in Vegas. However, I was on the phone at least an hour in the car trying to find a cheap room with no luck. It's just as well as Rick and I don't like Vegas and it definitely isn't a place for teenaged boys. We drove through and stopped in Mesquite instead. Good call. We were tired, but an hour closer to home the next morning.

We made it back to Draper on Friday in time for Zane to get his drivers license. We stopped on our way into town, so Zane got all of us there to experience it with him. I did my parental duty and took a ton of pics and embarrassed him appropriately. :)

First time driving with his license!

What a fun trip. We are exhausted!

1 comment:

kat said...: you are the best mom ever! i want you to plan my next birthday party for SURE! :); July 30, 2012 at 10:24 PM

My Movie Reviews

Quiet Earth. B-. Another SciFi recommended by Netflix, although this one was actually interesting and enjoyable. A guy wakes up and everyone is gone. Made in New Zealand, it claims to be one of the top ten movies in the US in the year it came out (sometime in the 1970s). After it was over, we agreed that it was good, but the ending was a little confusing, so we watched the ending again with the directors comments. Lame. Apparently the whole movie was supposed to have an anti-nuclear message and the director takes credit for his movie making New Zealand nuclear free. So.... pretend you don't know that and enjoy the movie.
Sunshine. C-. Netflix. That's it. We are not trusting Netflix's rating of sci-fi movies again. The sun is dying so a crew is going with a nuclear missle to "re-start" it. I kept hoping aliens would show up or at least something would happen to draw me in. A lot of things almost happened, but when they did, it did not make much sense.
Warm Bodies. B. Red Box. I was surprised by this movie. I'm a fan of a good zombie flick, but when I heard about the plot, it seemed a bit too much. It turned out to be very entertaining. I'd rate it pretty high on the must see zombie film list and very high on the cheesy teenage romance film list.
Wolverine. B. I'm a fan of the X-Men movies. I'm also a fan of Hugh Jackman. It was hard to go wrong going in with those two biases. The fighting sequences were too long, but that was expected. If you've like the X-Men movies, you should like this one too.
The East. B. I forget how much I love the indie flicks at the Broadway. This also had an environmentalist-based plot, but was written well and I liked how it ended. A women goes under cover in an environmental terrorist group. It goes with the obvious plot of her having sympathies for members of the group and trying to balance that with her personal beliefs. Worth seeing.
World War Z. B. I was in the middle of the book and didn't want to see the movie until I finish, but I couldn't help it and saw it opening weekend. Not a big deal as they are very different. This is a different kind of zombie movie. While most are horror flicks, this was more of a suspense movie. They cut out the gratutious gore associated with most zombie movies and gave it more of a plot. Fun for zombie fans and non-zombie fans.
Silent Running. D. Netflix. I have no idea why this is rated so well on Netflix. Sci-fi movie made in the sixties with blatant environmental message. Forests have died on the earth so they are growing them in a space station orbiting Saturn. Earth decides to abandon the project and for some reason that means they have to blow up the forests. One man understands the impact of losing all our forests so he kills everyone. My description made it seem way better than it is. At one point, he programs his robot helpers to play cards and you watch them play cards for about 10 minutes. Skip this one!

My Book Reviews

The Rent Collector. B. I loved this book while I was reading it. Then the author's comments on the back disappointed me. It was fiction! I was so inspired by the "true" story of this woman living at the dump in Cambodia and learning to read. The whole way through I thought it was true. I was mad when it wasn't. Although toward the end, it started getitng a little unbelievable. It was based on real people which bothers me wondering how much is true and how much is fiction. I still recommend the book, but know what you're getting into.
Divergent. B+. Fun, quick read. YA fiction. Your basic strong female in post-apocolypic world fighting to make change. Even though the story's been told over and over, this one was very engaging. I can't wait to read the next in the series!
World War Z. B+. For staters, this is very different from the movie. It's 10 years after we won the zombie war. The book is a series of interviews with survivors. I was hesitant about the way it was written and that I wouldn't stay involved without a central character. However, the book created a very real world. So much so that when I was getting off the freeway one morning and saw some homeless people waking up under a bridge, for just second, I thought they were zombies. I also wanted to bring it up in conversation. Like when someone was talking about North Korea, I wanted to say, "Did you hear how they handled the Zombie Apocalypse?' It was a fun book. I've never read a zombie book before and I may never again, but I'm glad I read this one. It also was welcome to read a book that isn't a strong female character overcoming incredible odds. I'm seriously weary of that plot line.
Waiting to be Heard. B+. I've followed the Amanda Knox case for several years. I thought, since I knew most details of the case, this might be boring. I was surprised at how engaging and well written it was. She is a quirky girl and, while the complete lack of physical evidence makes me sure she is innocent, I can see why people think she is hiding something. The book was haunting to think the someone who doesn't understand a culture coupled with a corrupt prosecutor could put an innocent person in jail for years.
Girl Gone. C-. Maybe it was called Gone Girl. I don't remember. Book club book. I've never gotten into mysteries. This one took a while to get into, then I couldn't put it down, then it ended and I wished I never picked it up. Ridiculous ending.
The Kitchen House. B-. I have no idea how to rate this book. It was slow to start. Once things started to happen (murder), I found myself sucked in and not wanting to put it down; however, once I did put it down, I didn't look forward to picking it up again. I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's similar to a bunch of other books I've read. I'm just getting weary of the genre and need to mix it up a little. Overall, an interesting read. The story of a young white girl who is indentured when her family dies on the boat from Ireland to America. Her relationship with her new family (the slaves whom she is sent to live and work with) and how her life is different from them because of the color of her skin.
The Happiness Project. D. I'm reviewing the book, but I'm not going to finish it. I knew this wasn't my favorite genre, but it was the book club pick this month so I thought I'd give it a chance. I didn't see the point of reading someone's goals. I sometimes feel like these "self-help" books are an excuse for people to feel like they are doing something to be happier, when really they are an excuse to avoid working on yourself by living through someone else's experience. Instead of reading the book, how about spend that time working on your own "happiness project". As I read, I kept thinking it should have been a workbook for readers to complete their own project while reading hers. I'll be interested to hear how others in book club liked it.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Summer Vacation

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