- Holly Bousman
HUNTINGTON BEACH + HOMETOWN TEXAS
Photos by The Bearded Bousman Photo Co.
Happy Tuesday guys! It's so good to be sitting in bed writing this post the night before it goes live. The past two weekends have been a whirlwind and I am wiped out! I visited Disneyland pretty much on the tail of just returning from Disney World, and then Jordan and I flew down to Texas this past weekend so he could meet my family there and see where I grew up. This post is more of a journal post, so this is a fair warning to anyone who wants to stop right here! :)
Disneyland
Disneyland was so much fun! We hit the parks 2 out of the 4 days we were there. On our off days we went to Huntington Beach to hang out. I felt so Californian hanging out on that beach. It's like I stepped straight into Laguna or The Hills tv show. I ate that stuff up when I was younger! Anyone else?
Day 1: After we checked into Grand Californian, we hit Earl of Sandwich in Downtown Disney. Then we drove to Huntington Beach, watched the waves, explored Pier 13, and checked out the shops across the PCA.
In true Colorado fashion, we were curious about what stuff a California Costco had, so we found the closest one and checked it out. They don't sell much different stuff. There are more water-sport products, but other than that, it's pretty much the same! At least we know we're not missing out on anything haha.
For dinner, we stopped at In and Out to grab two cheese burgers. The sun was setting as we ate in the rental car, facing the west. We could see the sun through the palms, and again I felt soooo Californian. haha
Day 2: We hit Disneyland on the second day. Some rides were closed or completely out of fast passes by the time we got there, but we rode our favorites: Buzz, Splash Mountain, Hyperspace Mountain, Star Tours, and some others that we hadn't done before.
We ate lunch and dinner at the two fast food spots in Tomorrow Land. It was a great day, especially because we were given passes to Hyperspace Mountain by a complete stranger! That was so nice!
Day 3: We headed back to Huntington Beach to meet up with our two friends that were already out there for a mission trip. We had just been talking to them casually the week before and realized we'd all be there at the same time, so we decided to meet up with them and play some volleyball. We invited some locals to play with us and found people from Pennsylvania that wanted to join and we all had a really good time! We had lunch at the original Wahoo's fish tacos.
For dinner, we went out with two other friends of ours and had chicken and waffles for dinner + dragons breath for dessert! If you saw my Insta-story you saw how cool (pun intended) it was! I'm not sure what it is like everywhere, but at the place we went to, you got to choose your favorite cereal as the base. (Jordan and I chose Captain Crunch with crunch berries, of course.) Then, the ice-creamistas put liquid nitrogen (?) on your cereal and it freezes the cereal!
When you take a bite, it's like your breathing in the snow and you can see your breath. It looks like smoke is coming out of your mouth and even your nose- thus the name dragon's breath! It was so neat! And the girls at the shop said that Lucky Charms is their favorite because of the way the marshmallows turn out. Yum! That definitely sounds good!
Day 4: We hit up California adventure with our friends and mostly mozied around, but we rode some of our favorites there too: Soarin' (now: over the World, not just over California), the Cars ride, and Screamin'. We all explored the Food and Wine festival there and had all sorts of really creative snack-sized meals. Of course, we grabbed the free samples of Sour-dough bread + Ghirardelli chocolate in between snacks.
After a dinner, where none of us could even eat because we were already so stuffed, Jordan and I ran back into the park to do one last ride and we got to watch World of Color. It was Jordan's first time seeing it and it was so fun to see him light up about how cool it was! It's a spectacular display of water, projection, and fireworks telling some of the most popular Disney stories!
Houston, Texas
Our trip to Texas was super quick! I wanted to show Jordan everything, but there just wasn't enough time. We got into town around 1am and had to leave two days later around 5am! I feel so bad that we chose the absolute latest flight in and earliest flight out, but because we booked so close to this weekend, we were trying to get the cheapest flights! It made it really hard on my dad who came to pick us up and drop us off. Sorry, dad! But I hope it was worth it to make it down for this trip at this time. However, we'll plan better in the future, for sure!
It's so interesting to me how such small places like your house, your school, your church, can be your whole world growing up. I have so many memories in each spot that I can't count them and I couldn't tell Jordan about my memories quick enough. He'd probably be bored if I tried to tell him all the stories that came to mind anyway! haha
The one thing we didn't get to do on the grand tour was visit the school I went to from Kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. Since we were only there for a two days, we had to prioritize where and who we spent time with. My school was always in the opposite direction of where we were headed, so we'll have to save that for next time.
I hope you enjoyed this post even though it's a sprint through our two weekends!
What are some of your favorite places in Disneyland? What about in your hometown? I'd love to hear in the comments below! I hope you have a fantastic rest of the week!
* Thank you Inspyre Boutique for sponsoring this post.
Thanks for stopping by!
