Where is my mind?

So, I am a total slacker and still haven't posted about our trip to California! And since I've been getting death threats (ok, maybe not quite that bad), I figured now is as good a time as any. So here is our trip to California in a nutshell...

We arrived on Monday afternoon, picked up our rental car, and drove out to our hotel. Now, we booked everything online and picked a place that was reasonably priced but not trashy. It ended up being in Diamond Bar which seemed like forever away from Los Angeles and every where we wanted to go. After doing the drive a few times it ended up not being too bad. It is pretty much like Chinatown. The signs all over the place were in English and then Chinese. And if you love Chinese food then this was heaven! Unfortunately for me, anything other than Chinese food was hard to find. Even a grocery store!



Well, the next day was our big Ellen day. We had received another phone call letting us know that they were offering all of Ellen's guests a free screening of the documentary Young At Heart. It is about a group of senior citizens that form a choir and they travel all over the world singing pop songs. It was amazing! The screening was at 11am so after it was over, we had just enough time to get us something to eat and then head over to the Ellen studios. We had to be in line by 3pm and pretty much just wait until taping time which wasn't until 6pm. It was a long day! The show itself was pretty fun! It is a lot of dancing and clapping and screaming. The guests on that day were America Ferrera from Ugly Betty, Leo Wyatt who saved 3 people when a small plane crashed into his neighbors house, and the Young At Heart Choir. We told everyone we knew to look for us when the show aired but unfortunately, unless you knew where we were and what we were wearing...you couldn't see us at all. We sat all the way to the side right by Stryker. He is pretty dang cute so I wasn't complaining. Overall, it was a pretty fun experience. They wouldn't let us take pictures while we were on the lot so the pictures are limited. Here is the sign at check in where we stood in line and the other is a picture of Fai'ana in front of the Ellen Store.






The next day was our day in Los Angeles to play tourists and see the musical Wicked. We did a little sight seeing and ended up on Hollywood Blvd. Typical tourists we took a double decker bus tour. It was pretty fun! We got to see a lot of things we wouldn't have had the chance to see or know what we were seeing if we just drove ourselves. The best time of the whole day was of course seeing Wicked. It was AMAZING!!! I am serious. If you ever have the chance to see this musical you should jump on it. It is such a clever story and the musical performances were unreal! I used to make fun of my friends for being obsessed with it but I find myself slowly becoming the same. And to top it all off, we were sitting two rows behind and about 10 seats over from Jay from the Biggest Loser. If any of you are reality tv junkies like I am, you know who I'm talking about. I tried to talk to him and get his picture but I had a hard time so this is the best that I could do.





The next day we drove down to San Diego and went to Sea World. It was so nice because it was perfect weather and not crowded at all. We spent about 4 hours going to every exhibit and watching all of the water shows. I kinda felt like a little kid again. At the Shamu show, Fai'ana made us sit down in the soak zone. Everyone around us got soaked but we didn't get one drop on us. It was great! After our day at Sea World, we headed up the Pacific Coast Highway and headed back to our hotel. We were exhausted!



Friday was the day we planned on just relaxing at the beach. Unfortunately, the weather did not have the same plans. We drove down the Pacific Coast Highway and just ended up at Redondo Beach and sat on a bench and just watched the ocean. We were hoping to wait it out so we could see the sunset but it got very cold, very fast so we called it an early night and headed back to our hotel to try and swim in the pool. Little did we know that the hotel pool was not heated. Yikes! Good thing they had a hottub! Here is a pic I took of Fai'ana looking at the ocean and then a little sailboat I was worried might get lost in the storm.





It was such a fun trip and there are so many more pictures and stories that I could tell but this is already turning into a novel. So much for a nutshell huh? I didn't want to come home! I think being a responsible adult is overrated sometimes.