Wicked

Okay, I am feeling a bit better and thought that I would blog a little about my girls trip to LA to see WICKED! Let me tell you that if anybody has the chance to go and see this musical whether in LA or NY, or anywhere else it is playing, GO! It is SO good. I LOVED it. We started out journey on July 1st and spent the night at Julie's place in St. George. (Julie is a cousin to Creed on the Larsen side.) Then on the 2nd we finished our drive. Let me tell you, I have never had so much fun and entertainment in one drive. Kendra, married to Eric (Creed's brother just younger than him), Ellen, Val, EmmaLee (Creed's three sisters), Elizabeth (Creed's Mom), Janell Lunt (Creed's cousin on the Larsen side) and I were all in the car. (Just to give everyone out there a little reference) For the first part of the trip Val drove and Elizabeth sat up front, they mostly sang along to an old Disney CD, in harmony, which made the rest of us laugh, and at one point everybody else had headphones in connected to iPods. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, but it was just so great to be sitting and chatting with a bunch of adult girls (haven't had that experience in quite a while). I drove us into LA and it was right before traffic would hit, thank goodness! That night we went and saw Wicked and we had marvelous seats, and I cannot even describe how amazing it was!

The next day was spent at Catalina Island. Funny story with this little activity. Since I was in pain and have been and since doing anything really active brings on more pain, I opted out of doing anything active. I was told that there would be a beach for us to hang out on. So Janelle, EmmaLee, and Ellen all wore our swimsuits for the whole day, in hopes that we would be sitting on a beach for the day. Well, there really isn't a beach, it is more of a sandbox with warning signs about the dangers of playing at the "beach" because it is dirty and everyone and their dogs are hanging out at the "beach". Needless to say we wore our swimsuites and didn't go swimming until we got back to the hotel and it was like 10 pm. Kendra hung out with us too, but didn't wear her suite the whole day, lucky girl! While on the island we shopped mostly and chilled at a little cafe and we rented a golf cart for an hour and saw all of the sites. It was actually a really fun day. (Inside joke alert-lockers, sewers and boogey board! These three words make me laugh out loud!)

For the 4th we hung out at Venice beach and rented some tandem bikes and rode down to the Sana Monica Peir. It was Elizabeth's 50th birthday so we ate dinner at this amazing restuarant. It is where the stars eat, or at least there are quite a number of pictures of them there hanging on the wall (mostly stars I couldn't name!). The food was great, but caused a bit of sticker shock to the whole party. I forgot to mention that once in LA we met up with John and his family, Dave and his family and Grandma and Grandpa Mitton (Elizabeth's family minus Esther, her sister). So all 21 of us ate at this restaurant. Anyway, everybody but the 7 of us ladies drove to the restaurant, which was 3/4 of a mile from our hotel. (One car came back and picked us up) They left us with the intent of coming back to get us, but for some reason all the roads to and from our hotel were closed for the fireworks, so we started walking back to the hotel and ended up having a perfect view of the fireworks. It was so neat!

On the 5th we drove all the way home. Sarah was so glad to see me and I her. It was an amazing trip though and I am still working on the pictures, my camera only worked part of the time, plus everybody else had some good pictures, so a slide show will be coming your way in a few day's time. Thanks to everyone on the trip it was AMAZING!