10.19.2006

'sup.

here it is. your vacation update. can i just say, what is the deal with me getting sick after these vacations? i swear, my sinuses hate me traveling!

wednesday october 11: our flight. early. 8 am-ish. had to be up at 4am. nice flight considering... not too many people and was way cheap!
landed around 1030am. their time. got to the hotel around noon. i passed out. traveling wipes me out. that and we were up late the night before! lots going on...
just kinda hung out there for the day. room service. lots of nothingness! good times!
thursday october 12:
headed to the san diego zoo. turned out to be a nice day. probably the best besides the day we left! totally nice zoo. glad we ventured out that way. saw some turtles getting their groove on, two seperate groups of meerkats. yes, i do watch meerkat manor! and they are totally so cute in person. the pups... adorable. nick and i totally want us a meerkat family! saw some baby giraffes. love giraffes. they have the best eyelashes!
went to old towne for a bit after the zoo. the headed back to the hotel to meet up with our friends.
all the pics are uploaded to flickr. but i won't make you dig thru all of them... and they are backwards. out of order. how the heck am i managing that?!
some highlights from the zoo:
check the turtles in the background. there are three on the otherside of the fence. bunch of freaks!

me diggin the giraffes!

meerkats. seriously we have like 25 pictures of just meerkats. yeah, we have a problem!

thursday evening we spent the evening with tom and yogurt. okay, his real name is brian. but no one calls him that. and i'm proud to say that tom and i were the ones who made the nickname stick... ;o)
hung out at the hotel for a while. they had free appetizers and drink specials from 5-7. can't beat that. but the hotel did charge $10 a day parking. the heck? and no notice from the travel agent... nice.
afterwards, we walked around downtown disney. about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. not too bad. then tried to walk our stupid selves to jack in the box. those boys, tom, and their ultimate burgers. i think they had it every night!
our little gps guy totally helped us out. that and the big sheraton beacon across from our hotel. just had to look for it to figure out where we were headed when george, the gps, wasn't with us!
friday october 13: disneyland day!
tom, doug, yogurt, yogurt's cousin alicia, nick and myself went. had a blast. well, doug and tom left early. thought they were too grown up or something... got drunk with an old guy in a hot tub. totally sounds like more fun that disney, right?
were able to ride the nightmare before christmas ride! the new pirates of the caribbean was pretty neat. did an excellent job making the jack sparrow. totally looks like johnny depp!
got a picture from splash mountain....
yeah, tom's asleep. alicia is loving it. yogurt is scared to death! i'm screaming. i just can't help it! nick's loving it! and doug, well, he's hiding! ;o)
tom totally thought about his pose all morning! cracks me up!
ate like a pig! turkey legs, pickles, pineapple ice cream, pineapple floats, french fries, pluots {plum/apricot hybrids!}, pretzels, hot chocolate. soooo good.
had to try on some mouse ears...
watched the fireworks show over the castle. way cool. love fireworks. well, worth the wait in the cold and the rain! headed to downtown disney to meet up with rob, chie, and ryan. none of us had met rob's fiancee before... kinda strange. lots of weirdness behind it, but oh well.
saturday october 14: wedding day. nick and i slept in. headed to the nearby fruitstand when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed! yum. and cheap. wish we had a decent farmer's market or fruit stand near us... must investigate.
drove to the wedding. which was at the disneyland resort. in the rose garden. very pretty. chie even was brought out by horse and carriage... cinderella style. pretty cool!
don't have the best pictures. nick was my photographer. and there are heads in every picture. quite funny. but you can check out the photographer's website, if you are interested. not all the pictures are up, but the ones that are are phenomenal. joey ikemoto. if you like to search for the pics... go to weddings. groom's last name = longfellow. select the date of 10-14-2006. it will give you a movie of the one's posted.
the boys looking handsome...
nick and i... totally have our christmas card photo too. everyone will have to wait for their cards to see it!
where's yogurt? were you all paying attention?
not pictured because he was loaded. tom and doug left him after he put a giant construction cone on his head and proclaimed he was the wizard of oz... then proceeded to fall into the bushes. totally thought he would have been arrested. so hoping he wouldn't show up to the wedding and ruin it.
he did make it. after the ceremony thankfully. still drunk. not good. we ditched him again.. i know. so nice of us. his so called friends. walked around downtown disney to pass the time between the ceremony and reception. had a nummy drink from rainforest cafe. tequilla and orange sherbert. sounds freaky... but tastey!
went to the reception... yogurt found us. ended up leaving early. which was probably a good thing for everyone.
called it a night early. rob and chie were flying to japan way early. tom, doug, and yogurt all had 8 am flights.
sunday october 15: decided to treck back to san diego. went to the miramar air show. neither of us had been to an airshow so thought we should check it out. the weather sucked! cold, cloudy, windy. we froze our asses off. way crowded too. but neat. glad we went. saw a plane and a semi truck race. bad ass. from our angle it looked like the semi won. the blue angels were freaking crazy. flying at 300mph only 18 inches apart. seriously, what if someone sneezes. not good.
had the darndest time trying to nab some pictures. ended up taking a few videos. this is the best i could do...
we left early because we were cold and crabby and hungry!
drove to beverly hills to eat at the stinking rose. saw it on foodnetwork. good eats or something like that. great food. favorite of the night. garlic ice cream with chocolate mole sauce. a weird good. and no, i'm not pregnant.... thanks tho!
monday october 16: went back to the parks. hit california adventure land this time.
loved the candy corn a's. yeah, i'm weird. had this fascination with pumpkins and palm trees. they just don't mesh for this midwesterner!
not very big. no lines either. decent rides tho! loved the tower of terror. yeah, i screamed on that one too. nick got to ride a rollercoaster. he loves them! rode a funky ass ferris wheel. look closely at the picture. the carts don't stay around the edge of the ferris wheel. they have inside tracks.
way nauseating. so not what you expect on a nice ferris wheel ride!
monday night we hung out at the bar in our hotel. remember? free appetizers? drink specials? stuffed ourselves silly with junk and drank for cheap while watching the bears game. was that not the craziest game ever? so happy the bears ended up winning, although i still can't believe it!
tuesday october 17: our final day. weren't totally sure what we were going to do. our flight didn't leave lax until after 5 pm. the weather ended up cooperating so we drove to the santa monica pier.
had a blast. we were total fools. set the camera in the sand and played with the timer. you should have seen us running back and forth. okay, nick was running and maybe i shouldn't have admitted our silly little antics. got some decent pics tho!
and my pants were soaked after jumping around in the ocean. nothing like saltwater legs for a four hour flight!
a few of us being dorks...


seriously. have a ton of beach pics. maybe 100 or so! and they are all in the flickr set.
nick also found this neat workout area on the beach. was insanely jealous. so wants to move there just for that. told him we probably wouldn't appreciate it then!
then drove to lax and caught our flight....

sad to be gone. but good to be home at the same time. exhausted. glad our full time doc is in syria. have a little breather workwise before monday! nick not so lucky. tons going on at work. feel bad for the poor guy.
also have lots of extracirricular activities the next few days! totally wishing i could just hibernate for a bit!

10 comments:

Kache said...

Looks like it was really pretty weather for the wedding and the beach day. Love the candy corn "A"s and the pumpking Mickey. And Tom's pose on the ride. Really like the Disney topiaries, very cool pics...glad you had fun!

Stacey said...

sounds like a great time

Anonymous said...

Welcome home, sounds like you had fun! Looking forward to the layouts. LOVE your commentary along the way too :)

Carrie

Colleen said...

YAY!! Love reading your trip blogs! The Splash Mountain photo is a riot! Hey... your boyfriend's favorite ride is Tower of Terror!! We rode it 4 times this last trip! Glad you had fun.. the photos you posted are fabulous!! Welcome home; you were missed.

Susan said...

Hey! Welcome back! Sounds like good times!! That freaky ferris wheel is like the one in Coney Island, 'cept that one was built int the 20's and I doubt its structural integrity!

Brandy said...

What an awesome trip, I saw a little on Flickr - very badass. BTW,what a fortune that wedding must have cost!

TracyDacy said...

Awesome pictures Shannon! Looks and sounds like you had a TON of fun!!! Yeah, I'm jealous!

Colleen said...

I was telling Matthew about the Splash Mountain photo tonight at dinner so I had to show him.... he really got a kick out of your friend in the front. And he REALLY wants to ride that Ferris Wheel. Looks like a trip to CA is in our future. :)

Heather said...

Sounds like a blast! Off to check out flickr pics...

Rita said...

Sounds like you had an awesome trip! And congrats for checking that christmas card photo off your list. :-)
Of course, now I really want to see it so maybe you could just show me?? I promise I won't tell anyone. :-)