Our First Real Vacation

Ahoy, Mickey!

Rusty and I have taken little staycations here and there, mainly to Park City and the like. And always just for the night.  And to my everlasting frustration, we have planned and subsequently canceled more vacations than I care to admit.  NOT THIS TIME, FOLKS! We found a rare window of opportunity between our crazy work and show schedules to escape, and we jumped on it.


We decided, we planned, and we went to Disneyland!!!


As we headed to Vegas after initial departure on Saturday afternoon, the rain was so crazy-treacherous that we detoured to St. George and crashed there for the night.  The next morning we were off with a bang and on our way to sunny California!


...Or so we thought.


As we crossed into the San Bernadino highway stretch of the drive, we were met with menacing gray skies and snow.  What?! It was particularly disconcerting because we'd left a balmy, 70° Utah behind us.  At any rate, we were glad to be fancy-free on vacation so we didn't mind... too much.


We arrived at my home-away-from-home, the Newport Coast Villas, on Saturday afternoon and spent the evening grilling up steaks, veggies, and pineapple.  Ahhhh, how wonderful to leave real-life behind.

Monday marked the first of three glorious Disney days.  We conquered California Adventure on day one.  Rusty hadn't been since 2004 and remembered it as being somewhat lackluster so I was determined to prove him wrong. I succeeded. We had an amazing time.

The highlights of the day included:

Toy Story Mania: Rusty, of course, got a ridiculously high score. And if it's not the coolest interactive game ride, I don't know what is. Let's face it.

Using my womanly wiles, I somehow convinced Mr. Scaredypants to ride. And he didn't hate it!  Although if you look closely, I bet you can guess the not-so-Disney-friendly word he is about to scream as we make our initial drop. Alas, no amount of eyelash batting could get him to go again. But I still count it as a major win on my part!

World of Color: I'd never seen it until this trip so we got to experience a Disney first together!  It was breathtaking.

We went to Disneyland on Tuesday and Wednesday and had a most wonderful time.  The winner of the trip was Rusty's favorite, Pirates of the Caribbean. We went on it at least four times.  In second was the new and improved Star Tours.  OH MAN, it did not disappoint!  I was blown away by the extreme awesomeness. I think given the chance, we would have spent an entire day going on it over and over to experience all of its many scenario combinations.  

Tuesday was kind of a mini-Disney day, as we were at the brink of shutting down from exhaustion, and Rusty wrenched his back somehow. We ended up taking off a bit early. The next day we were ready to rally! We decided to splurge and ate an incredible lunch at the Blue Bayou.  Seemed only fitting, as Pirates was a recurring theme on our trip thus far.  Then, to our surprise and delight, our good pal Matt Glade was there at the same time so we spent the rest of the day with him! 

When we met up with Matt, he said something to the effect of "Avengers away!" That's when I realized-- yep, we sure did all wear our Marvel hero T-shirts to Disneyland that day. 

Storm Troopers like Pirates of the Caribbean too.

Delicious Blue Bayou

Somehow I beat both Rusty and Matt at Astro Blasters. And not even by a small margin either. I obliterated them.

Check out all our super impressive photo ops!

Well, that about wraps it up folks. Of course we concluded our Disney adventure with fireworks and Fantasmic.  And being the ridiculous weenies we are, Rusty and I cried our faces off at both.  Especially Fantasmic.  We are hopeless, but at least we are hopeless together. We had a magical adventure and loved every second of joyful non-adulthood-ness.  May this mark the first of many, MANY more trips to come.