Journey to the Happiest Place on Earth!!

So, my family went on a semi-spontaneous trip to Disneyland at the end of January.

If you know my family at all, you know this is very unlike us. :) But it was a good time to go. Shauna had just graduated BYU and was still job hunting, Kristie has the semester off school while she prepares for her mission in March. And we'd heard that January is a great time to go to Disneyland to avoid the crowds. With the measles outbreak going on, we had a pretty good shot at an empty park.

The first day was the absolute best. The park was almost empty. We could (and did) walk onto any ride we wanted. Didn't even need to get a fast pass. We took a bunch of pictures with characters and we didn't even have to wait in line!

I quickly succumbed to the temptation to get a mouse hat, while everyone else resisted... which resulted (as usual) in people thinking I was the youngest in our family instead of the oldest, but whatever. :)

We got to see the parades in both parks (Disneyland and California Adventure). We waited for a little bit to see the Disneyland one, but we walked right up to the California Adventure one when it was starting and managed to find an awesome spot.

Waiting for the Disneyland parade

The second day, we mostly spent in California Adventure. There were a lot more crowds than the day before, and we had to wait in lines for rides, but never for very long. The longest was half an hour (yes, I made my family wait half in hour for the Peter Pan ride... okay, I didn't make them, but they knew I wanted to, so they supported me in my choice. :) And yeah, I know the Peter Pan ride isn't in California Adventure--we did some park hopping! It was still really fun, but not quite as perfect at the day before.

One cool and kind of funny experience. We wanted to try this Toy Story ride called Midway Mania, but Shauna and Mom get a little bit motion sick, and there was a sign out front warning that this ride could cause motion sickness. There was also a 30 minute wait to get on to the ride. There was much debating whether or not Mom and Shauna wanted to try it. Mom finally asked an employee about it, and when he couldn't quite convince us that the ride was good for everyone in our family, he offered to let me, Dad, and Kristie skip the line to ride it to see if it was something Mom and Shauna could handle.  Just like that, he whisked us through to the handicap access point and let us on the ride, no waiting. And once we were done, we collected Mom and Shauna, and he let us skip the line again to go through together.

Excellent customer service. Who knew motion sickness could come so in handy? :)

At the end of the day, we watched the Fantasmic show. We got fastpasses in the morning so we had a great place to watch. It's quite an impressive show--I liked it a lot. When it was over, we had five minutes left before Disneyland closed, so we frantically ran into Pirates of the Caribbean for one last ride. Pirates has always been one of our favorites, because it's awesome, and because it's high capacity so the line is always short. We probably rode it 5 or 6 times in those 2 days. It was a great way to finish things up.

On our last day in California, we headed to Huntington Beach. Dad grew up in California, and when he was a kid, his family brought visiting relatives to Huntington because it has fire pits there, so they could roast hot dogs when people got hungry. We had a great time just chilling at the beach.  I was too much of a coward to go into the cold water, but Shauna and Kristie had a ball wading in and looking for shells.

The whole trip was amazing and so relaxing. Disneyland really is one of the happiest places on Earth. The little kids that come there are so happy and so excited! For them it is a dream come true.

I've made some happy memories there myself over the years and I intend to keep going back. :) I miss it a lot already!

Saving Sherlock: A Night at the Escape Key

Guys, tonight I helped save Sherlock Holmes' life!!!

Best Saturday night ever.

Tonight I got to check out a new Salt Lake attraction called the Escape Key (in honor of my awesome roommate's birthday--Happy birthday Melissa!!). Apparently, this sort of thing is very popular out east and overseas. Basically you are locked into a room with a deadline, and you have to solve a series of puzzles in order to escape.

We were in the "Anything But Elementary Room" based off Sherlock Holmes. It's designed to look like Sherlock Holmes' study. After you enter, a screen lights up with an incoming phone call from Inspector LaStrade. It seems Sherlock is on a case, and he desperately requires something from his study. He's trusted you, his good friends, to locate what he needs. But being Sherlock, it's not so easy as plucking something out of a desk drawer.

It soon becomes clear that the stakes are very high--you have an hour to act, or Sherlock will be dead.

I don't want to give too much away. :) But it was really fun, very cleverly done and challenging. You can't beat the thrill you get when you're the one to solve the next piece of the puzzle. Or the mounting pressure as the clock ticks away Sherlock's life. In the end, we solved the puzzle with 9 seconds to spare. NINE SECONDS!

Seriously, I felt like I was in the BBC version of Sherlock. One touch I really liked was helpful texts from "Watson." The proprietors monitor the room through cameras, and so occasionally they'll "text" you helpful hints (which appear on the screen) based on what they can see you doing. For me, that just made it more real. If I were in BBC Sherlock land and Sherlock had sent me on a mission, it seems totally legit that Watson would be my backup over the phone. I'd read him off clues and stuff I found or things that were stumped me, and he give back his insight. (We didn't text Watson back, he was just observant to what we were doing--and he was pretty hands off. He only stepped in when we really needed it, and his hints were small). I totally read all the Watson texts in Martin Freeman's voice.

I had a great time. The Escape Key is still pretty new, so not a lot of people have heard about it yet--consider this my attempt to spread the word!! If you live anywhere near the Salt Lake area, you should give it a try--way more fun and creative than your basic dinner and a movie night. Right now they only have the Sherlock room, but they are working on building CSI and Mission: Impossible rooms too. Check out their website for more info: http://www.theescapekeyutah.com/

The Count of Monte Cristo

I LOVE the Count of Monte Cristo. I love the movie, I love the book....and now I officially love the musical. :)

I heard that BYU was doing a musical version, but tickets got snapped up fast. I thought I would have to miss out. Then today Melissa facebook messaged me that they were releasing cheap tickets for a dress rehearsal tonight.

I read up a little bit on the show before we went. Turns out, it's an even bigger deal than I thought. It's a musical originally commissioned for a theater in Switzerland. It's done very well overseas, but this was the first time it's been performed in the US. 

Frank Wildhorn, the composer (a famous composer who's done many Broadway shows) was invited to perform a concert at BYU back in 2013 and to teach master classes to the BYU theater students. He was so impressed with the quality of their work, that he decided to do something essentially unheard of and debut his musical for the first time in America at BYU, before it goes to Broadway.

You can read more about it in this awesome article from the Deseret News: 

BYU readies English premiere of Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn's 'The Count of Monte Cristo'

Or you can watch Frank Wildhorn talk about it here: :)

Anyway, all of that really impressed me. I felt like I was getting to preview a Broadway show. And it felt very Broadway. (Okay, I've only ever seen Wicked, but still). The set and the special effects blew my mind. The actors were all super talented with amazing voices.

And the book was adapted beautifully into the musical, in a way that felt true to the original story. I loved it.

And I love that we got to see it on dress rehearsal night, even before the official opening night. We were some of the first people (on American soil, anyways) to see the musical! I loved it so much--I wouldn't be surprised if it's hugely popular once it hits Broadway. If you ever have a chance to see it, you should go!!

I think I'm going to reread the book.

The Tech Generation

Tonight I got to spend some time with my cousins. The six year old proudly showed me his new smart watch. I had no idea they made child versions of these things (much cheaper than the adult versions, I'm sure). I don't think he's learned how to tell time yet, but there he was, playing games on his watch.

His watch also comes with a camera. He showed me several videos he's taken of things going on in his life, like the time he hid his brother's dinosaur toys (in a treasure hunt game that his brother quite enjoyed) or the time his sister painted her bedroom wall.

We live in a super tech world. I'm used to seeing glimpses of younger people's lives--teenagers especially--in the videos and photos they take. But it was very interesting to see what a six year old would record. And all of these videos are taken from a six year old's height, reminding me of what it was like when everything and everyone is so much bigger than  you are.

Kids just get more and more tech savvy all the time. What are my kids going to be like?

Post-Christmas Blues

I always have a hard time letting Christmas go every year.

Of course I know that we can keep Christ as the center of our lives year round.

But there's nothing quite like the Christmas season. The lights and the decorations... the endless holiday parties... My year's longest break from working... Time home with my whole family...

There's so much build-up, and then, just like that, it's over. Back to work, back to Utah, back to a normal life without a break in sight... and then there's the fact that January is when the snow really hits. Winter becomes dreary instead of festive.

I guess I need to come up with some things to look forward to until we make it to spring! A Winter bucket list of sorts.

...

Of course, looking at that snow outside, I'm not super motivated to go out, so I guess this is gonna need to be an indoor bucket list... I'll get back to you on that.

Bunny Dog

Mom got a great idea. It's hard to send letters to Jason through the mail, but we can always use the missionary pouch system (letters sent to Salt Lake and carried to missions with the latest batch of missionaries). She discovered we are allowed to send postcards through the pouch system, so she's been working on custom postcards from Walgreens to send to him.

Here's a little preview of what he has to look forward to (his Easter postcard):

Word of the Year: Light

Melissa gave me a challenge to pick a word of the year.

A word to define 2015, to remind me of my goals and resolutions and help keep me on track.

After a lot of thought... I've decided my word will be "light."

Light means:

• Striving to grow closer to Heavenly Father

• Being optimistic about my future

• Learning new things, reading good books, visiting new places, all kinds of good things. :)

I think this is gonna be a good year.