CaLiFoRnIa!!!

I spent a GLORIOUS week in California dates March 11th- thru the 18th and every single day was fabulous! Ryan, who I went to go see and the whole reason for the trip ;), made up a list of stuff for us to do and we kept busy and did almost every single thing on that list.

DAY ONE- Right after picking me up at the airport, Ryan took me to lunch at the burger joint In-n-out burgers simply because I had never been and I must say...NOT too shabby! Then we spent the afternoon at a crazy fun Science Discovery Center and goofed around with all of the fun scientific stuff. We even watched a 3D film on dinosaurs which was fairly interesting. Then, because Ryan knows I love baseball/softball, we hit the batting cages! I was positive I was going to do HORRIBLE because it had been YEARS since I played but I actually hit a lot of the balls. I quite impressed myself! But Ryan still beat me out, he did WAY better than I. OH well, can't win them all. The rest of the evening was spent at home watching a movie and eating a yummy home cooked meal. YUM!

DAY TWO- We went to Knott's Berry Farm! YAY! I had been there once before but its been over ten years so it was really fun to go back. They have so many more rides there now. We OF COURSE had to go on the ancient classic ride Ghost Rider...which was INSANE! The first drop off was HUGE and I sooo wasn't ready for it! I was totally freaking out! There was another roller coaster we went on which was my favorite ride of the day called the Silver Bullet. It twisted round and round and flipped us all over the place. We were going to go on it again but we decided against it since we were both slightly dizzy. Amongst all of the fun rides we ran into Snoopy himself! He was so kind he even let us take a pic with him...Thanks Snoopy! For dinner we snagged some Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and biscuits (of which were to die for!) from a shop at Knott's and took them home and filled up. MMMmmmMMM....good eatin!

DAY THREE- This day was def jam packed and one of my favorites. We went to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Can I just say, ocean creatures are AMAZING! I was in AWE the entire time we were there. We saw so many different kinds of fish, jellies, sting rays, sharks, coral, starfish, eels, etc. One sting ray in particular was MASSIVE! It was at least 5 feet across (AT LEAST!). I didn't even know sting rays could get so big! We got to pet the smaller sting rays and some small tiger sharks. After we left the Aquarium we headed back home and cleaned up a little and changed into some nicer clothing and then Ryan took me to a nice and quaint Italian restaurant in Laguna Beach called Ti Amo. The food there was DELICIOUS! I got an artichoke/spinach pasta dish and he got the duck. We each tried some of each others food and as good as my meal was, I was a little jealous of him for having the duck. haha...I was COMPLETELY satisfied with my food though, no complains here! We even managed to fit some dessert into our already full bellies. Everything about dinner was spectacular. To finish our date off we went to see the movie Witch Mountain. It was kind of an odd movie, about teenage aliens from another planet trying to save our planet and theirs....lol a bit strange indeed, but a decent way to end the date.

DAY FOUR- This day was a very relaxing, chilled out day. It was too chilly to swim, but we visited a few different beaches (Huntington, Newport, and Laguna) and wandered the day away walking up and down the piers taking pictures and looking out into the water. At one of the beaches we went to they were having a surfing competition so it was kind of fun to watch all the surfers out in the water doing their thing. On one of the peirs there was a silly pelican just hanging out with a few fishmen. We just stood there starring at all the passerbys. I thought he was adorable. For dinner that night I made my famous Orange Chicken (see recent blog post) and again it was a huge success. Both Ryan and his roommate scarfed that stuff down...and there was quite a bit too! I'm glad they liked. :D

DAY FIVE- Unfortunately Ryan had to work this day, but it wasn't so bad. I tagged along because the event he was working at were the horse races. YAY! Was lots of fun to watch all of the competing horses and all the tiny jockeys. Those guys seriously are MINIATURE! The bidders were really funny to watch also. They got so worked up that literally, as grown men, they were jumping up and down with excitement. They seriously could not contain themselves! Just that was enough to keep me entertained.

DAY SIX- After running a few errands earlier in they day, we ventured into downtown Los Angelos to go see the Hollywood walk of fame. Some of the people there were fairly interesting, some made me laugh. Was quite kewl to see all those stars on the side walks too. There are SO MANY. They don't end! I found a bunch of stars of some famous people I like...for example: JOHNNY! OH YES! :P We found and ice cream cookie shop where you can pick what 2 freshly baked cookies you want and then what ice cream you want and they make a homemade ice cream sandwich for you. SOOOO GOOD! And rich! We pretty much made ourselves sick from eating so much chocolate, ice cream, and cookie. But it was sooo worth it! That evening we attended a hockey game at the Staples Center. The L.A. Kings played versus the Nashville Predators. Sadly Nashville won by 1 point. We were both very disappointed, but overall we were happy about the game.

DAY SEVEN- Was extremely layed back. We slept in real late and didn't even leave the house til the afternoon. We spent the entire afternoon and early evening back on Laguna Beach and hung out. Although the water was still cold, the weather was perfect so we wore our bathing suits and got our feet wet-well that was the intention anyway. A few of the waves were bigger than we anticipated and we got splashed pretty good. One time I even got my camera wet...WHOOPS! But nothing was damaged so it was all in good fun. Out in the water there were some dolphins swimming around and Ryan said he even saw a whale out in the distance. We stayed until the sun set and disappeared from view before we decided to head back to the house.

DAY EIGHT- The day I left Cali and came home. What a bitter day. I was not ready to leave. Every moment in CA was so nice and I had such a great time I didn't want it to end. Again we slept in a little bit and Ryan made a really good breakfast before he took me to the airport and we spent the last couple hours hanging around.

I was sad to leave but I'm incredibly glad I went. The trip couldn't have gone any better and I really hope I get another chance to go the Cali sometime soon. :)