Day 52-54: Venice Beach, Hollywood and Sunset Drumers

We did a lot of bumming around, a lot of driving and a few cool things. 

Venice beach was fun, but cold. Everyone thought it was going to be 80 degrees, but it was more like 65 and a little rainy.  Although we did not have jackets, we braved the weather and had a good time looking at all the shops and street performers. Jon was in the show!

We also made it to Hollywood!  It was dirtier than I had imagined. We went on a tour and saw where all the celebrities live. So we are in the know.  When we got back we mostly walked around and people watched. There were some weird people there. We also bought a taser. I’ve been wanting one for a while, it was a good deal, and now I’m looking for volunteers to be tased to see if it actually works. Let me know if you are interested. 

Barbara Eden was I Dream of Jeanie

People tell Jon he looks like Johnny Depp sometimes. I agree.

We also went to Huntington Beach at sunset and listened to random community members play drums. It was cool in an odd way to see all sorts of people out with drums or other instruments pounding and dancing away. It totally added to the sunset.

I got sick again…. Blah…. If anyone has a super vitamin to give me to boost my immune system, let me know!  We stayed another day so that I could rest more.  Jeremy and Sarahlynn came home and turns out they were REALLY happy we were there because they wanted to play another round of Dominion. That is right, they are addicts!

Day 51: A Lonely Lovely Thanksgiving

We had been planning all along to make it to Sac-Town for Thanksgiving… but when offered to stay in HB for 4 more days by ourselves, we could not pass this opportunity up! It goes without saying that could defiantly live here. Plus, although we have been on this trip together for like 2 months, we were alone for very little of it… and sometimes married people need some alone time… especially when they are about to move in with my parents for the next 5 weeks. So we made the difficult decision to have Thanksgiving by ourselves. 

Jon decided that he was going all out and started to prep the turkey 2 days in advance. 

Thursday was spent in the kitchen together cooking. Jon hit a grand slam with his super moist turkey and he also made a to-die-for berry pie.  I made cranberries from scratch for the first time and took care of the rest of the sides. I was most pleased with the gravy- it turned out awesome.

Before shot

After stuffing ourselves shot

 Good thing we went on a run on the beach this AM!  It gave us lots of room to go crazy. We mostly slept off this feast for the rest of the day... that and we got addicted to Hell on Wheels on Netflix.

Day 48-50: The Babysitters Club

The reason we were in such a hurry to get to HB was because we got the opportunity to babysit our adorable nephew Tanner!  His regular daycare was on vacation Mon-Wed and we were offered $50 a day to bond with this little cutie.

We blew it and did not take a ton of pictures…. But they would mostly consist of us and Tanner at the park, or one day we road bikes to the ocean and played in the sand, or we also had a fun time at Target. Jon and Tanner were best buddies and they also danced to Dubstep and went skateboarding.When they left to go to SarahLynn’s families for Thanksgiving we went through some rough Tanner withdrawals. 

Also SarahLynn taught me how to make chicken parmigiana and we taught JermaLynn how to play Dominion. They are hooked. :-)

Day 47: The Ocean at Sunset

Our first day in HB we went to church with Jeremy SarahLynn and Tanner.  It was fun to be there with them, and Jon got a kick out of all of the guys in Elders Quorum talking about going surfing.  I loved watch SarahLynn in action teaching the 3 year old class.  She was SO good at teaching and randomly the lesson for this week was about music (she is a elementary school music teacher in real life!). So the kids were adorable, and so was she.  After church we went to the ocean and looked at tide pools.  We spent the afternoon putting our fingers into sea anemone, and trying not to slip on the course rocks and muscles we were standing on.

SarahLynn has a good eye for sea slugs, she found 4 and made me touch 1, it was super slimy but I’m glad she made me do it!

Jon is master at finding starfish, and he picked up the whole rock, so nothing was harmed :-)

I think Jon kinda looks like the virgin de Guatalupe here

My brother and beautiful sister in law

Jeremy said that this was a very artistic picture, so I put it up here.

Days 43-46: Road, Road, Road!

I got behind!  When you hear about how long the next part of our adventure was, you’ll understand why we needed some R&R! From San Antonio we hit the road and made it all the way to El Paso.

550 Miles: 13 hours in the bus!

 Jon knew a family there from his mission who opened up their home to us. We had such a good stay with the Simpsons!  Our stay was short and sweet, and we forgot to take a picture. Boooo! 

This is a picture of the Spunky Simpson Gals that I stole off the internet. They are each amazing and we had a blast getting to know them!

 We headed out around lunch time and FINNALLY made it out of Texas!   

320 miles: 7 hours in the bus

We stayed the night at one of Jon’s mission companions house Chris Hales. His beautiful wife just had a baby a few weeks ago, and they let us stay anyway!  They are awesome, and we had a great, and again SHORT stay- Too short if you ask us.

We got back on the road again—This time headed for Huntington Beach, but we got side tracked in Phoenix because they have the Nordstrom’s Last Chance store, where we heard that everything that does not sell at all of the Rack’s go on mega clearance. Of course we had to stop. After rummaging through loads of used looking clothes, we decided it was not all that great, and got back in the bus, but Bluebell started acting funny... like she was out of gas, but she had a full tank. Of course it is Saturday night and nobody is open to help us out. I talked to all the VW repair friends we have collected and Jon tinkered around near the engine. I have a college roommate who lives in the area, and although we did not get to see her and her family, she deserves a MAJOR shout out for offering to drive an hour each way to rescue us! (Shaina Rocks!)

In the end we decided to drive on it until it died, or started acting worse… and we did not have another problem the WHOLE way to California! 

525 miles: 11 hours in the bus and 3 hours broken down

Jon took this super sweet picture of me driving somewhere in Arizona. As you can tell it was beautiful and boring at the same time

We did not get to my Brothers place until 3 am, and we found an air mattress blown up for us in the living room, candles lit and there were little shampoos laid out for us in the bathroom. Such a GREAT end to a long day!