As you probably have guessed, our trip to California was aaa-mazing! After much anticipation and countdown.... We'll need a little bit of background so we'll start from the very beginning of our trip! Please prepare yourself for a 9 page post and picture overload :) sorry, it must be done!
Uncle Rob and Rhonda came down on Saturday and we had a big family party (at which Josh DIDN'T help me get the groceries and it bugged me... strike one, little did i know, this is where he informed everyone else on planet earth of his giant plan), we stayed up way too late playing wii, and got up wayyyy to early the next morning to go get breakfast before heading out on the road! We had a blast goofing around in the car the whole ride there! After we got settled in our hotel we took Rhonda to the beach cause she had never been before! EVER! can you believe this?! it baffled me since she is 30 something and has always lived in the US, so of course us beach loving people HAD to take her! i think we ended up at seal beach about 4ish in the afternoon, it was sunny and a beautiful 75! I had to laugh when Rhonda stepped into the freezing water and let out a scream, probably shoulda warned her that pacific water isn't too warm in march...or ever lol :)
After the beach we enjoyed a ridiculously hilarious dinner at BJ's, full of much too much adult jokes that are wildly inappropriate but extremely funny.....I'll let you guess where it all started since you know where we ate....ha :)
On day 2 of our trip we decided to go to Universal Studios since 6 Flags sucks and isn't open Monday-Friday. I had never been, so I was excited, and it was totally cool!
the boys and their mummy, which made them even more stoked to ride their favorite ride of course!
please note that shrek is loving on josh's head
no lie, we rode this thing about 14 times, rob lost his glasses, and the hotel key. (sidenote: Rhonda was also ridiculous about her purse this entire day, i have never seen a woman so tightly hold a purse under her arm ever in my life, especially one with a zipper and a snap and straps that leave it perfectly placed in your armpit. nor have i ever seen anyone test a purse locker for a ride so vigorously....)
After a full day of adventure at Universal we had a lovely dinner at Olive Garden where much laughter commenced, so much so that we even had our waitress giggling! It was at Olive Garden however that we discovered that Rob's debit card was missing, so of course we frantically searched through everything trying to find the dang thing. I offered to help, but everyone was like "Don't touch my stuff!" I thought they were all just a bunch of weirdos....little did I know they were all secretly plotting together!
Then on Tuesday, it was FINALLY time for Disneyland! We met up with Wendy, Curtis and their 2 kids, Jalen and Kyle to start the morning at the park.
Wendy decided that we should go to the Finding Nemo ride first since that one always has the longest line and it was already a 35 minute wait at 8:20 am. I was excited to go because the last time I had been to Disneyland the ride was just 2 months shy of opening, and I loved the movie so much and the orginial submarine ride as a kid that I had to go on it at least once!
After a short trek back to the ride Wendy asked us to please stand in front of the sign so she could take our picture..........my first reaction was "OHH, they are one of THOSE families that takes photos at every ride they go on to document every FREAKING second of their Disneyland adventure. It's going to be a long day." But I happily obliged since they allowed just the man and I to be in the first picture together, ALONE, which almost never happens, so i was pleased. Then she says, "that one didn't turn out so good, let me get another!" and Rob and Rhonda also pulled out cameras to get one on my camera too, very sweet. So we get ready for take two, but JZ was no longer standing next to me, so I look over to my left where he had just been attached to me at the hip, and he was on a knee.....it took my tiny brain a moment to process, but once I realized he was on a knee with a sparkling thing in a box, you could say i freaked out. I don't know that the next few pictures really need any words, cause they pretty much captured it frame by frame. ( we are still waiting on the video which Wendy has on her camera, i promise i will post it as soon as i snag it!)
take one
the "oh my gosh" freak out
"I love you! Will you marry me?"
"YES!"
seal it with a kiss!
still freaking out, but very happy
He sweetly told me he loved me and asked if i would marry him, to which i immediately replied yes! somehow though, i forgot the part about needing to put my hand out for him to put the ring on my finger, so while still on a knee he kindly says "hey babe, i kinda need your hand." since my hands were still stuck over my mouth.....oops. whats a girl to do when you nearly give her a heart attack in the middle of a crowded Disneyland?! I don't hardly remember it, but if you watch the video you can see lots of people in the line for the ride clapping and hollering, even the line attendant was like "WOO! way to go man!" Unfortunately some oblivious people walked right through the video, but i think you can pretty much see all the action, so it's okay! After all of that craziness, I learned that Rhonda had been hiding the ring in her purse since I had left to get groceries and Josh had refused to go with me......those stinkers, they got me good! Lucky for josh he wore his cargo shorts that day, or i probably would have noticed the large lump on his thigh prior to the ride! (sidenote #2: about the time i had my second round of mono, i guess he got the rings and showed my parents, so they knew what was up, and they were all praying that i would get better before the trip and that my hands would stop peeling so that i could wear the ring. then about 3 weeks before we left, i was helping clean josh's room, when i moved some stuff into his closet that i thought was just another bag of stuff like he has in the corner of his room already, but he got SO mad at me and told me i shouldn't have moved anything and if i saw something and didn't tell him that i would be sorry for lying. needless to say, i was highly upset since all i did was nicely clean the corner of his room and his heavy accusations felt uncalled for. i guess i had picked up the gift bag that on one side says "Michael's Creative Jewelry" which probably would have been a dead giveaway had i been paying any attention....oops :) good thing he's got a blonde!)
Everything after that was kinda a crazy big blur, but it was OH so wonderful. We had always talked about doing a low-key sort of engagement, i didn't want to be on a jumbo tron at some game somewhere, Disneyland on Spring Break with like 3 million people wasn't exactly a jumbo tron but it was close! somehow though it was all lost in the fairytale moment. i have my prince charming, in the happiest place on earth, and i couldn't be a luckier girl! it was definitely more than a dream come true! immediately after as we were boarding submarine for the ride, 8 year old Kyle asks me if all of that business meant we were now married. of course i told him, not yet, we will have to have a wedding first. then i said, "will you come to our wedding?" and he says, "well, i don't know, will there be any cake?" trying not to laugh i said, "yes we will have cake there" and he replies, "okay well since there's gonna be cake i'll probably come, but if there isn't any, then i might not be there." ha oh kids!
the rest of our trip was absolutely amazing and SO much fun! we had a blast! our vacation could not have been any more amazing and could not have come at a more perfect time! I love my Joshua so SO much and I'm so thankful that we are now on the path to married life! As you can tell there is never a dull moment around here, so i'm sure the craziness will continue as we begin our new journey together. The big day will be December 1st, 2011, exactly 3 years since we began dating. It seemed rather fitting to continue with the second half of our journey where it all began. We will have a giant party to celebrate on December 2nd, 2011 and we will go on a honeymoon cruise the week following. I will do my very best to keep everyone updated with our new stories and adventures as we get closer to a wedding, there is all sorts of exciting stuff going on around here! And hopefully soon we will even have some engagement photos up after our photo shoot with Ms. Nicole Burt!
XOXO smile on :)