{"id":12254,"date":"2025-11-30T23:53:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T07:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jshox.com\/jay\/?p=12254"},"modified":"2025-12-08T15:00:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T23:00:52","slug":"universal-travels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jshox.com\/jay\/2025\/11\/30\/universal-travels\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Travels"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hey there,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of spending the entire Thanksgiving Weekend at our house, we decided to take a trip to my parents’ place. This would also give them a couple of days to take Luca to stay with them. All of the kids have been able to do so at some point, and he has been begging to go for quite some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, this weekend worked out to be a good time to get this done as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also, since the last few Thanksgivings have been very costly and not very enjoyable (as far as everyone enjoying the food), we all decided to eat out. It turned out to be more cost-effective than eating at home. Where did we go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Bear Diner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luca (if you didn’t know) has forever been obsessed with Bears. Having Black Bear Diner was something that would make his day. The food wasn’t the greatest. I don’t remember the last time I ate at a BBD. It had to have been over 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway! As I mentioned in my last update, we had the opportunity to eat at Fogo. We did so cheaply in part because of the gift cards we purchased at Costco. That also allowed us to return another night (because we had overestimated a bit). We got a burger ($10), which was a terrific deal with a pretty good flavor. If I had known it was that good, I would’ve gotten it the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hmm.. what else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We FINALLY got our anniversary Dinner (from August). My parents treated us to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Afterwards, we roamed around the mall; it felt like we were single (without having the kids around).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before we knew it, we were off and heading down to Southern California for our final big trip of the year. We stayed at the Hilton Universal hotel, which was within walking distance of the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first night, since we had nothing else planned, we took a quick trip into the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We may have spent two hours inside the park before heading out to get something to eat and returning to the hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take a look at our view from the hotel. Pretty nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do like Universal. I think it’s the best park in LA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kids are most excited for Disney, but I prefer it here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

just Pray<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey there, Instead of spending the entire Thanksgiving Weekend at our house, we decided to take a trip to my parents’ place. This would also give them a couple of days to take Luca to stay with them. All of the kids have been able to do so at some point, and he has been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jshox.com\/jay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/nov30-uni.jpg?fit=1168%2C876&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1083,"url":"https:\/\/jshox.com\/jay\/2011\/08\/28\/1083\/","url_meta":{"origin":12254,"position":0},"title":"Chase","author":"me@jshox.com","date":"August 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Tomorrow I start the job at Chase. 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