Our Final Days

We are home! I'm typing this on Monday morning after a good nights sleep in my own bed! It's good to be home! Let me tell you about the last two days of our trip.

On Friday, after my wonderful anniversary dinner with my wife, the park was going to open early and stay open late. All week long, because this is a slow time of year, the park hours were 10am-8pm, which was plenty of time to enjoy the parks because the crowds were SO low. But on Friday the hours were 9am-midnight! The plan Was to hit the park at opening time and hit some of the rides that we hadn't yet done and wanted to do again, while grabbing some fast passes for some cool rides for later! So thats what we did; we rode Peter Pan (which is always like one of the longest lines in the park) and Star Tours which we just hadn't gotten around to as well as Matterhorn and some of the other ones we wanted to ride again! Meanwhile we grabbed fastpasses for Space Mountain, Big Thunder, Indiana Jones, Soaring over California and the Grizzly River Rapids! So now we were going to go to lunch, swim, and take a nap and then come back at about 5 and stay till midnight! We finally left the resort, for the first time since we arrived to go eat at In-N-Out Burger! It was the best! If you haven't tried In-N-Out, you need to get to California and try it! After swimming and a nap we went back to the park, starting off at California Adventure! Spent a few hours there rockin some new and repeat rides, and then went back to Disneyland so that we could catch the fireworks, fantasmic, and use our fast passes. We also ate dinner at a place called rancho Del Zocalo in frontierland. It's a Mexican place. It wasn't as good as home, but still was pretty awesome! So from that point it was directly over to the castle to see the fireworks which is always a sweet way to end a day at Disneyland! Fantasmic was right afterwards on the rivers of America in front of New Orleans Square. That is great show as well. The only problem now, is that after sitting through 2 shows the exhaustion is starting to set in with the kids and they want to call it a night. We've got three more fastpasses though. Well, Courtney wanted to use at least one more of those fastpasses, so we did (Big Thunder) and then we made our final walk out of Disneyland for the last time this trip. It is always a sad feeling because we love that place so much, but we have a great family, great friends, and an incredible church to look forward to when we get home!

The day we left, we slept in until we all woke up, and then started packing to get out of the hotel by 11:00am. We don't normally stay at nice hotels, so we felt all special when the bell hop came to our room, loaded up our luggage, and took it it down to the bell desk where he was going to hold all of our bags until we were good and ready to pick them up. That was really cool because we had lots of time to kill before we had to leave. After we were all checked out, we went to In-N-Out one more time! I can't tell you how amazing that place is. Then we came back to Downtown Disney and went to a movie; Nim's Island. That was a pretty good movie. The kids really liked it. I would probably reccomend it as a family friendly movie. Next, we took one more stroll up and down Downtown Disney and then brought the car up to the front of the hotel for the bell dudes to load up our luggage into our car and then we were on our way. We stopped at Target for some snacks, and Subway to get some dinner to take on the train, as well as Chevron in Los Angeles for gas. Gas was like 4.33 a gallon there! Enjoy the "low prices" we have here while you can. Sheesh...gas prices are crazy! Anyway, we loaded onto a train and had a wonderful trip home. After all the excitement and fun we had, we ALL slept very well on the train and the trip was very short; felt like we were there in no time.

All in all this was a very great trip! We really missed having Savannah with us, as this is the first trip we've taken since she has been living with her Grandma Connie. Please don't let Savannah be out of sight and out of mind. Please pray for her. I'm glad that she is where she wants to be, but I also hope and pray that she will not depart from all that we have taught her these many years that we've raised her. We love her and miss her very much. Maybe one day she'll want to come be a part of this family again. You never know. But God is so good. When we experience a great week of fun and excitement like we did this past week, we have only to consider what heaven will be like! The bible says, in Psalm 16:11, that in your (God's) presence there is fullness of joy;at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. All good things come from God, that is a fact, but nothing can compare to God Himself! When we are in His presence, experiencing FULLNESS OF JOY, and we can experience the pleasures that are at His right hand, everything that we consider awesome in this life will pale in comparison! I pray that we will all gaurd ourselves against exalting the gifts above the giver. We are sinful people that have a tendency of doing that. God is all satisfying apart from His gifts! Taste and see that the Lord is good!