A trip with Jake

Jake and I went to Vancouver Canada back in September. Jake was in a Skate contest called The Vancouver Dam Am. We left Tuesday night September 15th and stayed until Monday the 21st. Jake drove down to our dental office in Thousand Oaks and picked me up from work and we then headed to the airport to fly to Vancouver. Since this was an International flight we had to be there 2 1/2 hours early. I think our flight was about that long, so it seemed kind of ridiculous to be there so early. Anyway we landed in Vancouver just before midnight. Made our way through customs and found our rental car.

We had a GPS unit and plugged in the address of our hotel and we set out in the middle of the night. We reached our hotel at about 1:00 am.

We were tired from our travels and went to bed. I forced Jake up early in the morning so we could take advantage of our free continental breakfast from the hotel. We made it just in time before they closed it down. After our first breakfast in Vancouver we went back to our room and decided what we would do for the day. It was raining as we headed out, so we went into the downtown area to check out the sights. As I was driving around and pointing things out to Jake, very excited to be checking out the city, I realized that he was sleeping! I continued to sight see in the rain and lots of traffic.


I decided to stop and park and find somewhere to eat. We got out and found a sushi restaurant and took a few pictures of the big buildings. It was still raining off and on. But we made the best of our first day in Vancouver! We quickly realized that our phones would be very expensive and turned off all internet settings and tried very hard not to text or phone unless absolutely necessary. Texting is a pass time that I love and so does Jake so it was hard. When we were at the hotel we had free internet and I could then email things to Eddie and Morgan. So a lot of my pictures I took on my phone. And here is my big excuse for why this and the next few posts are so late getting up... It is such a pain to transfer pictures from my phone to my computer, but I got it done so now the posts of our trips can begin.

Monster Mash with Morgan's friends

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What a nice sister

Sticking with the driving theme from the previous post... Jake took his test on Monday morning for his drivers license. Wednesday, he flew to Utah for the Gatorade Free Flow skate contest at Ogio, in Salt Lake City. Jake was staying at Logan's house (his friend) in Salt Lake. School had already gone back in session for Logan and Jake was planning on skating around Salt Lake until Logan was done with school. Thursday morning as I am leaving for work, I hear Morgan on the phone with Jake. From my understanding, Jake had left Logan's house at 6:30 am and had been out skating for a few hours and it was only 10:00 am. He had waited for the library to open to have a place to go hang out in for awhile. But he was bored and had a long wait till Logan got out of school. Morgan was on her computer and on the phone with Jake. She was looking up buss schedules and train schedules and mapping a route for Jake to get to their cousin Jesse's house. I amazed at how unselfish and helpful Morgan was about to be. Morgan let Jake pick up her car that she had stored at her cousins house for the summer. At this point Jake has now had his license for 3 days.

It wasn't easy for Jake to get to Jesse's, but he made it. After a train ride and I think about 5 miles of skateboarding, he was able to pick up his sisters car and then drive off to a local skate park. Morgan allowed Jake to keep her car until she arrived on Saturday afternoon. Jake was able to drive himself to places to practice for the contest and then to the contest, making his time in Salt Lake much easier.

Now Morgan's return trip to Utah was not easy... She stayed up until 4:00 am helping me with my YW slide show for camp. She had to get up and leave for the airport by 7:30 am. Her flight had stop in Phoenix that was supposed to be just a 30 minute drop off then take off again. But the plane ended up with a dented wing and they had to find another plane to use. So she was stuck in Phoenix for about an hour and a half. When she finally made it to Salt Lake, Jake was late picking her up and he had kids in the car with him. Morgan was ticked at this point. She called me and I told her to leave the kids at the airport if there wasn't enough room for her luggage and them. Morgan was much nicer, she dropped the kids off at the Gateway shopping center and then headed for Provo. Upon her arrival to her new apartment she was locked out. Her roommates had picked up the keys but where no where to be found. So Morgan with no sleep, a delay in her flight, no one at the airport when she arrived with all her boxes and luggage, was now locked out and waiting on the steps to her apartment. To say the least she was upset and frustrated. But she handled it all with style and finally got into her new bedroom and was able to crash out for a while!

Driving Test

Jake took his drivers license test at the Ventura DMV on August 24th. He used my car instead of his because his glove box doesn't have a latching cover on it and that's something that your working vehicle has to have in order to be used for the test. Plus, at the time Jake had been practicing more on my car then his.
His appointment at the DMV the day after he got home from skateboard camp. As the driving instructors were coming out of the DMV and taking the cars ahead of us we picked out the instructor we hoped Jake would get. Ventura DMV is notorious for failing first time testers. But Ventura was the only DMV that I could get the appointment time that worked with our schedule. We waited our turn in line and fortunately the instructor we liked was the one Jake got. I hopped out of the car and waited inside while Jake showed his hand signals to the instructor. And then they pulled out of the parking lot to go test his driving skills.

I knew Jake would do well, and he passed with no problems. She marked him down for two things, one was not driving fast enough and the other was, not checking both ways before entering an intersection. Jake said it was hard to go the speed limit with the traffic they encountered and not knowing when she would ask him to turn and what not. But she only took off partial points, so we didn't feel too bad about that. Jake is a good driver and I'm very happy for him. Its amazing how nice it is to have him driving.