SPRING BREAK

So I've neglected this blog for a little bit, but here's a super long post to make up for it!

Two weeks ago was SPRING BREAK!!! It seriously couldn't come fast enough. We started planning in January, we were that excited. Mark and I planned the majority of the trip, and I must say, everything turned out awesome.

The first Friday Mark, Paula, Andrew and I drove down to Mark's house, which is 4 1/2 hours away. We spent the night there and then drove to St George the next morning. Daniel and Myles met us there, and we spent the afternoon shopping and exploring while Mark went to his niece's baptism. We all then went to the family dinner, and then drove to Mark's grandparent's house where we spent the night. While driving to Mark's grandparent's house somehow we got on the topic of canibalism and kicking people off the 'island', it was quite hilarious.

Me, Myles, Daniel, and Andrew on top of the Dixie Rock Paula and I by the crack

Sunday we went to church with Mark's grandparents, then went home and made dinner and just relaxed. His Grandparents are hilairous, and I really enjoyed visiting with them. Here's Andrew, Mark, and Daniel taking their Sunday nap together :)
That evening we drove back to St George where we met up with the other car of people (Adam, Heidi, Todd, Kathy and Rachel) and we stayed the night at Paula's cousin's house. It was awesome! They had a huge dinner for us, and basically let us have reign of their house. It was so much fun. The next morning we got up and got everything packed. They fed us a great breakfast, and we got our lunches ready for the car. Don't the brown bags with names on them remind you of elementary school?

We then started on our journey to California. Mark drove, I was the navigator, and Kathy, Paula, and Myles were in the backseat. We stopped for gas in Vegas and Barstow. When we got into California we were stopped by the 'wavers', or people looking for fruit in your cars. A bit ridiculous, I know. We realized we actually had a box of grapefruit in our trunk, so we were a bit worried about them stopping us. When we actually got up to them they just waved us through. All they accomplished was slowing down traffic, which was quite lame. When we got to Barstow it was soooooooo windy! I literally thought I was going to blow away. We drove the rest of the way to San Diego and dropped all of our stuff off at Kathy's uncle's house, just outside of San Diego. Can you tell they were excited to be out of the car?
That evening we went to eat at an awesome Mongolian buffet restaurnt. It was super good, but I ate way too much. We then drove to see the ocean!

We got there just before sunset, and it was gorgeous. A little chilly, but still awesome. Of course Heidi got splashed by a wave first thing ;) We then drove around trying to find Old Town San Diego, with no success. We then decided to call it a night.
The next day our first stop was the San Diego temple. We were able to go and do Baptisms, and everything about it was awesome. The Temple President actually came and talked to us, which was super neat. The boys that are Endowed did all the baptisms, and acutally ended up baptizing another group of girls, so we were actually all ready to go before they were even done. Us waiting for the boys became quite typical ;) We actually ran into another group of USU students there, and Preston from our ward was with them. Small world!

A nice gentleman that took our picture recommended that we eat lunch at Acupoco (spelling?) in Old Town San Diego. We actually found it this time! We went there and ate on a roof, hade amazing fajitas, and were serenaded by a man with a guitar. Life does not suck!
After lunch we went to the Mormon Batallion museum in Old Town. It was probably the best Mormon museum I've ever been to. It was way fun. We maybe had a little too much fun at the play set out back :)

After we explored the rest of Old Town, we drove to a Bay area to spend the rest of the day. We played in the water, build sand castles, buried our feet in the sand, had races, took a ridiculous amount of pictures, and had tons of fun. I almost stepped on a sting ray, which definitely would have put a damper on the trip.

It took us an outlandish amont of shots to perfect this ;)

This is basically a requirement at the beach :)

So is this :)

Posing like rock stars is also a requirement :)

We then drove to Little Italy and explored. Gelato is a necessity in little Italy! Far superior to our American ice cream.

It got quite cold and I didn't have a jacket, so Todd shared his with me. Isn't he so kind?

Two thumbs up for Little Italy :)

The next day we packed everything up and drove an hour and a half to Laguna Beach. It was a pretty drive, but San Diego is definitely the prettiest part of California that we saw. Mark and Myles were taking the cars to a parking lot, so they dropped us off right across the street from the beach. We were all standing at a stop light waiting to cross when two guys across from us took our picture and started laughing. Apparently we really looked like tourists. Maybe it had something to do with our entire case of bottled water, our ridiculously white skin, our 50 beach towels, or our sand toys. Whatever it was, they got a kick out of us.

The family next to us on the beach also happened to be from Utah. I pegged them as Utahns becase of the three modest swimming suits. They actually came and asked us to watch their stuff while they were at lunch, and kindly let us use their boogie boards. They said they knew we were from Utah by our pale skin, and the fact that we were the only other people in the freezing water :)

Meet the Phatts - your average American sand family. Heidi, Kathy, Todd, and Myles.

Other eventful beach happenings: a seagull stole Paula's sandwich right out of her hands, and we saw dolphins in the wild! It was pretty awesome. I also drank quite a bit of sea water. I wasn't in past my knees yet, and Mark comes over and drags me deeper into the water. A huge wave then came and wiped us out. I'm pretty sure I tasted salt for the rest of the day. We then drove up towards LA, to our hotel in Hawthorne. Our hotel was super nice, and it was fun to not have to worry about being loud, our our stuff being everywhere. We unpacked everything and showered. We then went to an AMAZING authentic Italian restraunt. I can't remember the name, but it was sooooooooooo good. That night we watched a movie and just hung out. We also read scriptures every night together, which was really cool.

The next day we drove into LA and went to Chinatown!!! It was super cool. The little shops were really fun, and the owners were hilarious.

All us girls bought umbrellas, and Mark bought an awesome hat

We then ate the best chinese food ever! You know the food's gonna be good when you're the only white people in the place :)

Heidi rode the kiddie ride!

We then went to the Santa Monica Pier

We rode a ferris wheel over the ocean! It was pretty awesome. Mark howerver, complained the entire time. Apparently he hates ferris wheels. I didn't know it was possible to hate them. After we took this picture, "That was such a girl thing to do! Why did I do that?" - Mark

Let's cram 7 people into a small photo booth and take our own picture!

After the Pier we drove home in horrid traffic. We stopped at Jack in the Box for dinner, and it was actually pretty good. We got back to the hotel and just chilled, we were all pretty wiped out.

The next day I was woken up at 6:30 am by a phone call from Steph. The first thing I heard was 8.9 earthquake hit Japan. Tsunami headed for the entire West Coast. Crap. Was my first thought. Today was supposed to be our other big beach day. So, looking quite fabulous, I went next door to the boys' room to use Mark's computer. I looked up news on the earthquake and Tsunami. We were in the Tsunami Advisory area, and the waves were reportedly going to be 3-4 feet. Nothing too drastic, but we decided that it would be safer to go to the beach later in the day, or not at all. Apparently after I left the boys all made fun of me because they thought that I thought that the Tsunami was going to hit our hotel. Yes, I thought the Tsunami was going to hit our hotel 20 miles inland, ha, yeah right.

After I got back none of us could go back to sleep. We watched the news on the disaster, and got ready for the day and packed everything up. We then went down to breakfast. At the continental breakfast the lady was very strict. She got mad at Paula for putting too much batter into the waffle maker, and for not using tongs to get her bread. She also got mad at Myles for not wearing shoes. She earned the name the waffle nazi.

After everyone was up and ready to go, we decided to hang out at a park until we decided what to do. We were going to go to the 20th biggest park in the US, but the hour drive wasn't worth it, so we went to a ghetto park 2 min from our hotel. We tried to finish watching a movie we started, but it was too light to see it. Mark then said, 'We can either go to the car and cover ourselves with blankets, or we can cover ourselves with blankets here'. We laughed pretty hard at that one. We ran to a grocery store and got stuff for lunch, and then had lunch at the park. We then drove to Santa Monica beach. We didn't actually go swimming, but we did wade in the water.

I love this picture - Myles and I had no idea it was being taken.

It's pretty cool to say we got in the ocean during a Tsunami warning :) We caught about 20 hermit crabs. Four of them may or may not have made it to then car, only to tragically die . . . and my trunk may or may not smell like dead hermit crabs .....

Myles so kindly locked me in the outhouse. Apparently he's being my body guard.

Paula, Kathy, and Myles in the backseet while stuck in traffic. This is pretty typical of the entire week.

LA traffic may be the worst I've ever seen. It took us 4 hours to go 90 miles. We eventually made it to Paula's uncle's house near Victorville. He had and awesome dinner ready for us - baked potatoes, roast beef, rolls, salad, and tons of other great food, as well as dessert. He also had every individually packeged snack available from Costco for us. We were definitely spoiled. We all slept on the floor, and as usual, at least one person was snoring. We got up early and ate an awesome breakfast, and then drove 2 hours to Six Flags.

Six Flags has the best rollercoasters ever, but ridiculous amounts of people. We waited in two two hour lines. In totaly we rode six rides, which were all pretty awesome. My favorites were Tatsu, The Riddler's Revenge, and the X2. Way better than Lagoon or even Disneyland. You can definitely tell we were all tired though.

Heidi and Todd being themselves

Yay for touristy pics

Six Flags was awesome, but tiring. We drove back to Paula's uncle's house where he had tons of options for food that night and the next morning. He also had a big journal, small journal, quotes, a cd, and pens for all of us. He was one the coolest guys I've met. We were really lucky to have been able to stay with him and his family.

By the time we got to bed it was around 12:15, and we were getting up at 5 to head home. However, with daylights savings time, it was really like we were getting up at 4am. Yay. We ended up leaving by 6, and getting to Vegas about 8:45.

Paula, Kathy, and Mark - this us most of the ride home.

We stopped at Adam's uncle's house in Vegas. We went to a Sacrament Meeting at 10, and then went back to the house where they fed us an awesome lunch. We then started our drive back home. My car stopped at Mark's house to get my ipod I'd left in Cedar, and also Mark's clothes he'd left there. We made sandwiches for the car, and just relaxed for about an hour. We then drove the rest of the way home. We got home about 11:00, and were so ready to be out of the car. It was an aweome trip, but after 10 days it feels good to be home again.