California or BUST!!!

I guess I should've said that before my trip, Oh Well...lol Be prepared for a LONG post, just warnin' ya. I had a blast in California and just spent the last two hours going through making collages of pictures, otherwise I would have to post a blog entry for each day that I was there. I let my inner tourist out to play and ended up with almost 200 pictures. lol YAY for digital cameras, I can't even imagine how many rolls of film that would be. LOL Anyway, without further ado here are snippets from my trip.

My first collage is a little bit from all of the places that we went. I stayed at the Peacock hotel, which is literally right behind Disney so I could hear the fireworks every night. We ate at the "Pig N Whistle", ate at Fish Camp, went to the OC Fair, Downtown Disney, Newport Beach/Balboa CA., ate at Newport Landing and went dolphin/whale watching.

The two pics near the bottom right of this college are some treasures that I got while on my trip. For those of you who don't know, I collect pencils so I came home with 3 pencils, a pen and a new key chain. So I guess I am a collector of key chains now too. LOL

The other little picture is one of all of my trip treasures. My mom got both of us a jar to keep small trinkets in as little mementos from our trip. I may have to keep doing this for all my trips. It was kind of fun to find little things and those trinkets will make the memories last forever. :) I like to think of them as vacation joy boxes, in bottle form. ;)

 

I think from here, we will go by day. This is day number 1. I got to LA in the middle of the afternoon so we went to Hollywood Blvd to eat and wait for the traffic to die down before making our way to Anaheim. I always love going to Hollywood. The things you see and the business of it all just makes me feel somewhat invigorated. Only in Hollywood can you find people dressed as Darth Vader with their little tag along R2D2 and another person dressed as Elmo. Oh and ONLY in Hollywood can you find parking meters that take credit cards. I'm sure there are other places but this was a first for me. LOL In Hollywood, we ate at the Pig N Whistle (mmmmm Halibut fish and chips) and walked up and down the Blvd - My inner tourist taking pictures all along the way.

She took LOTS of pictures!!!! One of the ladies stood right in the middle of my shot, How Rude!!

Day number 2 was a very simple day. It was nice to be able to just relax for a day and spend time with my mom and Jay. My mom and I dropped Moonius off at the beach and we went to Ulta!! /sigh....every girls paradise!! I got $22 worth of stuff for $7! Yes, I am an awesome bargain shopper! I learned from the best, that would be my mom. ;) After Ulta we went back to the beach and discovered that Jay was waiting for us because it was too cold to lay on the beach. I think I left the sun in AZ because it was somewhat cloudy the whole time I was there. Since the beach was too cold we went to Fish Camp for lunch instead (I got grilled Salmon and salad mmmm) and then just went back to the hotel for the rest of the day. My mom taught me how to knit and we did pedicures. After I got home I made this tiny square of knitting to put in my little treasure jar. :)

Since we were so close to Disney, I did Disney themed pedicures on our toes. I offered to paint Moon's toes, but he wasn't too keen on that idea. For the Disney design, we painted our nails red, and then I did a white tip on our big toes, made a little tiny Mickey silhouette on the white tip and then put white dots on the rest of the nail. They turned out really cute!

Day number 3 was Friday the 13th. Eeep! It was the most awesome Friday the 13th Ever! The Orange County Fair opened that day and had free admission for the first hour, so we stood in line and waited. The picture in the top left is a picture of the line once we could see the gate; it was much longer than that, believe me. The fair was a blast!! I had never really been to big fair like that, so the only fried fair food that I'd ever eaten was funnel cake. I made up for it that day. I had a corn dog, fried cheese, a funnel cake (just a little one), a fried Snickers (omg...to die for), cotton candy (of which I still have some) and a gelato. Holy Hannah! I won't need ANY fried food for a while.

While at the fair, we saw some fun dancers and shopped till we literally dropped! The pretty flowers are hair clips that my mom and I got. It wasn't until we went to put them on that we realized that we had picked the exact same ones. If I believed in reincarnation, I think we may have been twins in another lifetime. LOL After the fair my mom and I took a nap back at the hotel, like I said we literally dropped. After the nap we taught Moonius how to play Hand and Foot and then we all went to Downtown Disney. I had to go to the Gigantic Disney store and I love the lego store too. We ate at Napolini (margarita pizza), caught some of Disney's Fireworks through the trees and called it a day! I think at some point that night I caught my mom and Jay dancing to the wonderful music that was being played in Downtown Disney. ;)

Day number 4. This was my last full day in CA and it was a BLAST!!! We went to Newport Beach, which is in Balboa California. Balboa is my new favorite place in all of everywhere. I loved the beach. I loved the town itself. It was a touristy town with all of the little fun shops right in the middle of residential area. 

We did two things while in Balboa. First we spent some good time at the beach. By the end of the day, I was incognito as a lobster. Luckily, I think I have put on enough lotion so that it is now a tan and won’t peel. :) While at the beach I took lots of pictures (of course) and enjoyed getting my feet wet. When I went down to the shore I hadn’t planned on coming back half drenched but it happened - I should've just known. Luickly the camera survived! ;) 

Since I had my little jar that I had to fill up with mementos from my trip I gathered up a bunch of seashells. The whole time chanting, “I’m picking up seashells, along the sea shore.” LOL There were a couple of pictures that I wanted to get while I was on the beach and those were some pics of my feet with the sea foam coming up to them. (I know, I’m weird) After a LOT of trial and error I did manage to get a couple shots that I really liked. In addition to the pictures of the sea, I also took a little bit of video of the waves. I love the sound of the ocean.

The second excursion that we took in Balboa was lunch and dolphin/whale watching!! We ate lunch at Newport Landing and someone who reserved a table was a "no-show" so we even got a pretty view! :) We saw lots of birds before we left on our boat to go see dolphins. I learned that Jay really likes birds, so I took pictures just for him. :) Our ship was the "Nautilus" and off we went.

I had never been out on the water before. I learned two things very quickly, one I'm not prone to sea-sickness, YAY!!! And two, it is very, very, VERY cold out on the water. I had dressed for the beach: shorts, tank top, flip flops...that is NOT how you dress to go out to sea. LOL Luckily I had brought a shirt with me, in case I got too much sun but that was definitely not enough. Note to self: Next time you go out to sea, bring a jacket, and maybe a blanket. LOL 

Along the way before we got to open sea the tour guide was telling us about the beautiful houses along the shore. I took several pictures of them but I now I don't remember who they belonged to, with the exception of the house in the bottom left corner of this collage. That house, with the green awnings, was Shirley Temple's childhood home. :) 

While out at sea, we saw many, many, many dolphins - but they are camera shy so it's hard to get good pictures of them. What they aren't shy of is video cameras! :) I only took a few snippets of video because video sucks my camera's batteries dry but I did edit them together and it is uploaded to YouTube. :)  We didn't see any whales. :( I tried to summon my inner Dory and speak "whale" but they didn't understand my dialect. LMAO!!!

Overall, my trip was awesome!! I made memories that will last a lifetime and had a blast too! ;)

To my Mom and Moonius, thank you so much for flying me out to spend some time with you!! The whole trip was a blast! I can't wait for the next trip. Hopefully one day I'll make it to Abilene. I really want to see your home in KS too!

Your California Girl, 

Jessy <3