On Thursday morning, I woke up and thought for a split second, “Where am I?” Then I felt the cheap sheets of the bed and overly stuffed pillow beneath my head and remembered. Oh yeah, I’m in LA. Buena Park, to be exact, one block from Knotts Berry Farm and Medieval Times (hooray!).

Because we sat through a few hours of a high-pressured timeshare presentation earlier this year in Seattle, we received a free flight to Anaheim and two nights’ lodging. But because we were too cheap to upgrade our “free” package, we ended up with one of the crappiest itineraries ever. We arrived in LA at 11 p.m. Wednesday night, spent all day Thursday there, and flew out at 7 a.m. on Friday (we woke up at 3:30 to return our rental car. *groan*). Since Heather and Eugene were visiting Seattle and wanted to go to Vancouver, we drove up to Canada later that day.

Going back for a day was worth it, though. The pure shock on our parents’ faces was priceless. Sarah had arranged for everyone to be home for dinner that night, telling her parents that she and her bf wanted to take them out for dinner. What a way to put your parents into misery, wondering why their teenage daughter and her bf would want to take them out for dinner. As we pulled up to Matt’s parents’ home, Matt called mom so that when we appeared in the backyard (where she was sitting), she still had the phone up to her ear. Her jaw just fell and she was speechless for a few seconds. She knew we were supposed to be in Seattle, so how could we be standing before her? It was great. Jon and dad were equally surprised. I love it when surprises actually work. (Thanks, Sarah!)

We even got to squeeze in lunch at The Hat (one of Matt’s top restaurants unique to the LA area), left a note on Trish and Rob’s door, met the Manguys’ new baby, caught up with Brenda and Kevin (the newlyweds whose wedding we attended last month), and had about 10 minutes with Dave (after he crawled out his bedroom window).

Our time in Vancouver with the Lees was actually just time in Richmond, the Monterey Park of Vancouver. The Lees–especially Eugene–are crazy about cheap Chinese food, so one meal was followed by another meal until there were no more hours in the day. You think I’m crazy about boba? Heather had TWO in one day. I’ve NEVER done that before. The only time we spent in Vancouver was at the hotel to sleep, and the Lees didn’t even care to see the city. They had good, cheap Chinese food on the brain, so that’s what they got. It was fun hanging out with them and catching up, since I can’t even remember the last time we hung out or even saw them.

Until Christmastime, this is our last bit of traveling and our last visitors…as far as we know.