Sending LOVE from California!

January 14, 2018

Sending LOVE from California!

Hi Landon and Mason!!!

I am writing this post at the hotel in their business room. I hope this email finds you both well and enjoying the mission! We are having a nice time in California. We feel your absence often but probably more so when we are on vacation!

So we got here Thursday night. We spent Friday in Disneyland and Saturday in California Adventure. Today we took off and went to church and the beach (more on that later).

Thanks Southwest for the free vouchers!

(At the Burbank Airport you get off the plane by stairs so you walk right down by the plane)

Disneyland is an exhausting and fun! Lots of our favorite rides are closed this time like Splash Mountain and Screamin and since Christmas just got over they haven't had any parades or firework shows since they are changing them out with the new. But there is still plenty to do. Gracie has been fun and she has also worn her parents tired! It's hard to know how to handle soo much fun when you are 2!!!
She has completely surprised us by being very comfortable with the characters. She would hardly look at Santa, but when we stopped to visit our first character "Goofy" she ran up and gave him a hug without any of us saying anything.

But she was completely star struck when she saw Cinderella. She had been talking about meeting her, along with Mickey and Moana (which we hope she meets tomorrow). But when she saw Cinderella she was so funny, she was so shocked that is was "really" her.

Lydia also got some acting pointers from Ariel!!

We have done a few rides too.......

Space Mountain (the hair ball is Lydia)

Mattorhorn

Today (Sunday) we went to church in Irvine! We decided to scope out Elder Hatch's ward. We had asked the Hatches what they thought and they thought it would be good. He is a missionary over 2 wards. These two wards attend a very large church building, in-fact it even homes the mission office for his mission too, as well as the family history center and 2 chapels. We didn't know which chapel would be his ward. We were a little early and had peeked into one chapel and decided to walk around. When we saw the second chapel there was a choir practicing on the stand. We decided to cut through but as we passed on the far side was Caleb, he looked down at us walking through, Dad waved and he had a look of complete shock and lifted his hands a bit and waved with a few fingers. Then we felt bad that we had probably startled him so much. After the choir practiced, we talked to him for a few minutes and he went to greet others with is companion. After the meeting we talked to him for just a little bit and took this picture. He is doing well. Was very talkative! It was fun to see him for just a little bit. He's got two really nice companions. I asked if they eat a lot of pizza, they laughed!

We also visited the Newport beach temple and the beach after. It's sure fun to be in the warm weather in January when you know it's cold back in Utah!