We headed up to Parkdale, hoping the house was clean enough to inhabit for Christmas break. To see what happened last time, scroll down to my previous post. If you're too lazy to look, here's a short summary: "When we went to the house for Thanksgiving, we discovered the heat furnace had  blown up so we had to leave but we hired some cleaners to clean the place."
     Now we came back only to find our snow coats, mittens, and hats were gone. The insurance agent had said we could come up because he would leave those necessary items for us to use in the snow. But they were missing, so Dad called the guy who told him that early that morning he had decided we shouldn't use the sooty clothes so he had taken them away but...he hadn't told us! Therefore, we were stuck up there without any snow wear. We decided to head back home. We stopped by Dairy Queen for some much needed dinner and talked through what we should do. The day before had been Christmas so we had a whole week of Christmas break before us where Dad was off work and our plans were ruined. Excitedly, we started brainstorming ideas. Dad finally gave the jackpot answer. "How about we use our year passes to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain Park down in California?"

     We had gone to Six Flags Park for spring break and had bought year passes because they were cheaper than buying a row of days together. Not expecting to come back, we had still saved the tickets and were we sure glad we had! Magic Mountain, here we come.... we drove the rest of the way home in a frenzy. Dad said we would be leaving at 5 am in the morning to get there by nightfall.
Shorts, swimsuits, sunglasses flew into our bags late that night as we got ready. In the morning, all 6 of us were in the car enduring what turned out to be a 14 hour car ride. We didn't know where we were going to stay so Mom finally just got a hotel room for Wednesday night 3 miles from Magic Mountain although we still were looking for a house for the rest of the nights. As we all piled into the 3 bed tiny hotel room, Dad checked the desk to see if they could just let us stay in our suite until Sunday night. The man said no but that they had a 2 bed suite that he'd let us buy for a reduced price. Dad agreed since we couldn't find anywhere else to stay. The next morning, Dad went to the desk to get the small suite key but the new person there said that we could stay in our 3 bed suite and she'd let us have it for the reduced price the man offered - $80 less than normal price! So our hotel room ended up being about a 4th of the price of a normal house rental. It's amazing how God orchestrated the room problem and turned it into a blessing.

     We had a wonderful sunny time down there. Upper 70's and low 80's degree weather in the end of December is not normal, the locals stated. But we sure enjoyed it! Three days we spent at Magic Mountain and another day we spent at the beach, shops, and Claim Jumper before heading back home on January 1st. Bye bye flip flops:(

They had fake snow falling down everywhere and lights glistening at night.

There was more pictures of us in the snow and roller coasters next to Christmas trees but my computer won't upload any more pics besides the one up above!