Whirlwind Weekend

This past weekend was filled with lots of fun and friends, but MAN am I tired! I realized today as I was looking at the calendar, that I have not stayed at home for any weekends in July. I guess it makes for some event-filled blog posts!

The weekend started on Saturday with an awesome Boot Camp class. I finally convinced Ernie to go with me, which made it super fun. After that we changed and got ready to drive to La Mirada for the West Coast PACA 50th reunion. PACA (Pan American Christian Academy) is the high school Ernie went to in Brazil. It was a fun event held at a park in a little barn. There were graduates there from as early as 1979! Many of them brought their yearbooks. We got to see a picture of Dad Spoelhof, who was a teacher there for a few years, in one of the 81/82 (I think) yearbooks. (Did we tell you that, Dad?) They gave out cool shirts and brazilian candy...yum!

After that party we drove to Yorba Linda to celebrate with my good friend Diana. She just earned her PhD from UGA in Cognitive Psychology!! What an accomplishment! It was so awesome to see her since she's been living in Georgia for the past 4 years. She is now a professor at Georgia College.

We finished off the night back in San Diego with our good friends Joe and Angel. Joe played the music for our wedding ceremony! They just moved back to San Diego from Colorado, so it was great to see them and celebrate their return.

Sunday morning started off bright and early. I had a family wedding to go to in Fresno. We decided it was easier for me to fly home to Oakland and drive down with my parents, rather than make the 10 hour round trip drive for a Sunday night wedding. Turns out, we were wrong. I arrived at the airport and made it through security with no problems at all. About 10 minutes before we were supposed to start board, two gates over started to have some problems. This woman got on the loudspeaker and started making announcements about some "doohicky" (she seriously said this) that was broken on the plane and how she was sure it would be fixed in time, and so on. I'm all for honesty, but I'm not sure how this announcement was supposed to instill confidence in the passengers. I didn't worry too much about it though, because I was just glad our flight was progressing on time. Or, so I thought. So the 10 minutes went by and they boarded us all on the plane. Right as we were about to close the doors, a flight attendant made an announcement: "Well, I know we are all boarded, but dispatch is thinking of giving this plane to the delayed Phoenix flight. It doesn't really make sense to do this, since we are all boarded, but it is ultimately their decision. We will keep you updated." Of course all the passengers were in an uproar. How and why would they do this? Why ruin another flight to fix that flight? Well, being the great decision makers they are, dispatch bumped us. We were told to exit the plane in an orderly fashion, remember where we were sitting as we would be boarding in that same order (ha!), and to wait around at the gate for an announcement. So we all got off the plane we had just boarded, and made a jumbled mass of our flight and the Phoenix flight out in the waiting area. To make matters worse, many of the Phoenix passengers had missed their connecting flights and were told not to get on the plane but instead to go to the desk to get help. Needless to say, there were a lot of confused and angry people around the Southwest terminal--I mean, we didn't even have boarding passes anymore. How were we supposed to board with no boarding passes? Is that even TSA legal? As I pondered these, and other questions, it was announced that we were moving to Gate 3. The SAME gate the Phoenix flight had just come from. Surely they weren't just going to switch us onto the broken plane?? YEP!! We walked over to the new gate and got on the same plane that 10 minutes earlier was unfit to take the Phoenix passengers on their flight. Let's just say I spent most of that flight praying for a safe trip.

Thankfully, I arrived in Oakland, but was unfortunately 1.5 hours late and still needed to get ready for the wedding. I got ready in record time (30 minutes from entering to exiting the house!!) and we were on the road for Fresno. The wedding was for a great family friend I went to school with 4th grade-high school.

It was like a Danville reunion. Here's a picture of some of the moms who were in a bible study together and all the kids would play and swim.

It was a really great family time, but we were sad that Jess, JT, and Ernie couldn't make it.

Bethany, Bekah and I drove back that night to Azusa. We didn't get home until 2:30am! It was a really tough drive home in the dark and so late, but we made it nice and safe. I had to eat lots of snack to stay awake and felt pretty sick when we got home.

Monday we had plans to go to Disneyland--woohoo! Bethany's friend Dani works there, and is able to get 3 tickets when she works. Since I'm the only one without a pass, Bekah invited Ashkon to come too. A few minutes before we were going to enter the park, Ernie called to say he was done with work, so he came too! We decided to go to California Adventure park. We went on the new Toy Story ride. IT WAS AWESOME!!

It is a 3D ride set up like a carnival. So you ride in your little cart and go through different carnival games. I almost beat Ernie, but he pulled ahead in the last game.

Later that night we went to dinner at Anaheim Garden Walk. Forrest and Karin came to meet us. We realized that it was Ashkon's birthday on Tuesday and Forrest's on Wednesday, so we turned it into a mini birthday celebration.

I don't know why Karin was laughing so hard in this picture, Ernie probably said something funny :) Well, it was a whirlwind for sure, but lots of fun!