Sidney, Molly and I traveled down to Anaheim for Sidney's cheer nationals. ONCE we FINALLY got there it was a super fun time!
Let me start back at the beginning......... Several months back, the cheer team had their annual fund raiser. They always have a silent auction at it and at this auction, Jeff had donated 2 round trip airline tickets to the competition. The ladies who bid the most and won were Lynette Black and Ruth Nelson, who are grandma's to some of the girls on the team. They also happen to be 2 of Jeff's grandma's best friends - they've been bff's since elementary school. So Jeff decided to throw in a ticket for his grandma too. I found cheap airline tickets on Allegiant Air and I told him to just buy those instead of using his Delta miles. So that's what we did. So, we had the 3 ladies tickets, mine, Molly's and my friend Kina and her two girls as well on that airline. Eight of us total. Well..... Thursday, the day of our travel comes and and thick fog has set in. Our plane gets delayed, then delayed a second time, delayed a third time, a fourth and a FIFTH time! Then it just got cancelled altogether! They rescheduled it for the following morning. Since I had the biggest car, I was picking each lady up at her home and bringing them back home again. Friday morning rolls around and its still just as foggy as foggy gets. I make my rounds picking up each lady again only to find out that our plane got delayed again. Then delayed a second time! Then cancelled altogether!!!!! They reschedule it for the next day which is now going to be Saturday.
Unbelievable!
Apparently the problem was that the airport that we were flying out of was a small airport in Provo - right next to the lake. Fog is very dense at times there. I guess you can fly out in it but you can't land in it. Our scheduled plane was coming in from Arizona and they couldn't land in it. We decided that flying out on Saturday was not going to work out for us because the cheer team was scheduled to compete on Saturday. What if it were to be cancelled again on Saturday. We'd be screwed and miss the whole purpose of our trip. So we decided to start looking at other airlines. We tried Delta, United, Southwest, Frontier, you name it. They were sold out! You see, the problem was that it was Valentines weekend and President's day was on Monday. Everyone had work and school off so people were playing! I could have gotten a ticket here and a ticket there but nothing that would have worked out for us. So I decided to rent a car. It's only a 9 hour drive. Easy right! Well.... all the cars had been booked as well! In order for me to get a car big enough to hold 5 passengers and 5 pieces of luggage, I would have had to had driven to South Jordan to pick it up. That's an hour away ONE way! No way. So I decided to just drive my big 8 passenger expedition. I quickly ran down to the service station and had the oil changed and filled the car with gas. I went back to Jeff's grandma's house to pick up the ladies yet again. We loaded up in the car, had a word of prayer and decided to hit McDonald's on our way out of town. We were literally in the drive up when my friend Kina called me. Her husband's travel agent had struck gold and found some tickets on Delta flying out of Salt Lake for a reasonable price. She told me to hurry and call her. She gave me the agents number and I called her, only to get her voice mail. I left a message and she called me back about 3 minutes later. Sadly, she informed me that in the time that lapsed in between booking Kina's tickets, her calling me and me calling the agent back, the tickets were now gone! BUT she was able to find 5 on Southwest leaving that evening. It had an hour layover in Las Vegas and then went into Los Angeles. They were reasonable enough especially to fly out the same day so I bought them right then! Believe it or not, I proceeded to drop each lady back off at her home again! Only to pick them all back up again four hours later.
I picked them all up and we headed up to SLC International. Once we were on the road, I got a call from the agent saying...... if you can believe this or not, that our flight was DELAYED! She asked if we wanted to cancel altogether. UMMM, heck no! Not after all we'd been through! We were going to get there by dang! So we proceeded to go to our flight. It was only delayed about 45 minutes. No big deal right? Well, remember when I mentioned that we had a layover in Las Vegas for only one hour? That's where our problem was. We took the flight just thinking that worst case scenario, we'd end up spending the night in Vegas and flying out the next morning OR we could drive it from Vegas. It's only like 4 hours from there. Our plane landed and we shot off like a cannon. It was fine for me and Molly to run the distance to our next gate but these poor sweet ladies who were all 70 years old had a harder time getting there. And quite honestly, my chest was on fire because I was recovering from bronchitis. We hurried to the gate to find lots of passengers sitting in the chairs still. The gate agent told us that our plane from Vegas to Los Angela's had been, you guessed it, delayed. But this time, it was a very good thing! Ha Ha! I mean at this point it was just comical! About 15 minutes later we were ready to board. I just couldn't believe it when we finally landed in LA. All the trouble we had gone through to get there. We caught our shuttle and took the 45 or so minute ride down to Anaheim, got to our hotel and absolutely crashed! It was like 2:30 in the morning for us at that point and we felt like we had been traveling for days on end.
The next day was the cheer competition. (the cheer team had taken a different flight out of SLC early on Friday morning) The girls did great! They ended up placing 7th in Nationals. 
Cassidy and Molly
The grandma's with their granddaughters! Bless their hearts! They had been put through the ringer.
Molly with Sophie and Sophie's grandma Lynette (Molly also adopted Lynette as grandma for this trip too. I mean we had been through so much together, ha ha!).
Miss Kaylie and Sid. We were next door neighbors for 17 years. I've watched Kaylie grow up from a baby. I feel like she's mine!
Kaylie's mom Jody and her little sister Leah.
So the competition was Saturday and the next day, Sunday, also Valentines Day, we all went to Disneyland! Wow oh wow had we ever earned that Disney trip!
Molly with Kina's girls, Paisley and Cassidy.
Sidney and a bunch of her cheer friends
Left to right: Cecily - Sid - Emily J. - Natalie - Miley
The Fairy Godmother was absolutely adorable! She had the cutest
smile and was just sweet as sweet can be.
Disney is celebrating their 60th anniversary.
A few little facts about Disney:
*Disney opened the park with 18 attractions. Fourteen of them are still in operation today
*There used to be several human bones/skulls in Pirates of the Caribbean. Today there is only one remaining human skull. It sits on the head board of the bed in Pirates. It was a cadaver donated from the medical team at UCLA.
*There is a basketball court inside the Matterhorn that the employees can use on their breaks.
*The abominable snowman on the Matterhorn ride is named Harold.
*Disneyland's King Arthur Carousel is older than the park itself. It was built in 1922 for the Sunnyside Beach Park in Toronto, Canada.
*The drawbridge to Sleeping Beauty's castle is a real working drawbridge. It's been used twice. Once on opening day and the second for the remodeled Fantasyland.
*The Disney family crest is the crest on Sleeping Beauty's castle. It's located above the drawbridge entrance.
*Disneyland occupies 85 acres
*As of 2012, there have been three babies born
*Walt had a private apartment located directly above the fire station on Main Street, USA.
*Disney estimates that more than 2.8 million churro's are sold each year.
*Disneyland was built in one year.
*The gold trimmings on the outside of It's A Small World ride are made of real 22 karat gold.
*About 200 hundred feral cats live in Disneyland to keep the rodents away. Most of them are nocturnal so sighting them during the day is rare.
*Mickey has over 290 outfits and Minnie has over 200.
*Guests are never more than 30 steps away from a garbage can.
*Disney does not sell gum or shelled peanuts for obvious reasons.
*The Haunted Mansion has 999 ghosts in it.
*Both Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion weren't originally planned to be rides. They were originally planned to be walk through attractions.
*Disney has only closed its doors twice since opening day. The day after JFK was shot and on 9/11.
*The props in Indiana Jones office (located in the queue) are real props from the Indiana Jones movies.
*The term employees use when a guest vomits is "code V". It used to be called "protein spill".
*Fun fact about Magic Kingdom in Orlando - It is 107 acres
*Walt Disney World Resort is the size of San Francisco or two Manhattan islands!
When we got into Toon Town, the sky was so pretty! I took all of these picture with my cell phone. Not perfect quality but they still look great. By the way, these aren't photo shopped at all. This is how the sky really looked!
Kina and I reserved a lunch for us and our girls at Ariel's Grotto in California Adventure. The girls got to meet several princesses. We all loved it to be honest with you!
Molly got to meet Rapunzel who is her FAVORITE princess!
I love love love Cars Land! I think that they have made it look so super cute! Its just like the movie.
Well done Disney!
We spent four days in Disneyland / California Adventure.
The cheer team only spent three. (we flew home a day later than them.)
On our last day there in the late afternoon it started to rain. It rained and rained and rained. But we weren't about to go home early on our last day! So we endured it and by the time we walked back to our hotel - - - we were SOAKED! It looked like we had been swimming. But hey! That's what makes memories right!
Then next morning we left our hotel, took the hour or so shuttle ride back up to LA (this time we were on a Thursday in morning rush hour traffic) got to the airport and found out........ YEP you guessed it! Our flight was delayed!!!! Ha HA HAHA HAAA! Of course it was.
We delayed just over one hour. Then they decided that we needed to take a different plane. So they moved us gates, we got on that plane and flew home. I then drove the hour drive home from the SLC airport and for the last time on our giant trip of adventure, I dropped each lady back off to her home.
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