California Vacation! --------Warning! LOTS of pictures!!!

Jamie and I headed out for vacation in California for a few days and we had an absolute blast! We kicked it off by getting a hotel on Wednesday night. We stayed at the beautiful Hyatt hotel in Valencia, California. It was absolutely gorgeous, right down to the pool in the backyard and the rose garden.

On Thursday we caught some yummy breakfast at Mimi's Cafe and headed straight over to Magic Mountain 6 Flags! Oh my heck, we had a blast! We seriously felt like kids again! We got the Flash Pass added to our tickets for a little bit more and were able to skip all the crowds! The longest we waited for a ride was a half hour! We bumped into a few people without the Flash Pass that had been waiting for 2 1/2 to 3 hours for ONE RIDE! I think I would have been ticked all day if that was the case! Thanks to our speedy pass, we were able to ride all the big rides at the park! Some of them about made us crap our pants, which made it all that much funner! They were so fast and such tall rides...i've NEVER been on anything like them! I think my favorite was the X2 and the Tatsu. Both were so dang scarry!

After Magic Mountain we headed over to our friend's house, Sam and Tatum's, and stayed there for three nights. While Sam and Tatum were at work on Friday, we headed over to Newport Beach to meet up with my sister and her family at Marc's grandmother's beach house. We played on the beach all day long, even though it was a little chilly. The little boys didn't seem to mind at all either! They chased and ran away from the waves all day long. We looked for seashells, and discovered a bunch of star fish on the rocks. So cool! It was so great to see Amy, Marc and the boys. It's crazy we met up in California of all places.

We got back that night to Sam and Tatum's and she had made us a beautiful dinner with three different pastas and a yummy salad! She did such a good job! We finished the evening with homemade icecream sandwiches and hottubbing.

Saturday Sam and Tatum took us out on the town. We started off the day at Venice Beach at watched all the crazy performers on the street, looked at the beach shops, and grabbed some lunch. It felt like we were on an island! You could see and hear the waves everywhere you went!

Warning: Please no dog pee on this pole! (That's what the pole says...)

After that, we headed over to Hollywood and hiked up to the Hollywood sign to take some pictures. We didn't quite get up to the letters, but we got close enough to really get a good view. It was so cool to look out and see all of L.A.

After the Hollywood sign, we drove down Hollywood Boulevard, and drove around Beverly Hills.

We made a stop to walk around the L.A. temple grounds. Everything was so tropical and so gorgeous!

Then we headed over to Santa Monica and walked down to the pier to ride the ferris wheel. It was so romantic! It was dark, and all you could see was the lights below and the ocean crashing right under us. It was perfect! We ended the night by Sam and Tatum introducing us to Indian food. We went to a place called Nawab India and we loved it! It was a perfect ending to a perfect day.

We went to church with Sam and Tatum on Sunday and came back to take a Sunday walk around their neighborhood then sat around with our feet in their pool before we headed out that afternoon. It was such a good and relaxing vacation! This was Jamie and I's first real vacation together outside of going home for the holidays or Salt Lake. We had a great time together. It's been hard getting back into the groove of things and especially having to go back to work!