Our boat returned to San Diego port early Friday morning. We took our sweet time leaving, sad to go. When we got back to our car, we found out that the battery was DEAD. Yep. Dead. So we had to flag down a guy at the Park and Ride and get them to jump start our car. It came back to life and we were hoping it would stay that way!! We drove to the San Diego Zoo but sat in the parking lot letting the car stay alive for a little while longer.
The zoo was HOT!!!!!! The best thing in the world we could have ever purchased was this little coffee/hot chocolate tumbler that you could get soda in and free refills all day long. We got a bazillion. It was crazy. Also, the best thing that we did was take the bus ride around the zoo. That let us see EVERYTHING without walking up and down the hills, which was really nice! After that i was ready to go, hahaha, but we checked out the Elephant Exhibit and got a bunch more drink refills, then left :)
After the zoo, we prayed that the car would start and it did! So we drove to the San Diego temple... and it was beautiful!! We would have liked to have done a session there but did not have time, nor the appropriate dress attire on us. We got to chat with the sister missionaries though and turns out, one of them knows Heather Colbert! I told Heather I would visit her on her mission while we were in San Diego! I just didn't know we'd get that close to actually being able to!
After the temple we headed on up to DISNEYLAND!! The traffic was a little backed up but it wasn't too terrible, which we were very grateful for. We got into Anaheim and checked into our hotel, then we were off to Downtown Disney. We got our Disneyland tickets and checked out Downtown Disney, making sure to peek in the Lego store and sitting down for some food at a Mexican place that was there... dont' remember what it was called, but it was good! Of course, Rain Forest Cafe had like a 2 hour wait, hence the Mexican joint. We also gave in and got a double twisted churro before dinner... I guess that prepped us for Mexican food. Hahaha. The trip couldn't have been complete without a trip to the candy store so we got some fudge and headed to the hotel to get some sleep.
We wanted to go to Disneyland pretty early.... but then when we woke up, we decided it really wasn't worth it. Hahaha. We took our dear sweet time to wake up and get breakfast and the IHOP across the street from Disneyland entrance. We didn't get to the park until 11 ish. We went straight to Space Mountain for some fast passes, but of course, they were temporarily down... so we went to the next best thing, BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!! We grabbed a fast pass for that, then got in line for it. Such a great ride. After riding Buzz Lightyear once, we were able to get the Space Mountain fast passes, but the time was for 11 PM. Seriously... ridiculous. I guess that's what you get for making a great ride "haunted." So back to Buzz Lightyear, we used our fast passes and had another great time! We decided to just wait in line for Space Mountain and it wasn't too bad... only 45 mins or so. And I decided... it wasn't that great!! I liked it better before they made it haunted.
We then made our way over to Adventure Land for some quality Indiana Jones. I still love that ride. My favorite ride out of all though was The Haunted Mansion Holiday. Seriously so much fun! For Halloween through Christmas, they decorate the Haunted Mansion and make it a Nightmare Before Christmas theme. It was seriously so cool. You know the room where there are the dancing ghosts? This time it was a Christmas gingerbread house type room with dancing ghosts and it SMELLED like Christmas which made me so happy!
I really did enjoy having Disneyland all dressed up for Halloween! It was a lot of fun!!! And so cute! Although we got there late, my feet were still killing me by the time 9 PM hit... and I was just about ready to be done. We had fast passes left for Indiana Jones and of course, Space Mountain from that morning, but I didn't care.... We left around 10 or 10:30 cuz I was pooped and my feet were dead! I still had a lot of fun!! And I got to do everything I wanted to do so i was okay with that.
Saturday we checked out and drove all the way home! It wasn't too bad of a drive... but it was sad to come home. Wouldn't it be nice if vacation could last forever? But then i guess it wouldn't be vacation, it would just be life.... oh well.
It was a great trip though!!!
Thursday October 15th was the last day of our cruise. This was our 12 hour Ensenada day! Our ship landed in the port at about 9 AM and we didn’t leave til 9 PM. So does that mean that we hung out in Ensenada all day? HECK NO. We just relaxed for the morning…. Ventured out into Ensenada early afternoon, walked around the shops looking for some good deals to barter on. I got some jewelry, Dustin got a cowboy type hat, and I also got some Mexican vanilla! I haven’t used it yet, but I’m excited to try it out. I didn’t take my camera out at all when we were actually in Ensenada, so I don’t have any pics from off the boat. We got back on the boat early afternoon, got some lunch, and finally got to relax in a hot tub! We made friends with a little girl who’s actually from Spanish Fork! She made up games with dunking herself under water and counting how long she was down there for. Dustin also discovered that he liked going down the water slide :) Apparently it was more fun that it looked, but I couldn’t bring myself to go down it. Um, so now that I’m thinking about it, we might have done the hot tub deal the day before… I really don’t remember. Doesn’t matter anyway, right?
Tuesday was the second day of the cruise—the fun day at sea. Honestly, I don’t remember what we did… just relaxed. Did some mini golf… tried to hop in a hot tub but they were always full. We ate a lot… slept in… just RELAXED, which was so nice! We found out a little bit more about our dinner friends Ryan and Nicole—Both are 21, from Riverside CA, and Ryan is studying religious theology to become a pastor or minister or something like that… which we thought was very interesting. :) 
Tuesday night was our formal dinner night so we were all dressed up and took some pictures with the photographers on the boat, but we didn’t really like any of them, which is too bad.
Wednesday was our day in Catalina. We were hoping to go snorkeling or rent golf carts to drive around the island… and did neither. It was very overcast that day which made the water really cold so we decided not to snorkel. To rent the golf carts, you had to be 25… seriously… am I not adult enough?! 
So instead we decided to do a bus tour of the city and a glass bottom boat tour to see the fish. It was still a lot of fun! Our little excursions we bought on the island which saved us at least 20 bucks, so that was awesome too. 
It was a nice tour of the whole city of Avalon, so that was fun. We had some time to kill before our glass bottom boat tour so we did a little shopping, I got a new jacket that is nice and big and cozy. The glass bottom boat tour was a lot of fun. We got to see lots of fishies and didn’t have to get wet or cold!
After the boat tour we had to go get ice cream at Big Olafs! Very yummy. Then we got back on our boat and relaxed again. We decided that we’d give Ryan and Nicole a Book of Mormon that night if they weren’t going to be at dinner Thursday night… since he’s studying religious theology and all… But they said that they would be at dinner Thursday so we held off for another night.
