It Rained In California Again

Friday January 29
I had Project FOCUS work in the morning, it was pretty interesting trying to track a student down. I've pretty much become a professional stalker since I began work with Project FOCUS. Is that something good to put on a resume?
Anyway...
After work I drove to Mesa so I could party on Sadie's birthday road trip extravaganza to Six Flags! Before I went to her house, I stopped by my house to say hi to everyone. I forgot that I only told my mom that I was coming and she wasn't even home, so EJ, Kenzie and Avery got a nice surprise. Avery was so excited when I walked in, but that excitement only lasted for a hot second because she asked "how long are you staying?" Then I had to break it to her that I was leaving again in just a few minutes, and then it was crying city. She kept saying "I want you to stay forever, I don't want you to have a house in Tucson" it was pretty precious... until the 5th time she repeated it.
After the drama party with Avery, I went over to Sadie's house, waited for everyone else to arrive and then we were off!
The road trip crew consisted of: Sadie, Trevor, Zach, Dalyn, Tyler, Brittany and Sabrina.

^^In case you are a visual person^^

[Tyler, Zach, me, Sadie, Sabrina, Brittany, Dalyn, Trevor]

The car ride was pretty fun, lots of music jamming, lots of card games, charades, sleeping (or trying to), you know the usual road trip things. We stopped a couple times to get some food, once at In-N-Out because you can't go to California without going to In-N-Out at least once.

Eventually we made it to the hotel. It was a cheap hotel, but nice compared to what we were paying for it. We were all kind of pooped from the car ride, so the girls just hung out in the girls room and the boys did their own thing. Unfortunately I cannot run away from all my problems when I am in California, so I had some work to do. Luckily, the hotel had free wifi and the work wasn't all that time consuming. 

The rest of the night we just relaxed, watched some TV and got creeped out by the haunted flickering lights. 

Saturday January 30

SIX FLAGS DAY! 

Let's just note that I think Six Flags is super lame because they open at 10:30 and close at 6... ON A SATURDAY. They are lucky they have such thrilling rides there, otherwise it wouldn't be worth it. 

So we all woke up in the morning, got ready, ran to Mickey D's for some breaky and then made our way to Valencia to start the party! It was Tyler, Dalyn, and Sadie's first time going (well Sadie's first time going physically, Zach Trev and I did technically bring "her" last time we went)

So since it was the first time for multiple people, we decided to start the day off right with X2. It's probably my 2nd favorite ride there, it's so insane. No matter how many times I go on it I still get anxious and terrified. I was kind of bummed this time around because the fire effect wasn't on, that blew my mind the first time I went on the ride.

After X2 we started to just go down the line of roller coasters, so next up was Viper! Viper is like a good roller coaster but nothing insane about it. It is pretty scary though because I never feel like I am completely fastened in, so I always think I am going to fall. Everyone came off this ride, a little bit more bruised than they were before.

Next up was my absolute favorite ride, Tatsu! Unfortunately right when we were super close to the front of the line the ride broke down so we had to wait for an extra half hour on top of the 45 minutes we had already waited. It's always freaky to be one of the first ones to go on a ride after it breaks down, but all is well, we are still alive!

Everyone was pretty much starving after waiting so long for Tatsu, so we went and got some over priced lunch afterward. And the smartest thing to do after you eat lunch is to go on a crazy ride like Superman right? haha wrong. Luckily, the superman ride was way too long, and we wanted to get in as many rides as we could in such a short amount of time, so we decided to skip it [I'm pretty much scared out of my mind of Superman, so I wasn't necessarily sad that we missed it haha]. 

Instead we went on the Apocalypse which is one of those wood roller coasters. Wood roller coasters are always quite freaky and you never think they will go as fast as they do. Both Zach and Brittany recorded the ride and I am still amazed that their phones didn't fly out of their hands.

Then we went on Lex Luther's drop of doom. I love dropping rides. The great thing about this one is that it's like the tallest in the world so you just keep going up and up and up and up and you never know when you reached the top until you start falling. 

After the drop of doom everyone went on the Wonder Woman's lasso of truth ride, Sadie and I were smart and skipped out on that went, and decided to go on the Flash ride. We made the better choice, but it was funny to watch the videos people took while on the other ride. We recorded our ride, but I am struggling to upload it, maybe another time. In the mean time, a picture:

The rides ended right about the same time, so it was perfect. Poor Trevor looked like he was going to throw up everywhere. 

Next up was Scream! I love scream, it's jus a classic roller coaster, and it has lots of those corkscrews which are my favorite things on roller coasters.

Then we went on the Riddler's Revenge, which is awesome because it's a standing roller coaster. Poor Sadie and Trev's seats weren't low enough when the ride started so their feet couldn't reach the ground. Let's all pray for Trev's future babies.

Then before we knew it the park was going to close in like an hour, so we decided to ride X2 one last time. The best way to end a fun day at Six Flags.

Here are some pics from the day:

Sadie and I went to Knottsberry Farm in 2012 and we have this heel clicking picture together so we tried to reenact it, but it turned out too blurry... dang iPhones (for the record the original photo Sadie has the best heel clicking form in the world, and I was a little behind, so I look a little foolish, but Sadie looks to good in the photo to hate the picture haha)

Once we left Six Flags we decided we wanted to have a pizza party, so we went and picked some pizzas up from Little Casesers and took them back to the hotel. We partied in they boys' room. We ate pizza, watch the Offica, played maffia (I was the murderer so many times, it was so stressful), and we started to watch Tommy Boy but then our speakers died. We also played this weird laughing game... I can't even begin to explain it, it was just so strange and funny.

Sunday January 31

We were originally planning on going to Church for sacrament somewhere, but then we decided to go to the beach, but then it was too cold and rainy so we decided to just start driving home. 

The car ride home was much more chill than the car ride to California, everyone was pretty pooped. But poor Tyler had to drive in crazy rain and in crazy haboobs,  while everyone was chilling n their own, he's a champ.

We stopped for some lunch in Blythe, and the Burger King there had the crowns! I was pretty excited, I hadn't seen them in ages.

While we were driving home I got a text from McKenzie saying that our Grandma McLeod might be dying, and that people were looking for a pulse. When I got to my home in Mesa, I found out she had died. She had Huntington's disease so most of my memories with her involve her being in a chair. I do have this vague picture in my head of her sitting on the stairs with me in my house in Calgary, and we were talking about this song I liked "Think Pink." Even when she was sick she was always really hilarious, sometimes she would just say random swear words and it would take everything I had in me not to bust out laughing. I don't think that it has really hit me yet that she's gone, and I figured it would hit me when I went to Canada for the funeral. Unfortunately, I couldn't make ends meet so I won't be attending the funeral with the rest of my family. It was a really heart breaking decision for me to make, but my Grandpa called me to tell me that she wouldn't want to me to give up everything else going on in my life for this. That was really comforting for me. And what has been even more comforting is just knowing that she is in a better place and is watching over me. She will definitely be missed.

Monday February 1
Work, work, work and more work. And then more schoolwork. That's just how Monday's go. There was also FHE, we got divided into new family's and we played get to know you games. One of the games was two truths and a lie. These were my facts, maybe you can guess

1. I was born on a Navajo reservation
2. I am the middle child
3. I am the assistant photo editor at the daily wildcat

I tricked mostly everyone, except Steph.

Tuesday February 2

Tuesday was just a roller coaster because so much schoolwork and work work was piling up on me and I was trying to make a decision about going to the funeral or not. I have definitely had better days. But the day ended well because I watched Grease Live all the way through. Seriously I love it so much. Also on Tuesday I started making the Super Bowl predictions poster, it's my favorite thing to do. Seriously those posters are my babies. 

Wednesday February 3

I had work, and then school. i got a new game on my phone called wordbubbles and I am addicted. The missionaries came over because Steph was feeding them dinner, so we hung out with them and they gave a pretty good object lesson involving balloons and duct tape and a needle.

I spent the rest of the night working on Daily Wildcat stuff, and waiting for the WSU game to end so I could turn everything in.

Although I am very sad that I won't be going to the funeral this weekend, I am happy to finally have a weekend where I am not traveling. I just need a long break from doing things on the weekends. But that break won't last long, I am going to Vegas later this month... whoops haha.