Dad, Sharon and Mckenzie's Visit

It was soooooo nice to have my dad, stepmom and little sister come visit us and help us move our stuff into our new apartment. I hope they enjoyed themselves here as much as we loved having the help and the company.

Daniel left for California on Tuesday night and drove all through the night in the hot desert! I on the other hand spent Tuesday night at my sister Brittanny's house and flew to LA the next morning. It was nice being on an airplane for 2 hours rather than in a hot uncomfortable car for 12 hours! The only thing that backfired was the fact that my hands, legs and feet swelled up from the flight and I had a hard time walking for the rest of the day. :(

We spent a few hours in LA to eat lunch at Daniel's favorite restaurant "Tommy's" and checking out the famous handprints at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. I honestly have never been there before so I made sure to get a picture with the handprints of my most favorite actress of all time....Doris Day!!

We drove to Santa Barbara after that stopping to get a broom, vacuum, paper towells, and other stuff we needed for our house from Walmart. It makes me sad that the closest Walmart to us is a 45 min drive away. It's like living in Hawaii again....Walmart will just have to be my "good time on a Saturday night" from now on. Oh precious Walmart....I miss thee!!

We stayed in our apartment that night and the next sleeping on some blankets we managed to fit into the car. It was hard not having the rest of my stuff there because the house was so empty that we had no idea what to do. It was already clean, we didn't have anything else to unpack so we were happy when my Dad and Sharon showed up with the rest of the stuff. I'm still working on getting everything organized now but at least it's all here.

After we spent a little while unpacking everything we all went to dinner at a place called "Freebirds". It is kind of like Cafe Rio but without the broad selection and Freebirds is twice as big as Cafe Rio...and that's saying something! Plus they have fresh home-made Horchata that is to die for!! Sharon and Dad went back for 2nd's because they loved it so much. We then walked along the beach, got tar all over our feet, then called it a night!

The beaches here are nice execpt for the fact that oil seeps up through the sand and sticks to your feet. It comes out great with Palmolive and a scrubbie but it's still rather annoying. It's not in the water, so you'll really only get it if you walk along the sand for a long time. We were out there for like ever so we came home and had a rather "fun" time trying to get the tar off our feet. Thank goodness my husband is awesome and immediately looked up online how to get it off and we found out about the Palmolive. Worked like a charm :)

The next day we found some free furniture (which I will save that whole story for another posting because it's long and awesome!) then we went and ate at Freebirds again...I pretty much think Sharon is addicted to the Horchata!!... then we went to the Mission Museum in Downtown Santa Barbara. It was way cool. For those of you who don't know what a Mission is it's a Catholic church thing where the missionaries would live like WAY back in the day. If any of you have seen the awesomely hillarious movie "Nacho Libre" then you'll kind of know what I'm talking about. (They live in a Mission in that movie) This one was built back in the late 1700's and early 1800's so it's pretty old.

The oldest statue in California is there and it looks like a jaguar or something so we got a picture with that thing too...

The rest of the day Dad, Sharon and McKenzie played at the beach and I went home to take a nap!

Dad of course went all out to build a freaking village!!!!

All in all I think they had fun while they were here. It was Sharon's birthday so that night when they were done at the beach they came back to our apartment to clean up and say goodbye. We had rootbeer floats together and looked at the pictures we had taken together. It was really fun and then they were off. The next morning they left and made it home later on that night. I thought they would fry in the van on the way home but they went to the store and bought a ton of ice and a few spray bottles to keep themselves cool.

Thanks again Dad, Sharon, and McKenzie for all the help you gave us!!! We love you :)