Los Angeles

We went to Hollywood!! This was the part of our trip that I was looking forward to the most. We headed to L.A. where Stephen served his mission so he could show me around some of the places he lived and visited. We took a VIP tour of Warner Bros. studio that lasted two  hours. It was pretty cool to see all the backdrops and fake cities, buildings, parks, etc... that Hollywood uses in their movies and television shows. We didn't see any celebrities although we got word that Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunas was nearby. We got to on set of Friends and Pretty Little Liars to see how it all works. They were filming Pretty Little Liars and we could've gone over there to watch them, but by the time our bus came back around they taped off the street so we couldn't go by to watch it, bummer.

We also went to the props and costumes museum which was pretty cool to see the actual costumes batman, Harry Potter, Friends, and many more celebrities wore, and to see how big or small they are in real life. We also saw some the famous cars used in movies.

 Dukes of Hazzard

 Scooby Doo

 Old Batmobile

 The Weasley's flying car

After our tour we headed to the Hollywood walk of fame. This place was crazy crawling with all sorts of people: lots of people dressed in costumes. We saw several spiderman, Star Wars characters, Mickey and Donald Duck, etc... people who were trying to sell you their CDs that would "one day make them famous", lots of tourists like myself, and people trying to get you to go on tour uses with them. I have no idea how long the walk of fame goes for. We walked several blocks on both sides of the street looking at names until we got too tired and I got blisters on my feet.

These are a little hard to see. Julie Andrews

Michael Jackson

 Johnny Depp!!

 Sylvester Stallone

 Sandra Bullock

 Stephen didn't find any stars he wanted his picture with. We passed by George Clooney and couldn't find Brad Pitt :( So behind him is the famous Hollywood sign.

I was a little disappointed I didn't at least get my picture taken with Mickey in Disneyland, so I found this Mickey who took a picture with me. I graciously thanked him and started to walk away when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around surprised to see Mickey following me. I looked at him and without saying a word he rubbed his fingers together and showed me some money in his other hand waiting for me to pay him. Haha, I had no idea I was supposed to pay him to get my picture with him. I wondered why all these weirdos wore costumes walking the street posing with tourists!

 Forest Lawn

We left Hollywood and wound up at Forest Lawn in Glendale. This is a huge, and I mean HUGE cemetery where celebrities and other people are buried. It's over 300 acres with several mausoleums, chapels, and other buildings. Plots are thousands of dollars $25,000 and up. It has original and replicated works of art of Da Vinci, Picaso, Styka, Braque, and Ledger. There is a replicated Christus, and statue of David, a stained glass window of Da Vinci's Last Supper painting. This was the first thing we saw. They had a 10 minute spiel about who created it and where the idea came from and then they unveiled the window. It was really pretty.

The first thing I saw when I walked into the mausoleum with the stained glass was a huge statue of an angel over someone's grave. I read the name on the grave and noticed she died last year, and I thought to myself, wow this lady must have been really loved." Then I realized it was Elisabeth Taylor's grave, haha, no wonder.

The highlight of the cemetery was the crucifixion and resurrection paintings. The Crucifixion was done by Jan Styka and is the world's biggest oil painting at 45 feet tall and 195 feet wide. It took him several years to complete the work, and when it was done it was lost for 44 years and damaged until the owner of Forest Lawn found it, and had Styka son restore it. We weren't allowed to take photos in any of the buildings so you'd have to go online to see a picture of it; It is purely amazing. The other painting was of the resurrection of Christ. It wasn't quite as big, but just as beautiful.

The rest of our time spent in L.A. we bought $40 worth of soda from a soda shop full of unheard of soda companies and all sorts of different flavors like chocolate, peach, and pepper just to name a few. We visited the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple. This place was beautiful as well and we also couldn't take photos inside the building just like our own temple. 

I loved their Chinese gardens and landscaping. Stephen thought this sign was funny because, why would someone bring their turtle to a temple and dump it in the pond?

 Lastly, we bought some Japanese ice cream. It came in a box called mochi that we bought at an Asian grocery store. The smell in that place was like a punch in the face. It smelled really bad and the further into  the store you walked the worse it got. We bought chocolate mochi which is essentially an ice cream ball inside of a tapioca-like gel substance. I ate the first one and then decided that the mochi part really grossed me out-- not the taste because there is no taste, just the texture of it, so I peeled the rest of it off and just ate the ice cream itself.

 All in all, we had an awesome vacation. We came home extremely exhausted which is a good sign, and we can't wait for the next one!

   

Disneyland

We got two day passes to Disneyland so we could at least spend one day in each park. I found a site on the internet a week before that was selling tickets at a $30 discount, so that's where we bought them, but we had to pick them up the day we went to the park. I had no idea we were buying elicit Disneyland tickets! I waited in the car while Stephen went in to get them. The office we picked them up at was in the same building sandwiched between a gas station and a small restaurant. Anyway, the guy told Stephen to remember three things when we tried to use the tickets because the ticket takers ask questions just to make sure no one is reusing tickets. We were using used tickets! Haha, we had no idea and there was no way to get our money back.

We went to California Adventure on Tuesday and Disneyland on Wednesday. The whole purpose of going to Disneyland in the middle of October was to beat the heat, but both days we were in the park it was in the high 90s and Wednesday it hit 101 degrees! We had fun riding all the rides and seeking out the Disney characters, but most of the rides are for smaller children, so we probably ended up only riding 1/3 of the rides in both parks. I'd say Tower of terror and Space Mountain were my favorite rides; I rode them both twice.

 California Adventure was more like Pixar land, most of the rides were from Pixar movies like A Bugs Life and Cars.

 Me and Zac riding Tuck and Roll. He loved this ride!

 California Screamin coaster

 This is the Radiator Springs ride in the new Carsland that was the most popular ride in the entire park. It was pretty cool I have to admit.

 Tower of Terror

 Space Mountain

 Splash Mountain

This was our boat on the Grizzly Falls ride: Dad, Kaylee, me and Stephen...

 Sariah, Bekah, Mom, and Lori

 Star tours was another really fun ride with the Star Wars characters. We saw these little backpacks people were wearing all over the place and thought they were fun. This is Yoda on Stephen's back. He looks a little creepy

 Jasmine was the only princess I got my picture with. There were long lines for an hour or more to get your picture taken with the characters, but we also spotted Cruela De Vil and Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty too.

 What's Disneyland without Mickey Mouse ears?

 I was looking forward to seeing all the princesses (yes, even at my age), but because the lines were so long this parade is as close as I got. At least I got to see them.

San Diego

Alright, so Stephen's family planned a week long vacation to Disneyland this last week, and I have to say that it was one of my favorite vacations. I also have to give a big THANK YOU to my in laws and Loren and Debbie for providing the rental houses for the week, thank you, thank you, thank you!!! We had so much fun that we came home so exhausted we need another vacation to relax from this vacation. I'm going to divide up our trip by days because Stephen and I were all over the place in California. First, we headed to San Diego for a Monday night football game with the Chargers and Broncos. This was fate because these two teams were playing the exact week we were there and these teams are rivals in the Washburn family.

Before the game that night we spent the day on the coast at the Cabrillo tide pools and Point Loma lighthouse. Then we headed downtown to get something to eat before we headed to the game. I have to say, I was initially excited for the game, but thought I would get bored after the first quarter because I don't watch a lot of football, but this game was one of the high lights of our trip. I had so much fun cheering for the broncos and booing the chargers. I was really surprised how many broncos fans there were at this game too. To sum it up, the score was 24-0 chargers by half time but we ended up winning the game 32-24 or something close to it; I can't remember the exact score. It was a super fun night minus being stuck in traffic for an hour just to drive 3/4 of a mile to park and then getting stuck in the parking lot for another hour after the game to go home. Shule even got into it with a lady at the game who kicked two guys out of their seats after halftime just because she wanted to even though no one was sitting in them to begin with.

 Haha, I love Stephen's face in these two pics. He was saying "Eeeeeeeeeeewe!"

 It was high tide when we got there so there weren't hardly any tide pools to see, but we found these ones with tons of crabs and sea anemones. We were really hoping to find a starfish but, again the tide was too high

We got really good at saying "beeeeeach!, anemoneeeeee!, and oceeeeeeean!" when we took our pictures, instead of saying cheese.

 Point Loma Lighthouse

  So this short clip is me being a scaredy cat to touch the sea anemones.

 There were hundreds of hermit crabs of all sizes crawling around the beach, so we picked up two smalls ones because we were afraid they would pinch us.

 San Diego

The spiral stair case of the lighthouse

Chargers vs. Broncos

Shule and a few of his kids

 The victors. Go Broncos!

At the beginning of the day we stopped at the San Diego temple because I've seen pictures of it and looks so beautiful and castle-like. We weren't able to go in because it was Monday, but one of the missionaries stopped to show us some photos of the inside of some of the rooms. The celestial room has a gorgeous atrium with a window that opens and closes to let the rain fall down and water it. How cool is that?! I wish I could've seen it for myself. 

 We each had to take a photo in front of the temple since we couldn't take one of the both of us together.