Santa Clarita, California

Ok, so we made it California. It took about three days of driving 7 hours a day. It really wasn't too bad. We had a good time. Matt bought some books about route 66 that we followed the whole way. It was fun reading about the little towns we passed thought and seeing things like the leaning tower of Texas. (that would be a huge leaning water tower) I had never been to New Mexico or Arizona. Arizona is beautiful! We even got to see a ghost town on the Texas/New Mexico border and an old mining town where Clark Gable honeymooned in Arizona. We had a good time!
Once here in Santa Clarita we went to the warner brothers studio with a man from Real Life Church. He works on the lot so we got a private tour!! The only actor we saw was Scott Grimes from ER. He is the red headed doctor who is a real pain and I think he is the head of the ER now or something but I can't think of his caracters name. We saw him in this coffee shop where we started out. Pretty cool begining!
We got to see the prop house and costume house. Crazy huge! The costume house had so many of everything it is hard to even describe. We got to see the ER ambulance bay, an ER set, a bunch of cars like the General Lee, Mystery Machine, Bat Mobile, etc. We also saw a museum with a bunch of costumes that different actors had worn over the years like Erkel, Friends Gilmore Girls and the West Wing. We also got to see Stars Hallow!!!! I was so excited. We took pictures of Luke's dinner, Miss. Patty's, Dossies basically anywhere on the city square. We didn't get to see Lorali's house or anything like that because they were taping. I kept my eyes peeled while we were there but I guess they were working because we never saw them.
After all that we went to see a live taping of Joey. Again, so much fun! They handed out pizza, water and candy to the audiance throughout. We were in the taping about 4-5 hours so they wanted to keep us happy. There were give-a-ways but all we won was a door hanger that says "Don't disturb watching Joey"....kinda funny. The actors were great and really so fun to watch. We didn't get to take any pictures of Joey. They took our camera's at the door. We did get Matt LaBlanc's autograph so that will be a fun scrapbook page!Thursday, January 26, 2006
Ok, so we made it California. It took about three days of driving 7 hours a day. It really wasn't too bad. We had a good time. Matt bought some books about route 66 that we followed the whole way. It was fun reading about the little towns we passed thought and seeing things like the leaning tower of Texas. (that would be a huge leaning water tower) I had never been to New Mexico or Arizona. Arizona is beautiful! We even got to see a ghost town on the Texas/New Mexico border and an old mining town where Clark Gable honeymooned in Arizona. We had a good time!
Monday night we spent the evening with Michael and Beth. They picked us up and drove to Pasadena. We walked around a little bit and Michael showed us where he goes to school. It really is a pretty cool campus. Then we happend on to this little toy shop that had all these old toys in it. We were walking around calling out "I had this when I was a kid"! Everything was in the old packaging...it was really cool. We happend onto some view masters and we found one with pics of Italy! So we bought it for our display table. We also picked up some pop rocks and walked around eating those when we left. We ended up at PF Changs. This wonderful chinese restaurant. We were all so hungry that we ordered lots of food and all shared. I couldn't even pick what was my favorite food that we ate it was all so good. Then we went back to Michael and Beth's apartament. They have a very nice apartament and we looked at pictures. Matt showed Michael some pics of Pratola where their grandfather is from. Then we were looking at pics of when Michael was in high school that Matt had. We laughed and laughed and just really had a good time all evening.
Tuesday we went to the Jay Leno show! They tape it in the afternoon and unlike the Joey show Jay Leno only took an hour. They tape it in real time. The sound stage was so cool. Way smaller than we expected but so cool! Jay came out before it all started and told jokes and answered questions. Then this guy came out to warm up the audiance, give some gifts and tell us what to do when. The show was so fun! We saw Dominic, one of the guys from lost, an actrice from the show bones and a really good Christian band but I already forgot their name......POD I think.
The next day Amy Stoms took me to get a much needed haircut. I hadn't gotten my hair cut since we were in Italy and it was starting to get a bit shaggy. So we got that taken care of and then we went shopping. We had decided to fix an authentic Italian meal for the Storms, their life group and the Defazios. So we headed to this Italian import store, Maria's. It was great! I got several ingredients that were just what I would buy in Ancona. We fixed dinner and everyone loved it. Good times.
Wednesday morning we headed out of town but Matt and I stopped at this historical spot on the way out of town. There was an old school house that was so cool! It only fit about four desks inside. There were also houses, a train station, a church, an outhouse and another school. Fun stuff! Then we drove to Universal City just outside of Universal studios and had lunch.
Today we are in Oceanside, California with John and Judy Webb. Today we are going to the college that John works at and Matt is teaching a class. Of course, John is letting us drive his convertable....how fun is that?????