Quick Trip to California

We went to California last week for just a quick trip. Jackie had a work training meeting in Orange County on Friday and I decided to go with her and make a weekend trip out of it. We flew in Thursday night and met Bretton and Natalie at Downtown Disney. We went to ESPN Zone and sat in the room with the big movie theater screen that had the Angels game on. It was a lot of fun. We were even able to watch the firework show that happens at Disneyland. They were pretty cool.
We walked around Downtown Disney and went into the different shops. The Lego shop is cool to see all the different things they make out of Legos.

Jackie and Natalie had a little sword fight, not sure who won though.

We had to take a picture to send to Jackie's brother Tim to make him jealous that we were that close to Disneyland.

Friday, Jackie went to her work thing, Tyler had picked me up Thursday night and brought me back up to Ventura where we used to live. I went and stopped by my old work and said hi to everyone. It was really nice to see everyone. I miss them lots.

Friday night a big group of us went to the Dodger game. Above is Natalie and Bretton. We sat out in Right Field and they had all you can eat food with our tickets. We ate a lot of hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, and peanuts. It actually was a really good deal. We ate enough food to get our money's worth.

Above is Tyler and Jen. We are excited to be going to the Dominican Republic with them in the fall. It will be a great trip.Here is the view from our seats. The game was pretty exciting, but the Dodgers lost 6 to 3. I'm an A's fan, so it didn't really matter to me who won, but it was a lot of fun being at the game with everyone.

Here is the rest of the group, Sherry, Andy, Nellie, Logan, Spenny, and on the row behind is Rob and Ashley.

If you can make out what the sign says above, it is "MannyWood". They sure do love Manny Ramirez. Whenever he came to bat the crowd was the loudest. He is the one that just got back from his 50 game suspension.

After the game we were able to go down on the field for fireworks. If anyone knows how much I love baseball, you would know how cool this was for me. Everyone making faces behind my back while I was having Jackie take a serious pose picture of me on the field. Needless to say I laid down on the grass and have never walked on nicer grass than there. It was pretty cool.

The firework show was great and they did a Elvis tribute that night.

Here is me standing by the warning track, I wanted to make a run at the wall and jump like I was catching a ball, but there was a security guard as you can see. It was a really fun experience to be down on the field.

Saturday we went to the beach and played some volleyball and then swam in the ocean. Next we made a trip to In N Out and then just hung out the rest of the day. Sunday we went to church and were able to see some people from our old ward. We were excited to see Stacie and her two boys since we would always sit with them during sacrament. I was also able to see some of the young men that I used to work with down there. The trip was a lot of fun and it sure reminded us how much we loved living in California and how much we miss our great friends we made while we were out there.

Harry Potter Party!

My dear brother Timothy had this idea that we needed to go to the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie at 12:20 in the morning. At first, C.J. and I of course said no! We would much rather sleep and go see it at a normal time. Tim was quick to reject that idea. So he bought us tickets to go. Now, if you know C.J. you know he wouldn't be to excited about that. Well, he wasn't but he said he would still go. What a good Hubby! It was Tim, Ashli, Kelly, CJ and I and a bunch of Ashli's family. C.J. came home from work and played golf with his brother and thought it best if he went to sleep so that he could stay awake during the movie. He always falls asleep during movies and since this one was starting at midnight, he definitely needed to take a nap!
So while he was napping, I had my cute cousins Lizzy, Tricia, Becky and my two sisters Holly and Kelly over for dinner and we played fudge. It was so much fun. We need to get together more often and play! After my party, Kelly and I went to Mom and Dad's house around 10:30 and hung out for a little bit before we headed down to Jordan Commons to watch our show. C.J. needed a little more sleep so he met us at the theatre.
It was very busy and lots of people were dressed up. Some of the people were a little creepy and some of them looked really cool. There was witches selling candies, buttons, wands, and other stuff. It made me laugh. People really got into it. When it was time to start the show, we got into our seats, and C.J. was so excited for the previews. After the previews, C.J. was very disappointed, we had already seen all of them. There was nothing new at all, very disappointing.
After we watched the movie C.J. and I both agreed that it was a great movie and we both enjoyed it and then we hurried home so that we could catch some sleep before we had to get up and go to work. We got home at 3:30 and C.J. never once fell asleep. He did however spill Dr. Pepper all over his lap, so he sat in wet pants for the last half of the movie. Maybe that is why he did not sleep!

Johnson Reunion

We had Jackie's family Reunion last week. We first started out with Jackie's immediate family at her parents house. The first day was spent going on a hike to the Timpanogos Caves. Jackie and I had to be at work to get some Month End stuff done and I guess we were lucky we missed the hike because everyone was exhausted and sore when they got back. Jackie, Kelly, and I had baked cookies for the kids to decorate for activity and here are some pictures below.
The cookies were really yummy and the kids looked like they had fun decorating them. Some of the kids put so much frosting on their cookies and I have no idea how they ate them.

After decorating cookies, we ate dinner and just visited. The next day they hiked up to Ensign Peak and then we headed to Memory Grove Park and had a picnic. That park is beautiful and made for a relaxing afternoon.

Jackie's Dad was quite worn out from all the hiking and took a nice nap. While he was napping the grand kids decided to play in the little river.

What was supposed to be just get your feet wet and walk around ended up like this.... Some of the kids actually swam in the pond section.

On Friday we headed up to the Big Johnson Reunion in Star Valley with all of the extended family. On the way up is this Lonely Tree. When Jackie was in Elementary school she wrote a whole novel (that's what she calls it) about the adventures of this tree. She said her teacher loved the novel and was always anxious to read the next chapter. So Jackie has many fond memories of this tree.

It ended up raining a ton both nights. This is what happened to one of the tents after the first storm. It ended up ripping this tent and leaving a big puddle in multiple tents. We ended up sleeping at a cousin's house to avoid the wet rain.

Here are some of huddled under the pavilion during the first storm. There was hail, lots of wind, and lots of rain.

Terry took us on a little tour of where he grew up. Here is the actual house he was born in and then raised in. He took us in the barns and showed us different family houses etc.....

Here is an old school stove and oven that Terry's brother that lives in the house still uses. It was pretty cool looking.

Here is Tim in the milking barn showing his son what the cows do in there. It was pretty funny.

Here is a picture of the kids watching the adults and older kids get the cows into the corral so that they could brand them and then take away their male parts. Which they later tried to get everyone to eat at the reunion. I had none of that. No way was I eating that stuff.

After a quite a bit of work here are the cows going into the corral. They must have known what was going to happen.

So that was basically our busy week. Hope everyone had a great 4th of July.