Five Days With My Mama

When our trip to Missouri was canceled, my mom (with a little persuasion) decided to fly out to Bakersfield for a few days. Before you get your hopes up for a whole bunch of fun and exciting pictures, I'll be the bearer of bad news. Besides the rose parade, I didn't take a single picture of my mom's visit. I kept saying "I should take a picture for the blog" but I wasn't very successful. I'll just have to recap the trip with all text and a few pictures borrowed from the internet.
December 29: Picked mom up from the airport. Her flight got in around lunchtime and I was so excited to pick her up. As soon as I got to the airport and parked, I stood in front of the rotating glass doors looking down the long hallway for her. Once I finally saw her turn the corner, I had a flood of emotions. I immediately started crying like a big baby and trying to wave my hand for her to see me....I'm sure I looked like a total fool. I didn't think I missed her that much, but boy was I wrong. Once we drove back up to Bakersfield, we had a relaxing evening.
December 30: Jason was off work and we knew we wanted to go and see an early movie. We decided on TRON: 3D and it definitely didn't disappoint. I haven't seen the original but this one was very good! Once again our evening was spent with a cup of hot tea on the couch.
December 31: We spent the day getting ready for our trip to Pasadena for the Rose Parade. We headed down to Ventura in the afternoon because the weather wasn't the greatest and we were nervous that the mountains would get snow and we'd be trapped in Bakersfield. We stayed up to watch the ball drop in New York and then we headed to bed. I know, I know...sounds pretty lame. In our defense, we had to get up around 3:00am to head to the parade and I'm a girl that needs my sleep!
January 1: We made it to Pasadena, grabbed some breakfast and hung out in our car in the parking lot until the parade was just about to start. The parade was awesome and I did take pictures, maybe a few too many! Once the parade(100+ floats, bands, and equestrian groups) was over, we ran to our cars to beat the crowd, got detoured getting to the interstate by all the crowds and closed roads and then finally made it to an open 4 lane interstate. We made it home around 2:30 and we crashed. We were so exhausted! The parade was something that we'll never forget.
January 2: We took mom to our church's contemporary service. Our church has multiple services on Sunday and we prefer the "younger, upbeat" service...mom definitely enjoyed it! After church we headed to the movies to take advantage of their Sunday Family Day. The tickets and refreshments are 1/2 off so we couldn't resist.We watched The Fighter with Mark Wahlberg. The movie was good but I was a little disappointed because it wasn't as good as other movies that he's been in. Don't worry, the popcorn and the mini Butterfinger bars made up for it.
January 3: Moms last day in California and the weather took a turn for the worse. We had quite a bit of rain in the valley and that usually means that it is snowing in the mountains. The main road that takes us into LA was closed in the mountains due to snow and the only other option is to take the 101 up the coast. The only bad thing is that the alternative route takes about 3X as long...6 hours versus 2 hours. We kept watching the news hoping for the road to open back up but we decided if it didn't open by noon that we would head out and make the long drive to Ventura to stay the night at Jason's family's house. For lunch we went out with Donna and Lisa from the office to the cutest, yummiest little restaurant. The Guild House is a restaurant that is ran by all volunteers and all the money that is raised is given to the Henrietta Weill, which is a house that helps with abused or neglected children. It's such a great organization so any chance we can help and eat their delicious food, we're there!
They have the best hot rolls EVER!
After lunch, the road through the mountains opened and we made a mad dash for the coast. We wanted to make sure mom could get on her flight. We went to dinner with Chip and Sue and spent the night at their house (thank goodness they didn't care).
January 4: Mom boarded a plane at 6:00am and we had to make the long drive back to Bakersfield so we could go to work.

**The whole trip was a little chaotic. The weather wasn't helping the situation at all but it was nice to stay cuddled up inside drinking hot tea and chatting the days away. Even though mom's time here wasn't jammed packed of fun sightseeing things, we still had a great time.