Dreams. . . and an awesome August concert!

If you would rather not hear about part of the weirder side of me, skip the paragraph that follows this warning.

So, as I think a lot of you know by now, I often have trouble sleeping. But what less people know is that when I have trouble sleeping I also have pretty crazy, vivid dreams. Sometimes they are just about normal, everyday things, but always with the weird dream displacements. But I often have a few dreams that are very different in setting, characters, and such, have the same basic plot. There is me trying going about trying to save the world. I start out by myself. I always have a cause. Once I was trying to stop a law from being passed, once I was trying to expose a leader's lie, most lately from some sort of fantastical evil force, etc. Also, I am always trying to protect someone. This has often been my siblings in a younger form, or sometimes as they are now. Once it was a group of orphans. Most often they are children and they are rarely my own. The other thing that always exists is that someone that I do not know, who is almost always male, who does not know me, joins me because he cares about the same cause and he helps me protect the (usually) children who could be harmed. Our lives are always in danger but we never die. I never find out if I succeeded in saving the world or not, or what happens to the person who helps me. It's really weird, I know. I just thought of it because I had one last night. Maybe I will write a book one day about one of these crazy dreams!

Well, after Disneyland, my mom and I went to Zion on free National Parks day and had more fun than we probably should have. We were both tired so everything was abnormally fun. We went on the river walk. For most of the walk, we were near an Asian couple with a little boy and a littler, maybe two year old, girl. It was fun. Anyway, here are some pictures of the river walk:



See the fish?



We had far too much fun chasing squirrels. Well, not really chasing. I just wanted to get a good picture. There were lots of French people there that day and I am sure they thought I was the stupidest American they had ever seen. Here were some of the attempts:





When the creatures were really close to us, the father of the little girl I mentioned earlier put her on the ground so she could see them up close. They got right up close to her and she cried and put her arms up for her dad to save her. Me and my mom and the girl's family laughed. I thought it amazing that we could understand and share that moment in the same way without speaking the same language. I knew it was possible but it had never happened before.

But we finally sat down by this part of the river:


For a snack, and look what I got!




Then we headed back down, being sure to touch every cool looking, wet rock we could. We even found this nifty dam place we hadn't seen before:


By then we were exhausted, mostly due to sleep deprivation. We went to the gift shop (which my mom and I love) where she bought an alabaster sculpture. We got ice cream and then decided to go look at the Fatali gallery. Sadly, it was closed. We were very disappointed. So to cope with our disappointment, we found a restaurant and ate lunch. That ended our adventures for the day.

That weekend, I went with my buddy Sam to a Carrie Rodriguez show. There aren't very many of her songs on playlist.com, but I will post a couple and then recommend that you look her up. She is sort of a singer-songwriter/folk/country artist. She sings, plays the fiddle insanely well, plus the guitar and mandolin. It was amazing to see her live. Me and Sam both bought CDs and had them autographed and talked to Carrie for a bit. I will try to post a video or two of her on the sidebar. Here are a few photos of us and the stage. Look to the sidebar for videos of Carrie!

And finally. . . California!

First of all, if you are a follower of this blog, my musings, or are just randomly reading it, or whatever, I would love for you to become a follower and reader of my creations blog as well.

In order for you to fully appreciate my account of California, you must know what happened the day before we left.

You see, I have this stomach problem which I won't go in to great detail about, and I was in pain all day the Saturday before we left. So I was really anxious, nervous, and stuff, and my mom wanted me to go to the emergency room, but I didn't. I did, however, go to Sheralee's wedding reception!


It was beautiful and she was beautiful (though the photo turned out pretty awful) and she and Casey were really cute together. I also got to see Jami,

an old high school friend. We were in Madrigals together and I hadn't seen except once since we had graduated, so it was really fun!

After the reception, I had a blessing and we knew I would be ok. I remembered that the medicine I take (which I was out of and the pharmacy was closed, blah blah blah) was available over the counter so my dad took me to Wal-Mart and bought it for me. It was lovely! Then I slept a little and got up bright and really super early to begin our adventure! It was a beautiful day:


Once we got there that afternoon, we first found our hotel, then went to Newport Beach. It was really a fun little place. Finding parking wasn't, but the colorful houses were. Then we took a hike and found ourselves a little spot to play in. We had a blast! We collected a bunch of shells and buried John in the sand. Carl had to rescue him from certain death by drowning afterward, but it was fun anyway.





I could have stayed all day in the sun playing with the sand in my hand, but that wasn't an option :(

After we had all showered we ate at Wendy's and went to bed.

I woke up feeling a lot better than I thought I would and was very grateful. My mom was looking out the window and told me there was something I HAD to see. I thought she was being silly, but just to be a good sport, I went and looked. And I had a freak out moment. Because, you see, in the parking light right below our window I saw this:


Hee hee. Sheralee and Casey were staying in the same hotel as us! After a few minutes of crazy giggling, I got ready and we went to breakfast. We wrote a note to put on their car that said "Happy honeymoon from room whatever we were in" and put it on their windshield. It was awesome.

Then we boarded the shuttle and met our awesome, friendly shuttle driver. Then we got to Disneyland! It was such an exciting moment. We got there just before opening so were a part of the waiting at the gate and big opening announcement moment. Oh, here's a picture of us - dad just inside the ticket gate:


That day we pretty much rode everything in the park. Michelle had to use the bathroom a lot during the day. I took the picture during one of the first of many stops:


Soon after that, some rode the rockets:



We rode one of my dad's favorite rides and I took lots of pictures. Know what it is?





Here is a picture of the pirate ship we rode on, a picture of the view from it, and then a picture of me and my sisters with Princess Tiana!





That night we went to Fantasmic, which required lots of standing on my terribly sore feet, and a fit from my dad. But I really liked the show. And the fireworks afterward.

We saw Sheralee and Casey getting ready to board the shuttle at the end of the day. They didn't know for sure that we were there yet, so it was a fun moment. They told us about their couple days adventures, such as getting stuck in traffic in their just married car, and getting on the wrong shuttle. We saw them one day at the pool and a couple times at breakfast. It was so fun. Me and Sheralee had gone to Disneyland together our sophomore and senior years of high school:


Tuesday was another long, fun day. We rode lots and lots of rides in CA Adventure, including the Grizzly River Rapids, where I saw this sign that made me laugh:


That night though, we learned that Carl was going to leave our trip early to take care of a house he was in the process of buying and his stressed fiance. And my dad was going with him. One of those things disappointed me more than the other. I was sad they were both leaving but tried not to show it too much.

Wednesday was fun, though it was kind of harder to have fun. We went to Disneyland and to Huntington Beach. It wasn't our favorite. It was sort of cool because there was a surfing competition going on, and we saw the dudes doing their thing now and then. They were kind of far away and far out though. We also saw a dolphin and were very excited, much to the amusement of the locals. Yes, they thought we were funny being all excited over a dolphin. I suppose it would be like someone coming here and being excited over seeing a deer. Anyway, after that we went back and got food from the Bengel Barbecue and fruit from a store around the Tiki Room and put our blankets down for Fantasmic. My mom loves the shows, but we learned the hard way that all the standing waiting for it was misery. But this time was a lot better since we were sitting and riding rides while we waited.

On Thursday we decided to get our fast passes to A World of Color. (I don't really know if I have the days right though). That required us to get to the park at opening and wait in a line. It was John's second chance to ride the California Screamin', which he didn't and was a total grump about. He truly was AWFUL. But anyway, here is a picture of Em and Michelle on the ride. Good luck finding them:


We went back to the front of the park to eat and saw a string bass in the little nook. And then, wonder of wonders, a band came out and played! They were called the Miner 49ers. We all loved it! Michelle and I had a blast watching the fiddle player, and afterward he talked to us (catching on to the fact that we were violinists due to the rather creepy staring). He asked about what we were studying and we talked about my senior recital pieces and he congratulated me and graduating. He was very sincere and kind and truly, it may have been the highlight of the trip for me. Ok, maybe not. Well, maybe. Anyway, it was really really high up there. A was a big pick me up for the remainder of the family. A picture:


We played around in the brother bear treehouse thing for a while:


We rode the carousel on Paradise Pier. It had cute sea creature things like this one:


That day we also had fun "trying on" dresses at a really cute princess store:




That night we went to A World of Color, the big fountain and sometimes fire show in California Adventure. In one of the photos below you can see how they project images onto the water:







That was it for the day. It was the most fun so far, I think. While waiting for the shuttle, we made a list of what we wanted to do most on our last day, and based on that, we made a game plan for the day.

We went to Toon Town for John and got to see Mickey Mouse:


We got ice cream at the Tiki Room, and me and Michelle rode Pirates of the Carribbean more times than is healthy (not just that day, but I think we rode it like 8 times because we found the line short a lot. I decided I wanted to be a worker on the ride and creepily sing the Pirates Life song at the very beginning. We splashed each other and blew at the steamy Davy Jones head and were very poorly behaved but it created the best memories!)

We got to the park semi early, rode some rides, then left for the beach. We went to Crystal Cove State Park and it was absolutely beautiful. I found a bunch of mussel shells. My siblings couldn't figure out how to find them like I did. Pictures:







After getting cleaned up a bit, we went back in to hit the last things on our list. John kind of hurt my feelings by saying Peter Pan wasn't worth waiting for, but it was one of my top 2 things to do again. I know it was silly to be hurt over that, but I was. Michelle cheered me up by helping me stalk the sweeper man:




He went all the way through the line and didn't get to ride the ride! It was tragic.


We got almost everything done that day, except my mom didn't get to see the fireworks again. I felt really bad but she was a good sport. At the very last minute before our shuttle we ran into the park to buy souvenirs. I bought a Beauty and the Beast rose.

On Saturday we just drove and drove. We did stop at Alien Fresh Jerky which was kind of fun. Other than that, the drive was long and boring.


The end!