End of Summer & California, Arizona & Nevada Trip Highlights

Summer is always over far too fast. It went so fast, I failed to post pics from half of it, including our trip to the west coast. A quick catch up...

My adorable nieces rocked matching yukata that Aunty Mika got them from Japan. Super adorable. They wore them to Ryan's temple's annual obon festival, where we got to perform at.

This was the group that performed at the obon festival...Ryan's in the younger group that are really just there to supplement the older kids, who are the performance troupe.

We also celebrated with a Fourth of July family bbq, and fireworks in town after so that we could watch the aerial show.

Shortly after Ry had his summer karate tournament and taiko concert on back to back days one weekend, we flew out to CA at Ryan's request. He begged for a US trip so we could do 'fun' things for a change! :-D

The first day there, Ryan got to go to Dave & Busters...I think it used to be a lot more fun to do this when he was younger though. 

Thankfully, the candy stop never gets old. I'm 45 and this is still fun as heck!

We spent one day at Disneyland with Ryan's godmother and my BFF...

Our first stop was the new Star Wars area...definitely impressive (and I haven't seen a Star Wars movie since I was like, 12). The ride was worth the hype, but super nauseating for those vulnerable to motion sickness. ;-)

After Disneyland, we spent a few days with our other BFFs, the Kardashilanjians. We spent two days at Great Wolf Lodge's water park, then one day at Knotts Berry Farm.

Our next stop was to Rich's hometown to see family, and we took Ryan on what he called the highlight of his trip- indoor skydiving. He went on 4 jumps, I think...one of which was called a 'high fly', and another that was a VR over Dubai (which he remembered visiting).

After a few days visiting family, we drove to Arizona to take Ry to the Grand Canyon.

I think partly because we don't have pets, Ryan loves any opportunity to interact with animals. He loved this friendly squirrel. It reminded us of the only other friendly squirrel we've encountered, which was in DC...and the squirrel climbed up his body multiple times to get food from Ry. He loved every minute of both experiences.

After a few days in Arizona, we drove over to Nevada to check out the Hoover Dam, and Lost Wages.

It was steaming hot. A little too hot for me, personally...but we managed to cool him off with a trip to another favorite stop of his- ice skating.

Our last day on vacay was in Los Angeles, at my favorite hotel, where we enjoyed downtime in the room, and Chipotle bowls, of course. We had a reservation at SUR, but cancelled that to stay in and chill instead. It was a great trip that Ryan loved, since it was mostly all about him, for once. :-)