Salt Lake and Disneyland

Last week, Brian and I snuck away for a trip up to Salt Lake with a detour home through Disneyland. I think I can tell about our trip mostly through pictures (thank goodness for phones!). We flew to SLC Monday morning, checked in to our hotel, then headed out for some shopping. We went to Deseret Book,

had lunch at the Nauvoo Cafe in the Joseph Smith building, walked around the new City Creek Center, 

went to a cute, cute shop called Dear Lizzie where we indulged in one of many treats. There's just something about getting treats on vacation! When we were going through our pictures from the trip, Eliza started counting the ones of our treats. Haha! I won't tell you what number she got up to. :)

 We also drove down to Thanksgiving Point but decided that would be more fun with kids. Then we went to Gateway and walked around before having dinner at Costa Vida.

 That night we took a carriage ride around Temple Square and up to Memory Grove.

 The next morning we were up and at 'em early because we went to the temple. Neither of us had ever been to that one and it was a wonderful experience! We loved it.

 We went back to the hotel to change clothes for a hike. We ended up in Snowbird and hiked there. The first part was so hard! It was practically straight up. We had a great time and it was such a beautiful place to hike. We even saw a moose not very far from us on just off the trail. We hustled through that part!

 From there we went to the BYU bookstore to get shirts to take home to our girls. While we were there, Brian spotted Rose Datoc Dall.  Our girls love watching her Mormon Messages video. In fact, when we showed them the picture, Eliza knew who it was right away!

 Then of course we had to visit the Creamery. Mmmmm.

(Good thing we hiked that morning!) After BYU, we had dinner with the Headricks. It was so fun seeing them, their new house and catching up with them for the evening.

On Wednesday, we went to a book signing. It just so happened that Richard Paul Evans was going to be in Bountiful that day and he was signing a book that Eliza really wanted. She loved the first book, Michael Vey, so she's been counting down to when the sequel was coming out. We had him sign the book for her. She's already about halfway done with it!

 It just so happened that Salt Lake's Parade of Homes was also going on while we were there, so we bought tickets and visited a few of the homes. The first house was incredible--totally out of our reality. It was a 20,000+ square foot house near the Draper Temple. Sheesh. It really was beautiful.

 We also visited a bunch of homes in DayBreak, including the DIY Blogger House. It was fun to look around and get some ideas.

After the house tours, we stopped at Sweet Tooth Fairy for a treat. (I hope you're not counting!)

We didn't eat it all in one sitting!

From there we went to the airport and flew to LA. We drove straight to downtown Disney and the fireworks show was going on. It was so loud but a fun way to walk to dinner. 

 We couldn't decide what to eat for dinner but decided on House of Blues. What an experience.

It happened to be karaoke night. They had a live band where "you" are the star. It actually was very entertaining to watch and most everybody was pretty good. It was just funny thinking of us in there on karaoke night. 

The next morning we started in California Adventure to ride the new Cars Land rides. We waited in line for Radiator Springs Racers, but it broke down. After waiting about 45 minutes, we decided to give up and go somewhere else. We went to Tower of Terror. I really don't like that ride at all, but somehow I ended up going on it. I think you can tell from the picture what I thought about it. :)

We may or may not have had a "must have" treat that morning. Maybe we were just posing for a picture with it.

Again posing with a pretty looking peanut butter sundae from the Ghirardelli store. 

We finally made it on the Radiator Springs Racers. For the bigger rides, we used the single rider lines which saved us a TON of time waiting in lines. That ride was really fun though--two thumbs up except for it breaking down a couple times that day. 

I don't have a picture, but we also really liked Mater's Junkyard Jamboree. I loved the music on that ride, too. The next day we started in Disneyland and had breakfast at the Carnation Cafe.

 

We did a bunch of rides in the morning. The lines weren't too bad yet and we took advantage of the single rider lines again as often as we could. For lunch we had made reservations at the Blue Bayou. We've always wanted to eat there, but just never have. So we decided to make it happen this time! Boy howdy was it tasty! The food was delicious. And the ambiance was so fun, too.

Excuse the close up shot, but this treat is actually one of my Disneyland must-have favorites...dark chocolate and caramel covered marshmallows. Mmmmmm!

We did a bunch more rides in Disneyland before ending the day in CA Adventure. This cone area is the "cone"-session part of the new Cars Land. I won't disclose if any treats were purchased here or not.

Doesn't that look good? We could have just asked a stranger to take a picture of his ice cream sundae.

 After two full Disney days, we flew home late Friday night. What a fun trip!

 ...and just some more random photos...

 One entrance to Cars Land.

 Brian's face is pretend, mine...not so much!

The canoe ride was open on Friday while we were there. Brian was really excited because he's wanted to do that. It was fun but makes me nervous since it's not on a track. We survived though!

Brian didn't think I could do a picture where I wasn't screaming. I tried really hard and think I did it! What you don't see is the scream I let out right after the flash went off! 

I was made fun of a little for wearing my poncho on Grizzly Rapids...let's just say I didn't get very wet--unlike someone I know! :)

National Junior Olympic Track Meet

The second meet of the summer was the National Junior Olympic meet in Baltimore. It was a little crazy, too, because it was the same week I was at girls camp. It all worked out but was a bit hectic. Brian and his dad flew out with Eliza on a Tuesday for her event on Wednesday. This time she really stepped it up and did great. She jumped one height higher than her PR and ended up getting third place. She jumped 1.30 m, which is about 4'3". She was extremely happy with how she did, which made a great ending to her track season. Way to go, Eliza!