Continuation of California Adventures.....

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families. I know I sure did. It was so much fun spending time with friends and family.

I still can't believe that Missy and I are home from our wonderful 9-day vacation. The week went so quickly and of course we have lots of stories to tell. You'll have to be sure to read mine and Missy's blogs so that you can get all of the stories that we have to share.

Missy just wrote a blog about our first night on the planes and the trouble with the brakes on the plane that we were in first. I still couldn't believe there was something wrong with the brakes, but God took care of us... He always does.

So, we left with our awesome Mazda 3 rental car from the John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, CA and TRIED to find our hotel in Anaheim. The biggest problem with finding the hotel was the fact that the street addresses that we were looking at did not go in order. So, here we were driving down Katella Ave in Anaheim after midnight and we just keep doing U-turns because we keep thinking that the hotel is supposed to be somewhere in the vicinity. We were both getting aggravated because we had been awake for over 20 hours at this point and we wanted to sleep. So, I just keep doing U-turns to try to figure out where this hotel is. I called the hotel and spoke to a man that barely spoke english and he couldn't answer my questions. I was totally frustrated at this point. I finally decide to just keep driving one way on Katella Ave. and see what is at the other side. We finally see the hotel!! But how do we get to it?? It was sitting behind another building and I ended up doing another round of U-turns to try to get into the hotel parking lot. With over an hour of driving up and down Katella, we finally ended up finding the road that went back to our hotel. So, my lesson for the day was...do not ever trust street addresses! Keep that in mind if you ever visit Anaheim, CA.

Missy and I will continue writing blogs about what happened on our vacation....you'll just have to stay tuned. If you would like to hear specific stories about what happened, please comment and let us know. We can certainly answer your questions in our blogs.

And We're Off......

So, it's late on Thursday night and Missy and I have been packing all night long for our trip to California! I just wanted to let ya'll know that we are leaving tomorrow at 2pm SHARP! Here is a summary of our schedule of our 9-day vacation!

Friday, Nov. 14th - leave Indianapolis and fly to Santa Ana California with a layover in Phoenix

Saturday - Going to the San Diego Zoo

Sunday - Going to the Wild Animal park where we will get to experience the Journey into Africa tour

Monday - Disneyland

Tuesday - Disneyland

Wednesday - The Price is Right! (and yes...we will have special shirts made so that we can hopefully get onto the show as a contestant)

Thursday - We will be visiting the Wheel of Fortune to be in the studio audience and this will also be the day that we will get to explore in Los Angeles.

Friday - back to Disneyland to do all our favorite things

Saturday, Nov. 22 - we will be getting ready to leave, but hopefully seeing anything we missed.

This is a very busy schedule, but we have every intention of coming out alive and even though we will be getting home at about 4am Sunday morning, it is our intention to be at church on Sunday morning.

I hope you all have a great week...try not to miss us too much!

Today's Randomness

I can't believe that it's been two weeks since I've written a blog. I'm surprised some of you haven't said anything to me on MySpace! By the way, if you're not my MySpace friend and you'd like to be, you can find me at www.myspace.com/sparkles12780

So, first off....the election. As I sit here and watch the Oprah Show and see Will Smith and Oprah talk about how happy they are about Obama being the President-Elect, I wonder...what is happening to our country? I'll be the first one to admit that I don't like watching politics on TV or even talking about politics, but this is very disturbing to me. I feel that Obama is going to lead us in the wrong direction. My mom, who is all for Obama, was telling me that "Change is what we need." I guess we'll just have to wait and see......

I can't believe that I'm only 8 days away from being on a plane to CALIFORNIA!!!!!!!!!! How ironic is it that just last week at small group we were talking about things on our "Bucket List." This trip is going to be amazing. I wish every one of my friends could go with Missy and I. You know what they say....the more, the merrier. This trip includes so many things on my bucket list...like going to California. One of my life long dreams is to go to The Price is Right and see Hollywood. I'm still in shock that we are actually leaving next week!

Many of you, at church have been asking me how my job has been going. You may recall my very first blog was about feeling like there was a target over my head. Work is going better, but it still gets on my nerves. I'm just trying to be thankful for what I have, even though I can't get it done my way sometimes.

PLEASE join the Smith Small Group after the spaghetti luncheon on Sunday afternoon to watch the movie, Bucket List. This ties into our current series so well....30 days to Live. I've been thinking a lot lately about how I need to live my life differently and "live in the moment."

Lastly, I would like all your prayers and support during this next week. I know that most of you don't know the story behind my divorce, but my husband gets out of Prison on Tuesday, November 11th. I am very worried about this. He knows my address and I don't know if he will come here to contact me. The police tell me that I can't get a restraining order unless he threatens or harms me in any way...so I'm going to be worried about that. Also, on Wednesday, November 12th I have my divorce hearing. I tried to get this hearing taken care of while he was in prison, but things happened and all of it changed. I just hope and pray that everything goes smoothly and I do okay when I see my husband at the hearing on Wednesday.

I'm going to try to write blogs more often so that I don't have 50 different topics in one blog. I'm sure ya'll are just happy to hear from me.

Until Next Time......