Week 46 (the vacation begins)

{November 14 - 20}

Ammon had his annual Eye Dr. appointment for contacts on Monday at the end of the school day. That night, he dropped Kanyon off at his basketball youth league on the way to the high school for his own basketball practice. We had FHE after Ammon got home that night--I gave everyone bright pink and bright orange shirts to wear when we go to Disneyland and we talked about the itinerary for our upcoming Disney vacation.


I noticed that everyone was starting to take turns washing their loads of laundry every night since Sunday (everybody is in charge of their own laundry in this house), trying to get everything washed and ready for packing for Disney. I was grateful--because oftentimes, we usually end up needing to do laundry at the same time, and there's always a long wait time because our dryer doesn't have the correct ventilation, and the dryer takes two full cycles to dry anything. So if everyone had waited for Thursday or Friday to do their laundry, it wouldn't have gotten all done before we left for vacation on Saturday. When Josh woke up on Tuesday morning and left to go drive bus, he was awed at the bright glow that the moon was emanating.

On Wednesday night, Kanyon had basketball practice again and he left a little early from it to head to scout pack meeting. His scout leaders had a fun Medieval theme planned for the pack meeting, and he had a fun night between basketball and scouts. Josh and I were going to go to our second lesson for the swing dance class that night, but he'd had a long, tiring day, and didn't feel like dancing, so we didn't go.

The scouts all made their own suits of armor out of brown paper bags
They took turns playing a jousting game

Sister Rice knighted each scout as she gave them their badges

Sister Johnson instructed them in fencing uniforms and rules

The boys played with the fencing practice swords. 

The 3 younger boys and I had our Eye Dr. appointments on Friday. Kanyon's eyes and Ammon's eyes had no change, Jonah and Micah got new prescriptions, and mine was just slightly different in the left eye. The 3 younger boys picked their new glasses out pretty easily--Kanyon got a black/brown plastic pair instead of a red one, Micah picked a brown plastic pair instead of a black one like he'd had, and Jonah picked out another metal frame. I hadn't gotten new glasses in 3 years (which is when I last had vision insurance), and was so looking forward to picking out a newer style. I had a hard time picking between a blue and a pink/purple pair. I took a few pictures and had Josh decide--we ultimately picked blue (because it was cheaper!). I spent all afternoon/evening shopping and packing food for our Disney trip. We planned on eating most of the food on the vacation from groceries we were packing, rather than eating out every meal. It took a lot of planning and strategic packing skills! The boys got their bags all packed for our vacation that evening as well, so that we would just have to pack up the Suburban in the morning and leave!

On Saturday morning, we packed up the Suburban and left for our 8-day vacation--the longest vacation we've ever taken as a family! Surprisingly, all the food bags and luggage fit; I'd been worried about it the previous night after I realized how much room the food would take up. We drove to Tremonton at my parents' house and stopped for about a half hour for lunch. My mom made us a mac & cheese and ham casserole, which was so nice of her; it was our last home-baked meal for a week! As we were driving on the interstate near Ogden, we passed Matt Groll (he's from Salmon originally and knows Josh from their teenage years), who recognized us and we were writing notes to communicate between cars. That was a fun surprise! We drove to Nephi, stopped for gas, and waited for Mick & Jen (who we were planning on caravaning with), because they'd made a stop at Jen's parents' home in Springville, but after 25 minutes, we decided to continue on south and meet up with them when we stopped for dinner instead. We stopped for dinner in Cedar City. The sun was just setting, and the sky was breathtaking! We drove up the hill to see the temple that's being built, and we drove around the campus of SUU (my old college) before stopping to eat. Mick & Jen stopped for gas and a treat in Cedar City as well, and we passed them on the road between Cedar and St. George and caravaned for the last part of the day. We've been planning all year to have a Harry Potter movie marathon on the long drive to California, and the boys watched movies 1, 2, 3, and part of 4 before we stopped for the night in Mesquite. We stayed in the CasaBlanca Resort. Mick's family's room was right next door to ours, which was fun! We walked around for a bit that night after checking into our room, and the boys were totally in awe at the Palm Trees--they all thought the trees were fake! We didn't stay up too late that night, because we were planning on waking up at a decent hour the next morning to have a early start to the day.

Eating lunch at Grandma's house

Watching Harry Potter movies. The snack bag in between Ammon and Kanyon's
seat was overflowing on Day 1 of our vacation!

This cloud was so beautiful! We drove up to the temple on the hill to have a
better view of both together...

The Cedar City temple is currently under construction

We were never able to get the perfect view of the temple
with the beautiful clouds, but we tried!

The sunset was so gorgeous!

The hotel was lit up with blue lights, and it looked
so pretty in the dark! The boys thought these
Palm Tree branches looked fake!

We left the hotel Sunday morning about 8am. We stopped to get fuel at a nearby gas station, and the woman at the register was wowed when we all walked in, and asked when the game would be? I didn't know what she meant; I told her we were just passing through, and she said that she thought we were part of youth basketball team since I had so many boys with me! On the drive that morning, Jonah's glasses suddenly broke, so when we stopped for gas again, I got some duct tape and fixed them up best I could. Weird that they broke just days after ordering new glasses!! A few hours after passing into the California border, we hit a slow-moving traffic jam, and it put us behind schedule. I was hoping to get to Universal Studios Hollywood about 1:00, but we didn't get there until 1:45. It was raining when we arrived, so that kind of changed Josh's plans for the day. He originally thought he would drop me and the boys off, get Tawna and Bryce's luggage after they arrived from their flight, then he would drive to the hotel, check in, drop all of our luggage off, take a nap, and then drive back to Universal to pick us up. But after driving in the rain and the traffic that morning, he decided to just stay in the parking lot instead (napping, reading a book, checking out social media, etc.). Tawna and Bryce flew into the LA airport, and they got an uber to drive them to Universal Studios. They arrived about 3:30. Josh put their luggage in our car, and then he walked around Universal City for a while--it's the shopping area in front of the entrance. Bryce and Tawna met us inside the park. They came into Harry Potter world just as we were leaving. We'd gone on the HippoGriff Rollercoaster (it reminded me of Puff the Magic Dragon rollercoaster), rode the 3-D Wizarding ride (we loved it! it was SO awesome--even though we waited in line for an hour to go on it!!), we'd gone into shops in the Hogsmeade village, did the Ollivander's wand experience (Kanyon purchased a Death Eater wand there for $40!), bought some souvenir snacks and drinks, and had taken photos. We got rain ponchos that said Harry Potter on them, too, since the rain wasn't letting up. We were getting hungry, so we went to get some food from a cafe by the Despicable Me ride, but it was closed, so we went on the Despicable Me ride next, got photos with minions, purchased a new minion rain poncho for Kanyon (his Harry Potter one ripped), and got some turkey legs for dinner afterwards. Then we met back up with Bryce and Tawna, who'd eaten and ridden the Harry Potter 3-D ride. We did the Shrek ride on the upper lot and Transformers ride on the lower lot together with them. The mummy ride was closed, and the boys wanted to ride the Jurassic Park water ride next, but Bryce & Tawna didn't, so they went back up to the upper lot (4 steep escalators separate the upper lot from the lower lot) while we did the Jurassic Park ride. We got sopping wet! It was the most exciting water ride I've ever been on with a steep waterfall drop at the end! There was no line to get on the ride, and the boys loved it so much, they went on it again. I wanted to do a studio tour on the backlot of the fast & furious movie scene set, but by the time we got back up to the upper lot, we missed the last tour ride of the day by five minutes. Oh well. We went back into Harry Potter world to do some more shopping, and had planned on going on the 3-D Harry Potter ride again with Bryce and Tawna, but they were tired and cold and didn't feel like going again, and my boys were all feeling the same, so we did some souvenir shopping on our way out of the park and left about 7:00. Josh was waiting for us in the parking lot; he'd had a nice relaxing time while we were in the park, and had done some shopping and watched indoor sky diving, too. He drove us all to Anaheim in a SUPER packed car!! Bryce & Tawna's hotel was two blocks down from ours. We dropped them off first before going to our hotel. Mick and Jen had driven straight to Anaheim that day, and we didn't see them until that night. We had called the hotel a few days earlier and requested that we be in rooms by each other, and when Mick checked in, he again requested it, but when we checked in a few hours after him, we were given a room on a different floor than them. They were sold out for the night, so we couldn't switch until the next day. We packed all our stuff up to the hotel room. Then Josh and I decided to get some pizza for dinner from a next-door restaurant, but they were out of dough! Unreal! So we called and ordered a delivery pizza instead, which didn't arrive for over an hour and a half, and by then, most of the boys were asleep! Frustrating! I called the pizza place three times, and they lied about where the pizza was each time, and the last time they hung up on me. Then when the delivery man came, he said a totally different lie about why he was late. I was so done! We were all tired, wet, and hungry, and that's never a good combination! Thankfully, our hotel had family-friendly rooms, so we all got to sleep in beds (unlike the previous night when Kanyon slept in a sleeping bag on the floor). Wee all went to bed hoping that the following day, our first day in DisneyLand, would be rain-free, sunny, and fun!

Josh didn't go into Universal Studios with us--he was never interested in going
and wanted to save a $100 by not joining us, too.

This was the entrance to the Wizarding World.
We were so excited to see the Wizarding
World of Harry Potter! It was the main reason
 we went to Universal Studios.  We all loved it!

Standing in front of the miniature castle where the
3-D Harry Potter ride is located. 

We waited in line for over an hour to get
on the ride. This was the point in line when
we finally got to enter in the castle--the line
wandered through some of the castle corridors
before we finally got loaded in our broomstick seats

Part of the Hogsmeade Village. The stores were awesome and we went in all of them

Drinking ButterBeer. The boys thought it tasted like Cream Soda

Walking along the back alleyway

The Hogwarts Express. I had hoped they had a Platform 9 3/4 inside the train
station, but they didn't. 

The boys in front of the flying Ford Anglia that Mr. Weasley owned

The entrance to the minion area

Kanyon with some of his favorite characters ever!

We all enjoyed this Despicable Me ride!

The lobby right before we got seated in the auditorium
for the Despicable Me ride. We watched a little film
where they introduce the ride, and a minion fart (smelling
like banana) filled the air. That was fun! 

Waiting in line for Shrek

This was the boys' favorite ride at Universal!

It was dark by the time we rode this Jurassic Park ride!

Tawna & Bryce

Some of our food souvenirs from Universal Studios:
Pumpkin Juice, Butterbeer, Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, and Minion Tic Tacs

Kanyon's Death-Eater wand--he really wanted the wand with the skull on it.
The skull has a snake coming out of its mouth and it winds around its head.
It's the image of the Dark Mark!

Ammon's souvenirs from Universal Studios

Our room had a king bed, dresser, TV, and bathroom in the first section. Behind
 the glass doors there was a bunk bed, a double bed, a fridge, a desk, and another TV. 

The couch turned into the double bed. It was the first time we've all stayed in a
hotel room together for more than one night!! I was glad that everybody had
a bed to sleep in, and that the kids' room was separated from the parents' room.