2016 – January

Two-thousand and sixteen.

We rang in the new year at a Hampton Inn, in Sacramento.

It was part of our whirlwind tour that we did of Washington/Oregon before the end of the year. I had to be back for work the following week so we figured to leave on the 31st. The first day of 2016 was spent in California. We drove on down stopping at the chocolate factory (side note, Maryia had gotten a hot chocolate, but it was literally just hot chocolate. It was not drinkable, we still laugh about it to this day! I’m not sure if they made it wrong or if that was as intended, but we have never ventured to try again.

We then stopped at Universal Studios. Why? Well, sometime during 2015 (I can’t recall exactly when) we purchased an annual pass. It was still good until some time in 2016 so we used it. Why an annual pass? Well, we were often taking a trip to visit my family in So Cal, and to pay for a day was like 80 or 90 dollars (Arabella was free). At that time they had a deal to upgrade to a year pass, it was $1 more. We found an even cheaper rate at Costco and did not care about the blackout dates or anything because.. well.. yeah. So Grinchmas was going on and EVERY SINGLE DAY was blacked out. We checked the website once we were back in California and lo-and-behold they had made some time available that previously was not (and it was still part of Grinchmas!) so we took a trip over to the park when we got back. Here are some photos:

Now, the last two photos of the bunch that are listed above are actually from an Arizona Cardinals Game. What game? The NFC Divisional Playoff Game. The Arizona Cardinals vs the Green Bay Packers. The game was intense! Even saw overtime where the Cardinals prevailed by a score of 26 to 20. Here is a highlight if anyone wants to see a review of the game. I can remember everyone shouting “Larry, Larry, Larry” on the way out. The fans from Green Bay were also nice and respectful too.

Anyway, that was a thrilling game. Little did you know we had so much go on in just the first few weeks of the year? It gets better and builds on that.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/12/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of January 2016 to keep chronological order.