California Christmas

I am behind on blogging. Sorry, folks.

Something that I always love about Christmas time in California is the stark contrast that it is going from Utah to California, but this year has been probably the most mild winter I've ever seen in Utah. It's unreal. I've been outside running twice this week and it's early January.

In any case, California still didn't disappoint in that department. We got there late Thursday night and stayed until Tuesday afternoon and the temperatures ranged from high 60s to low 70s and even the 80s while we were there. I got to go do my favorite run in Peter's Canyon while we were there.

The trip was supposed to be more low-key this time because we thought more people would be gone. Dave and Caitlin were the most notable absentees, but we just thought there really wouldn't be anyone around. We thought we'd have all kinds of time to explore the Southern California only things that I've never really had a chance to do with Amy, but instead it was one appointment after another, which we really love more than anything.

We started our first full day in California by heading to Magic Mountain. Always a favorite. We hit all of the big rides, and especially having the proximity of time for our last Disneyland trip so close, it was easy to compare the magnitude of awesomeness for each of the rides. Disneyland really is so much about  atmosphere, which is amazing, but nothing compares to those rides at Magic Mountain.

I was going to just try and describe some of the rides, but I have some footage so I may as well let that do the talking:


MMCA11 by silva888
Our schedule looked like this:

• Friday - Magic Mountain; Matt and Laura; Crash
• Saturday - Redfords and visit with Greg and Laura, Mom and Bro's family; Doug and Kris for games and snickerdoodles (woo!)
• Sunday - Our very first married Christmas morning; Church; Dad's; Doug and Kris to pick up present; Greg and Laura for games
• Monday - Shopping; Dave and Vanessa for lunch; Shopping; MI4 with Greg; Games with Greg
• Tuesday - Spur of the moment change in phone plans and upgrading to the Cool Kids Club with smartphones.

Someone was telling us that it gets kind of tired running around and trying to see everyone, but I hope I never feel that way. Seeing everyone and spending time with people was the best part of the trip. I can't believe how blessed we are to have so many great people in our lives. It's so great.

But yeah, we upgraded to smartphones now. Amy and I had been wanting to make the move for a long time now because with the Sprint family plan, it's actually cheaper for us to be on there than it would have been to continue like we had been. Dumb. We had been searching for awhile for someone to jump on with, when it finally occurred to us that Greg and Laura are not only family, but they would be good candidates to do it all together. So, without having to switch numbers even though none of us were local and we had a couple different area codes, we got our new plans that even came with a student discount for University of Pacific (BYU has one too, although not as good), and we've upgraded to this decade. Amy spent a good portion of the car ride black playing on her phone, while I spent much of the following week getting every free app that I thought would interest me.

And Amy and I made out pretty well for Christmas. She got a 35mm lens; I got a new laptop; we really upgraded our board game collection; some new clothes, and other fun things.

We had a long trip home because of Vegas traffic on a Tuesday afternoon. What? But we made it, and we were happy to be in California, but happy to be back now too.