This is LA

We filled our days (as much as possible around naps) with other activities besides Disneyland while we were in California. Our sister Tricia and her husband Jacob have just gotten settled into their apartment in LA. We spent a few days visiting with them before our friends came into town. Tricia made us an incredible five-course meal after church on Sunday. I mean outstanding. Jacob said that his favorite part of every day in his newlywed life is coming home to one of Tricia's meals. I feel bad that Troy got jipped in the cooking wife department - that sentiment isn't quite the same in our home.

Tricia and Jacob live just down the road from the LA temple. We braved the wind, rain, and cold to take a brief walk on the temple grounds. We also visited the beautiful newly remodeled Visitor's Center.

On our "day off" from Disneyland, we spent the evening at Downtown Disney. The LEGO Store was a favorite!

I l-o-v-e these girls. I love how Kristen, Steph and I never skip a beat when we are reunited after long periods of time. We can skip right past all of those shooting the breeze and filling in missing pieces conversations. Our husbands fear our gatherings because they usually contain our special accented language, uncontrolled laughter, late night giddiness and scheming for future rendezvous.

These two also made a pretty sweet combination.

Blake and Skyler read scriptures together before we put them to bed. It made our hearts melt.

Kristen made them Mickey Mouse shaped pancakes to gear up for our Disneyland adventure.

The babies adored each other as well. Gracie was very tolerant of Nash crawling all over her. They were both pretty elated to clobber each other's hands and faces.

The part we looked forward to the most (besides Disneyland) was putting all of our little ones to bed and reliving our college days by playing rousing games. We were definitely a little delirious some nights from shear exhaustion, but that made the competition even better. We played several rounds of the card game Golf and when Kristen left to pick up her husband from the airport, Steph and I smoked the guys in a game of Euchre. It was so fun to play Euchre with our fellow Michiganders - no one has heard of that game out here!

I can't believe it is all over already. Now I am buried up to my elbows in laundry and hoping our schemes for a gathering next fall work out. I have a maximum threshold for the amount of time that can pass without seeing my best friends. We may have crammed nine people into one hotel room, dealt with the uncommon rain and cold in So Cal, and gotten very few hours of sleep, but I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.