New Year's and Rose Parade

In a semi-last minute decision, we went down to Pasadena for the Rose Parade and New Year's. We stayed with our friends, the Demings, and had a great time. Except for the drive home, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Usually, you have to camp out all night in order to save a good spot for the parade. Otherwise, you'll be stuck trying to catch a glimpse over a sea of heads. Anyway, the guys made the sacrifice and saved our spot. There was a large group of us, as we were combined with some people from our old ward and other friends that thought this would be fun.

Lots of games, food and conversation were had and the parade was pretty good too! It was really cold for this area, around 38 degrees at night! Last year, it was in the 60's and reached 75 by noon. Not this year!



Aaron was very tired and cold the morning of the parade, and we warmed him up with some hot chocolate and donuts :)



He kept falling asleep during the parade, but he enjoyed what he did see :D The boys love the marching bands and really cheer them on when they go by. There were some really good ones this year! My stupid camera wouldn't work in the cold, so all we had was Aaron's iphone.



Adam loved the mermaids on horses.



Mother Goose had a spectacular float! We all loved the dragon.



Pac-man was the boys' favorite though.

We were too tired to make the drive all the way home after the parade, but it seems we should have at least tried. We started the drive home on Sunday, after making a short appearance at church and we got all the way to the start of "the grapevine". The Grapevine is what locals call the Tejon pass over the mountains between Los Angeles and the rest of California north of it. Its summit is almost 5,000 ft and can get pretty snowy and icy.

Well, they had closed lanes and narrowed everyone down to a few lanes and were doing police escorts over the pass. We got stuck in line, with no way off, for 3, (yes, three) hours, and the pass was closed before we could get over the mountain. So, we finally got turned around (another 45 min) and headed towards Hwy 101 to go up the coast. On our way, a large tree had fallen across the road and had blocked traffic. So, after sitting in traffic for another hour, we were able to finally find a side road and get around the blocked traffic. The rest of the trip was, thankfully, uneventful. This is normally a 6 1/2 - 7 hour trip. This particular trip was 11 hours. Ugh.

Overall, it was fun, but not something we're ready to repeat any time soon ;)