We had a very awesome and relaxing Halloween Trip to OC to visit Andy's Family. It was my first time meeting his brother and sister, in the almost 8 years we've know each other!!
We didn't make many plans a head of time besides knowing we wanted to spend time with his family and meet up with some of our friends so I didn't know what to expect really. Also I wish we had more time and obviously that we weren't in the middle of the pandemic, so we could have meet up with more people but hopefully we can start taking more trips in the future. Also this was our first ever "vacation" together.
I planned on creating video vlog about everything we did, but it was more of a visit than "vacation", family time and getting to know each other and that doesn't need to be documented like a vacation and site seeing/activity vlog would be. We took quite a few pictures, I now wish I would have taken more but sometimes you just have to live in the moment and not worry about capturing it.
So that is why I'm writing this out, mostly for myself to be able to remember what a great time we had, but also so anyone who is interested!!!
DAY ONE: Monday: Oct 26 PGH>HOU>OC Andy scooped me up in our fancy ass rental car and drove me around the showing me the neighborhood he grew up in and a few other things! Checked into the Hotel Indigo Room 412 (THANKS TO DI RECORDS)!!!
Showered and both took a much needed nap. The bed was super freakin squishy!!! Of course took some photos in front of the 412 door and with the cool hallway lights!
Picked up some dinner at In n Out Burger! I ate the whole burger (which for me is unusual)
There was a pretty awesome sunset, although the sky was filled with smoke it was still beautiful.
I met Andy's sister Tiffany and his brother in-law Chris!
We then checked out the marijuana store, because its legal and fancy AF! It was like an apple store, and had so many options, even drink options. How crazy?! Also they handed us back coin change, when Andy paid with a CC. Yes, we obviously tried things.
Went back to Tiffany's; chilled on the porch, told her our whole couples story and chatted her ear off (like we do), but its the best way to get to know each other, and enjoyed the perfect Cali weather and sounds. Went back to the hotel and crashed!! I actually slept very well compared to normal!
DAY TWO: Tuesday: Oct 27
We went to Disney (kinda), it was closed but we checked out Downtown Disney! I had to stop by Sephoria because I bought the wrong shade of makeup and wasn't about to look super tan all of our trip (yes, I am ridiculous).
I had Jamba Juice for the first time, we had a fancy giant corndog.
Obviously I had to pick up a pair of Minnie Mouse ears for a picture and to give to Keira!
Drove around everywhere with Tiffany trying to hunt down pumpkin carving tools. With no luck, but being the pumpkin carving expert that I am, we picked up knives and a big spoon from Big Lots.
Meet Andy's Brother Ben, sister in-law Carolin, and his niece Penny (It was her 5th Birthday!)
We ate cake and carved pumpkins all designed by Penny herself!
Joined Andy's friend Taylor and his family for a home cooked meal and for some awesome entertainment by his adorable kids! We had a piece of our Halloween costume delivered and the kids loved the box. Chatted and visited about our lives, talked about how we change our looks up all the time, and really never look the same. It was really cool that Taylor's mom was telling us about a shop she used to own and that at one point she had half red and grey hair; like I have now! Headed back to the hotel where I worked on editing Skylers YouTube video! I almost had it finished, and my laptop died and my dumb butt left the block of the charger on our couch... in Pittsburgh! (although that was the only thing I forgot, and that is surprising because I'm the queen of leaving things at home when I need them)
DAY THREE: Wednesday: Oct 28
Checked out of room 412!! Shout out to DI Records for helping us with finding a rad room!
Tried to check out an out door mall, but were out and about before much was open!
Grabbed some lunch then stopped by another mall. I picked out some Croc sneakers because my feel have been driving me nuts for almost a year, and of course the day before our trip were super painful. Not going to lie, they are pretty freakin awesome, and helped my feet and legs to feel better. Andy took me to the Orange Circle!
We had to take a picture in front of the Solder and Sailor store because it was part of a scene in That Thing You Do!!!
Stopped into an antique store (there are a ton of them) and found a few Elvira paintings that I wish so badly I could have gotten, but there was no way to get them back to Pittsburgh with us.
Checked a cool thrift shop that was actually in the building where Andy's mom had a store years ago. I found a gem stone fancy, shiny, top and skirt that I didn't need but it was only $15, so I actually did need it. Andy found a sick leather jacket! We meet up with Andy's friend Jess and her son for lunch. Chatted about life, video games, and YouTube because kids all love and want to be on YouTube. We told them about Skylers YouTube video I was working on. (I didn't post it one here yet, but now that I am thinking about it I should!! so look for a Skyler Radtastic Pumpkin Carving blog). Met up with Chris and Tiffany for dinner at Lazy Dog! They had fried deviled eggs, we will be recreating those at some point. Yes, we ate quite often while we were out there but like people need to eat and we were sharing and trying new things!
We then settled into the Huber BNB (Tiffany & Chris's back house).
DAY FOUR: Thursday: Oct 29
Another lunch in the Orange Circle this time with Andy's friend Pam!
Seriously I loved meeting everyone of of this friends and family, they all made me feel so welcome! I didn't feel awkward or out of place at all, almost like I had know them forever. Which is very odd for me because I feel awkward all the time, especially with new people or in other peoples spaces. I wish I could have met them all soon, and really really hope to see all of them again.
Hopefully we can go back sooner than 3 years for him, or like 31 for myself!!
We did a little bit of shopping, picked up gifts for Penny, Skyler, and Keira! Then we took a awesome nap, seriously I love napping but my body/mind never lets me so it was awesome it allowed me too while on a relaxing trip. I worked on finishing up Skylers video, of course I'm a perfectionist and even more so on projects I say I'm going to not get too crazy with! It always takes me more time than planned but the videos turn out awesome, I mean I think they do. (I think, of course I'm writing this a little over a week later, so some details are getting mixed up on what days, but that's how my mind always works really) Spent the afternoon with Ben, Carolin, and Penny! Penny was having a ton of fun hiding Uncle Andy's hat, it was fun for me to watch too. Ben made us dinner he had both yams and sweet potatoes from their garden as fries!! I think I may have to take that idea because they are super yummy and some of my favorite foods that I never really think about cooking with. . We went back to Tiffany & Chris's and sat by a fire! It was definitely one of my favorite moments.
We all watched Skylers video premiere together, chatted, bounced tattoo ideas around for the next day, had a few drinks, and just relaxed.
Oh and we had some fancy pizza! (apparently I love the word fancy currently, because I am using it a lot!) Also everyone's houses and yards are so freakin' cute out there!! The fact that no one had too many political signs out in their yards helped to make the whole experience that more relaxing and a true escape from the normal, or at least the current normal.
So many people had cute halloween decorations out it was incredible! I wish more people had the halloween spirt like that everywhere!
UGHHHH, I wish I could have just recorded everything I saw, not to have to show anyone but to help my memories also because it was just such a good time and me just writing it out gives no justice to how cute or beautiful anything was. I really didn't want to be the weirdo with my camera out, that issue started like 3 years ago and I've been trying to get better at it, because I always regret not taking more video or photos. I used to say this all the time jokingly but I would love to just have someone follow me around and document my life for me. Mostly still joking now about it too. I wish non-fictional things were able to be reality and just have some sort of device that stores all the best memories for you and they were all able to be viewed as a movie when you wanted to reference it. But I'm getting way to ranty so moving on.
So after our visit we headed in snuggled up in bed, put on Adam Sandler's Hubie Halloween movie on Netflix and both passed out! I fell asleep watching a movie, seriously sleeping so well is something I could get used to!
DAY FIVE: Friday: Oct 30
Stopped by Penny, Carolin and Ben's house for a lunch visit! Penny needed to search for things that started with the letter F in the back yard, then her and Ben showed us their really cool Fantasy Football game. We had a delicious lunch and an awesome visit!
Then headed over to Tiffany's work and got some super sick tattoos!! Which pretty much took up the rest of the night, we spent quite a few hours there. We covered up the little cinema reel behind my right hear, shaved half my head, we added a giant spooky castle! YES, it hurt, NO, not as bad as you would think. It really wasn't too bad until the very end, right around 4 hours. It felt like it took forever but also once she was done I decently didn't think it had been that long. I needed a little break for my body to calm down. So I changed and chatted with my Mom for a bit (she still hasn't seen the tattoo, so lets hope she isn't too too mad at me, but also I kept it able to be hidden as long as my hair is down so....idk)
Then we crashed for the night, I finished watching the movie from the night before and he passed out right away. Because he's lucky and can be tired and fall asleep at any time, and me I can't hardly sleep even when I am exhausted. Although I slept pretty well while we are out there and woke up in a non-grump mood and was ready to go at like 8am everyday! Which makes sense because that would be 11ish at home. DEVILS NIGHT 2020!!!!!
Would have made the perfect wedding date ;p Too bad I didn't mention that sooner, seriously though it would have been a perfect day to do it but like I didn't want to say it but then I did going into the Devils's Night day. as in like midnight at the beginning of this day.. I had only come up with the idea on how cool that date would be like two days before, but yeah... ANYWAYS...
It was an awesome Devil's Night filled with getting sick tattoos!
DAY SIX: Saturday: Oct 31
HALLOWEEN!! started off with some simple spooky makeup and demon eyes! Headed down to the Anaheim Garden Walk for the SPOOKSIEBOO POP-UP EVENT <3 I was so excited for this event, I'm a huge fan of the artist SpooksieBoo and a few weeks before our trip I saw she was having and event and I registered for our tickets ASAP!!! Seriously her artwork is super adorable, and you should check it out. All of the other artist were amazing too.. Think spooky Disney and that literally describes it all! And it was pretty much inside Disney itself!! What made this event and lunch so much more exciting is that I got to see Stephi!!! Stephi is one of my best friends and favorite people from collage, and I hadn't seen her in almost 9 years! The crazy thing is when we saw each other it really didn't seem all that long. But also seems terribly long at the same time and I just miss her so much and wish we could spend more time together. It was amazing to hear how well she is doing, and she looked absolutely adorable, as always. Also how old do I feel? Pretty dang old! 9 years ago I was in collage, like what?! We bought all the spooky things! Well.... mostly I did, or I picked them out. We came home with way more stuff than Andy planned but I knew I would go a bit overboard. I did a lot of Xmas Shopping done so like, it was totally fine!
We got all dressed up and headed out to Joshua Tree. I had never heard about before recently, it is a popular spot! I watched an awesome Live Show of a friends band from there at the beginning of October, a work friend went on a trip recently and then we were there for Halloween! If we go back to CA, which I really hope we do I would love to go during the day or late evening to look around better!
It was the most beautiful Halloween setting with the giant full moon. I was mesmerized, and apparently Andy didn't know how excited I get over the moon being so beautiful. He was blaming it on the gummies we had taken, again because it's legal there. And I was like no I'm always this way, especially once it starts getting closer to winter. (The night sky in the winter is the best, although I hate snow and all that but driving through it and looking up at the moon- I feel like I'm in space) I also always try to take pictures of the moon because I love it so much, but I don't have the right equipment but I love it. And can't believe he didn't know that about me, but we don't go on late long drive nights usually. Dang, this blog of just listing what we did, is getting more details and is way longer than planned. But that's one of the things I do! And I'm on like day 5 of trying to write this. Because every time I'm working on it, I get distracted by work or everything else I have to do. Okay back to it! So Joshua Tree was amazing, we went to Tiffany & Chris's friends house that was one of the coolest houses I've seen or been to. It had everything and the back yard, was to die for! We got to meet some of their friends, eat some snacks, have a few drinks, sit by the fire, and just chit chat. We were the talk of the room for a bit when we showed up in our Star-Wars helmets, we didn't have much time to create or put together full costumes but we looked pretty bad ass! We also now have two new decorations for our house, and can make costumes or cosplays later! It was a perfect Halloween night and day to unfortunately conclude our visit. We headed back to the Huber BNB, it was about a 2 hour drive. I kept passing out on and off for like a minute or two at a time, maybe longer. Every time I woke up I kept trying to take videos or photos of the sky and everything but I was half asleep. I've never fell asleep that much randomly but I mean we had a long going on and with the time differences. But like being tired is a good thing, and actually being able to sleep when tired, is like an amazing thing for me! So then we actually went to sleep once we got back.
DAY SEVEN: Sunday: Nov 1
The very last day, so sad!!! It wasn't a sad day at all but we were sad to have to leave so soon. Also I really did not want to get back on a plane. We got around and mostly packed up, ran to Target to get Andy a carry-on bag to take back all the things I bought and made him buy and also our Star-Wars helmets. Finished packing up, picked up some breakfast and fresh orange juice and stopped over to see Penny, Carolin, and Ben one last time. It was a short visit because once we got there we realized we were looking at the take off time, thinking it was the boarding time and had to rush on over to the airpot. Got a few gifts at the airport for xmas presents and then got on the plane. I don't remember too much of the first ride, but I watched SCOOB! It is seriously adorable and may or may not have made me cry a few times, like actual tears but I recommend it. I was skeptical and it started out pretty cheesy and I have a million questions on how it makes sense, because like Scooby has a whole family of Doo's but Shaggy randomly made up his name? or does Scoobies family get named after him? just as an example of how my mind was working. The second plane we watched Sonic, we hit play at the same time on our phone to watched it "together". He probably loved that I couldn't talk or as questions during movies because, yes I do that. But it always has to do with what we are watching. Then the rest of the ride really wasn't that fun because the guy next to me was pretty gross and was giving me anxiety and the fact I could move away from him or say anything made me even more anxious. Then I tried to tell Andy and got even more anxious that it was kinda making us argue and then my anxiety was anger and then I wanted to cry or go fight the guy and blah blah blah. Save anxiety talk fora different time. (I only realize what a mess my mind is when writing long post, but this is what all my blog blogs are like). So we found my car, I made him drive, I called Mom and we went home, decompressed, we put something on TV but I don't remember what then passed out!!
FINAL THOUGHTS: I know, I really need to get better at getting black to vlogging - I was better 5 years ago starting out when I had no idea what I was doing!! I also really need to take notes or write up parts of blogs as I go not a week later. Also if I do wait until later to be sure I have a few hours to sit and write it all out at once, unlike me waiting a week and writing this all over like 5 days. I seriously have so much to do on my computer every time I open it, I feel I get nothing done.
Now that I edited that little intro I added at the top, I'm super sad I feel so awkward and anxious about filming because now I'm incredibly sad and disappointed I didn't. I started off right and planned to do even little videos because I knew I would end up feeling this way. UGH, I don't know how to push through and make videos and just not record everything to a point it is weird but snippets would have been great and GDI! Why am I me, sometimes? ANYWAYS....
I know I use way way too many explanation marks but I am happy and excited and you can't see that by typing, but not going to lie I over use them, like always. I wish you guys could see my facial expressions and hear this all in my voice. Because my emotions and expressions are much more expressive than how I normally experience things and you just reading it you can't see how truly excited and happy I am!