cory's little brother chad's wedding was scheduled for november 30, 2013, two days after thanksgiving. cor and i looked at our schedules and were able to get monday and tuesday off of work and both only had to miss one class out of the two days of classes! we drove to wrightwood, california on friday after work with sienna in tow. she was so good and got some free steak from a nice cafe rio in cedar city. the drive would've been easy, except there was a horrible freak snow storm outside of cedar city and a fedex truck slid through a guardrail and shut down one lane of a two lane highway...so that threw us an hour behind schedule. we made it through the rainstorms in nevada and california towards wrightwood, where the police monitoring the mountain traffic took a look at cory's utah license plate and waved him on into the snow :) sienna sure loved playing in the snow at grandma and grandpa hill's house!
it was a cozy weekend at their house, eating, napping and watching movies and quite a change when we headed down to hot, sunny corona on sunday! we stayed with cory's sanchez family that week, so we could travel to family in yorba linda with ease. it was a blast! i'm so lucky i married into a fabulous family!
monday, cory, his aunt teri, and cousin sara made our way to disneyland where cor and i had the time of our lives! i had surprised him with tickets to disneyland a few weeks earlier and could not wait for this special day! one of the perks of a degenerative eye disease is that you get a pass to skip all the lines at disneyland, soooo. yeah...we went on every ride we wanted to by 1 pm. it was AMAZING. we had a good lunch and loved the atmosphere of disneyland where everything is so magical! sara was such a doll, and as a yearly pass-holder, is quite the disney expert. she would find us spots to sit and take us through secret, quicker ways to get places. at the parade, cory was totally solicited by one of cinderella's stepsisters for a good five minutes. our chicken strips and fries filled us up for most of the day, but we still ate dinner and watched the beatles impersonators perform (so great)! sara rode space mountain again with me. cory and i got mary pippins and merida ornaments because we had seen mary pippins at tuacahn earlier that year and merida, because cory LOVES "brave". i was holding out to try my first dole whip-very good! we watched the magical show at the end of the night and it was the perfect conclusion to a perfect day-even though my feet were KILLING me. i solemnly swear to wear shoes with arch support for all future disney visits!
tuesday was a low-key day-i think cory and i slept in and went to a japanese restaurant for lunch. we drove up to yorba linda to head to the newport beach temple for candice's first temple session. it was lovely to be there with her on that special day!
cory and i got to spend the afternoon with cory's dad and his uncle greg, aunt saundy and their kids at their huntington beach home. we took sienna to the beach for the first time and that was an ADVENTURE! cory strapped his go pro camera to her and as soon as she was off the leash, she ran full-speed into the ocean and bam! there went the camera into the ocean! cory sprinted to save his precious go pro (he saved it). and we just gave up and let sienna run around and said cory staying dry was a lost cause. she ran for what seemed like forever while cory's dad and uncle played catch and effie and i just played in the little waves. one thing neither of us knew was that dogs swallow a lot of saltwater which apparently creates instant diarrhea. TMI and gross, but probably someone out there needs to know. sienna had a bad five minute walk home from the beach and spent many minutes being hosed off in the front yard where she stayed for a long time.
thursday-THANKSGIVING! in the morning, we woke up early to be one of the first people at candice's family's turkey bowl. jodie and i sat and watched the family play flag football for awhile and then we all headed home to get ready for thanksgiving! we showed up at aunt steph's house for their thanksgiving extravaganza of thirtyish people! it was intense and hard to wait while starving for everyone to show up and then pass the food around! luckily, we had lots of pie. afterwards, cory's family talked about black friday shopping but cory has this thing about crowds and i have this thing about no peripheral vision, thus making crowds not fun...so we went back to corona :)
we helped set up for the #chandice wedding and then parted ways as cory headed off to BWW's for cha'd bachelor party. jodie, shera and i went to one of candice's bridesmaid's house for a nice dinner, games and bachelorette party. it was so sweet!
i really wanted to get my hair done for the wedding and figured a local great clips would be cheap and easy....NOPE. it took the girl nearly an hour and half to do a half up-do. it was insane and crazy and i didn't spend nearly as much time on my hair for my own wedding. poor cory had to speed to get to newport beach where we made it five minutes before the sealing ceremony. it was lovely and intimate and so great to see candice and chad married together forever :) lots of pictures later, we were on our way to a luncheon of yummy tacos and then a reception of dancing and seeing friends and family! jodie, adam, cory and i had to head up to wrightwood after the reception, so we had to leave right after the couple. we had breakfast with grandma and grandpa hill at the classic rick's and then headed home back to the last stretch of school!
