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Thursday, October 25, 2007

California

California was so much fun. We're both still trying to recover from the trip!!! :) Sunday afternoon I got on to see how flights looked since we were flying standby under my benefits. We were going to fly out Monday afternoon. I figured it would work since I worked that morning from 1:45 a.m.-8a.m. and it would give me some time to sleep and a chance to clean up the house for our home study on Wednesday. Well, the flight Monday afternoon was just about sold out so it didn't look like we would be able to make it on. Which left the 6 a.m. flight. I wasn't sure it was going to work since I had to work till 8... It was completely NUTS! Sunday after church my husband and I cleaned like mad men. I had like 5 loads of laundry. It was about 12 a.m. when I finally drifted off to sleep.. and I woke up again at 1:45 a.m. to start work. I worked while folding clothes and trying to print off hotel, car, and flight confirmations... I was able to get off a little early (around 4?) which was excellent cause we were supposed to leave in a half hour and I still had not packed ANYTHING. I quickly packed our bags.. took Bella for a walk and got all of our last minute stuff ready (with Ryan's help). Chris and Stephanie came over and we headed to the airport. I thought for sure I would sleep on the plane since I had only slept 5 hours in the last 48 hours... but for some reason I could not sleep. So I watched the TV instead... :-} We got into long beach around seven in the morning. I called the hotel to ask them what time we could check in. They said 3 p.m. :( We rented a black Magnum. It was a nice car.. we had fun. Anyway we drove around trying to figure out what we could do for the next 8 hours... with no luck. We were all so tired that we were getting nowhere fast. Around 11 we stopped at the hotel to see if we could check in early. Luckily our rooms were available!!!
Our rooms were pretty ghetto for a hotel. Steph and Chris had a full size kitchen in their room- with appliances from the 1970s. There was a window from the kitchen that had a beautiful view of a cement wall 2 feet away.
Our room "the romantic suite" ... lol. There was a huge (four person) jacuzzi tub right NEXT to our bed. It was pretty out of date. It was just really funny to see it right next to our bed- it looked totally out of place I loved it. I should have taken pictures :( I have a funny story about that tub later..
Anyway- we took an hour nap and then we headed out to the pier to look at the boats and the cute little shops. It was fun. There was a lot of smoke in the air due to the fires down in S. Cal so we were pretty much the only people outside. We went out to eat and headed back to the hotel.
I was nervous about using the jacuzzi tub. A few years ago I got in one, and when I turned the jets on they started shooting out all this nasty cold brown water. I told Ryan that I didn't want to use the jets at first.. So we filled up the huge tub and Ryan waited till I was ready to take the risk, and use the jets. There wasn't any brown water, but there was a jet that was a little out of control. As soon as we turned the jets on this one jet in the very back went nuts. There was tons of water pressure and this huge stream of water went over our heads right on to the bed, the floor, and the nightstand. Constant water flow... So the whole time we sat there Ryan kept his hand over the jet. It was fun :)
We were going to go to bed early. But all of 'our' shows are on Monday ..so we stayed up till 10 :( We got up at 2 a.m. since we needed to be lined up outside the studio at 3:30 a.m. It was a 45 minute drive. So needless to say we were still pretty tired!! We ended up getting in line around 4 a.m. because we were having a hard time figuring out where to park. We ended up (when the day was said and done) paying over 40 bucks in parking that trip.
Anyway- this is turning into a novel so I'll try to wrap this up. On Tuesday we spent over 6 hours in lines. We did make it on the show, and it really was a blast. The perspective of the set is so different sitting in the audience. We weren't called as contestants... however we have a lot of TV time cause we were sitting right behind the people who were bidding.. so every time someone made a bid- our faces were in the screen. We'll get like 5 whole minutes of being on TV! :) The show will air January 15th. I'm in the white shirt looking very very cold. The studio was freezing. It must have been 45 degrees!!!
It was all so much fun. We were starving and tired but had a great time. There was so much energy in the room. It was great.
We got home around midnight. Today was crazy because we had a house appraisal early in the morning. I had to work for about six hours.. I got home and we had our home study. It went great- very painless :) .. I went visiting teaching, fell asleep.. and then got up at 1:45 to work this morning :) I'm anxious to get some sleep sometime this week!
Anyway- I hope everyone is doing well!

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