California: Days 5 & 6

So, I know I have Dalton's birthday to talk about yet and also what we've been up to the last few days when I've been doing trip re-caps. But this is the last of the recaps, and it's over a week now so I feel more anxious about getting this one out of the way before starting on other more recent events. Sue me.

I should also warn you, however, that I don't know how predictable my blogging will be this week. It is a VERY busy week 'round here with yesterday spent celebrating Diddlebug, then we've got Carson tomorrow and a total of 4 doctor's appointments this week: my first trimester screen with the perinatologist, my regular 12 week OB visit, Easton's anosmia ENT visit, and Dalton's 2 year well-child with a NEW doctor. See...busy. And when that's all over and done with it'll be March. Ack.

But back to the Cali talk.

So, Sunday morning found Dalton up even earlier than his normal time. Waaaay too early for the rest of us so I grabbed his milk and put him on my chest. We both fell back asleep and I was able to roll him off of me to keep sleeping once Easton woke up:


Easton and I were able to leave the bedroom (being an Embassy Suites) and watch some TV in the other room while the others snoozed a bit longer.

After the included breakfast in the hotel and waiting on housekeeping to come clean our filthy shower we were finally able to drive across town to meet my mom and Lauren in Hollywood for some touristy things. First stop was the handprints outside the Chinese theater:


Jason trying on Tom Hanks' prints:


Easton wanting to pose with Gramoo:


Me seeing how I compare to Marilyn:


Lauren, Jason and Easton over at the C3PO R2D2 square:


Dalton waving at the Mickey Mouse or Elmo guy:


Being just a week away from Oscar night, the Kodak Theatre was closed for people like us. You could see things they were doing to get ready though, like all the bleachers were out for the red carpet entrances and then lots of people walking around the area with various press passes.


Next we walked up and down Hollywood Blvd. looking at the stars on the Walk of Fame. We also saw this Mickey Mouse to pose with:




Jason found the star he was most wanting to see:

It's Mötley Crüe's if you can't read it for yourself.

In the Hollywood & Highland Center. See the teeny tiny Hollywood sign behind us:


You can see it a little better in this shot of Gramoo and Lauren:


Before long it was time for lunch. Lauren had been raving about this turkey sandwich she and her friend get from one of the restaurant's there at Hollywood & Highland:


It was really a neat place. It must be easy to be a waitress there because all the tables were outfitted with multiple touch screens so the patrons could look at pictures of the food and drinks, customize it with "hold tomatoes" or whatnot and then push "Send to kitchen". Here is Easton and I putting in our names:


After you order your food and drinks, you can then play all kinds of fun games on the screen in front of you. Wheel of Fortune or trivia or Bejeweled or whatever. They even had many games for kids. The boys loved it:


The turkey sandwich was good too. Part of what made it "special" was the addition of avocado and bacon and a fancy mayonnaise--all things Jason avoids so he had ravoli. :) But Moo and Lauren and I all got it. Easton ordered spaghetti and made a big mess. We sent the leftovers home with Lauren. But Easton kept this part of the kids meal for himself:


We wanted to make sure we saw the beach while we were so close. So that was our next stop. We drove down Santa Monica Boulevard (and I had to sing it like Sheryl Crow every time I said it) to get there. So, it wasn't necessarily the fastest route but certainly took us past many of the places to see. Dalton fell asleep shortly before we got there. D'oh! But Easton was excited!!! He was planning a big sand castle and sand angels and all sorts of things. It made me sad because he had elaborate plans involving needing buckets of water for his castle and I had to tell him we didn't have a bucket. :( It was all good, though. Here's the guys waiting for Gramoo and Lauren to park their car:


We took off E's shoes first thing so he could enjoy the sand:


And he went immediately into his sand angel:


Santa Monica beach:


Eastie wasted no time finding a stick to write his name in the sand:


Poor Diddles missing out on his first trip to the ocean:


Easton had been to the beach once before. The day he turned 10 months old we went to the beach near The Alabamaw's house. Still didn't get to get in the ocean but toes are a close second:


Such joy from our little guy:








Lauren apparently trying not to be recognized, professional make-up artist that she is now!


I made sure that sleeping Dalton's toes touched the sand...and that we documented the proof:


But eventually he woke up anyway and got to check it out for himself:




Gathering wood, because boys like sticks:


Sharing:




Wonder what that tastes like?


More stick fun:


Right then and there I decided that our next vacation has to be to a beach to actually play in the water one day. I have no idea when that day will be as I don't want to take a little tiny baby to spend the day in the sun for quite some time so we'll see. But those boys loved the beach that day. Easton's hair and clothes were full of sand. But it was so worth it.

We walked up the stairs to check out Santa Monica Pier:


Like most piers it is made of wood and the next day we noticed Dalton got a splinter in his foot. We both hated the idea of trying to take it out so for right now it's still in there!!! Aren't we awful? I just can't bear to un-bury it from his foot if it's not bothering him. We're hoping it'll work itself out soon.

I made a little Smilebox of our day at the beach. Many of the pictures are repeats but there is a video too.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

After we left the beach we headed to a little Mexican restaurant in Lauren's hood. Dalton wanted to dress up as Daddy:


And instead of eating their kids meal, Dalton fed both boys a bunch of Goldfish:


We headed back to our hotel after dinner for our last night and woke up to pouring-down rain!


After the hotel's breakfast we lazed around our room packing up and waiting for my mom and Lauren to drive over. The boys played with their new souvenirs:


And closed themselves in the hotel's wardrobe for awhile having dubbed it "the Superhero Club":


Once Gramoo and Lauren arrived we checked out. The boys had been wanting to pose by the waterfall in the lobby and we finally had our camera with us to do it:


We drove the short way to the Westfield Santa Anita mall for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Afterwards we bid adieu to my mom and Loe. We began our dreaded trek to LAX. Perhaps because it was a holiday, but we made excellent time. We stopped to fill up the rental car in a scary part of town so we hopped back on the highway to a less scary area to stock up on snacks for our flight home over the dinner hour. The boys slept in the car with Jason while I ran in:




We dropped off the rental car, the rain started pouring down again as Jason un-installed the car seats, we took the shuttle over to LAX and then did the whole airport things with all our gear once again. Easton was amazing thanks to his "trusty friend Buzz" accompanying him every step of the way. :) Dalton wasn't great as we waited to board the plane but after that he was fine. They both were. At first we were able to score him a seat but at the very last minute someone needed on from stand-by and we had to take his car seat off. Bummer. But both boys did really well during our flight home, during our time at the Denver airport, and our trip to get our car as well as our drive home.

It was after 10 p.m. by the time we got home that night. Way later than the boys are used to being up but they did great. It's always good to be home.

The end.

Happy Birthday to Dalton...

...from Dalton!

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Dalton Eve

Our littlest guy turns 2 tomorrow. Whoa. Where did the time go?

Poor little dude doesn't really have any friends of his own so his "party" consisted of family and some close family friends to celebrate. And he was perfectly happy.

Jason will be taking the day off with us tomorrow to celebrate our Diddlebug's special day. Then we've got a very busy week ahead of us so blogging might not be too regular. We'll see. I still have the last two days of our trip to recap too.

Anyway...till then...

California: Days 3 & 4

Okay, first I will address some of the questions brought up in yesterday's comments. I don't think I have Jennifer's email so we'll just do it publicly. :) Easton had to sit in his own section of log on Splash Mountain but Jason still could have both hands wrapped around him since he was directly behind E. And he loved the Matterhorn but he is a total thrill seeker and lives for speed and steep drops and such. He expected the "abominable snowmen" or whatever they are because we had watched clips of the ride on YouTube and he knew to expect them and that they were silly robots. He wasn't scared. Same thing with Haunted Mansion. We are not the type of people that find it amusing to scare the crap out of our children. Like, in the middle of Haunted Mansion we are not the types to suddenly scream out "Boo!" or grab our unsuspecting children or something. At least not at this young age. So, again, we'd watched some of it on YouTube and Easton was very fascinated by the "growing" picture frames at the beginning. Once on the actual ride, Jason and I are very matter of fact and give lots of explanations and running non-scary commentary. We're never like, "ooooooh, scary" or "Ohmigosh, he's got me!"...it's like, "Oh that's cool how they make all those pretend ghosts dance around. Look at that silly one over there!" or "how do you think that candle is floating like that?" and "Oh watch this, when we look in the mirror it's going to look like there's a ghost in here with us, but look...there's really nothing there...isn't that neat?" kinds of things. Dalton's too little to know about ghosts anyway.

So that's that.

On to Friday. So, Friday was a crazy day. I was so flustered...Jason was too. L.A. is not kidding about their traffic. Not that we thought they were but sheesh! So, Friday we had always planned to meet up with Julie and her girls. Jason printed out some maps and directions from our hotel and printed out some stuff he wanted to do while I met with the girls. Originally we were going to shoot for 12 at this Treehouse Social Club just outside Beverly Hills.

So we headed back to Downtown Disney in search of breakfast. We ended up back at Rainforest Cafe...breakfast is not their strong suit. But it was good enough. Then we headed back to the hotel. Julie and I texted and we changed our meet-up time to 12:30. So, Jason came up with this, "If we leave right now we'll have time to swing by and get Lauren" so he'd have a pal to do his Rock of Fame thing with. So we headed out for North Hollywood and made excellent time. Got a little lost because Lauren doesn't know the area and we didn't get a map for it but we got there. Diddles fell asleep on the way.

Wasn't he surprised to wake up and suddenly find Auntie Lauren shoved in between him and Bubba in the back seat! :) And actually Easton eventually fell asleep too.

So from North Hollywood we headed down the dreaded 405 towards where we'd be meeting Julie. But our directions were from another part of town, the traffic was awful, it was pouring down rain slowing things down even more that it was, like, 1:30 before we ever ended up at the spot. I felt awful! Julie was amazing though. She's super sweet and had already treated the boys' admission. But that's not all. Her girls also made little Valentines for my boys complete with a stuffed puppy dog for each with a bag of gummi bears tied around it's neck. And, she gave us a "Congratulations" card on the pregnancy and Fin's first and only present: a sweet little teddy bear with a pink bow. ;) Later Jason marveled at how sweet our friends were and was like, "Wow you just showed up all empty-handed like a bunch of rude Coloradans." Yup. :(

We ordered lunch and chatted and watched the kids play:








I was certainly shocked when I went in search of Dalton and found him shirtless!


I had Easton take this of me and Julie. The angle of a 39" photographer is really flattering. I love how well it shows off my double chin:


Eventually it got close to closing time for the Social Club, Julie had a long drive ahead of her (Thanks so much for driving all that way to meet our rude, late selves, Julie!!!) and so Jason and Lauren came to pick us up. It had poured down rain the entire time so all they managed to do was drive around Hollywood and drive through Starbucks. No getting out and checking out Rock Star stuff. Very sad. And no lunch either. Bummer.

Well, then we had to get Lauren back to her apartment so she could get Gramoo at the airport later that night. We drove through Hollywood on the way, Dalton sees an Elmo here:


Easton outside Loe's (very nice!) building:


Diddles and Daddy inside:


We got a quick tour, used her potty and hit the road. What took maybe half an hour earlier in the day now took us 3 hours just to get back to our hotel. It was awful, the boys were cranky on and off but found ways to entertain themselves here and there:




It was getting to be way too late to think about going to a restaurant for dinner so instead we drove by a grocery store for yogurt and fruit for the boys and a more reasonable bedtime:




Jason ran out to California Pizza Kitchen for some take-out for us and we ate it in the dark in the hotel while the boys slept. It wasn't too much later that I went to bed myself. Before the fireworks had even started across the street and each time there was a loud boom apparently in my sleep I'd reassure my dead-to-the world children, "It's okay boys, it's just fireworks, go back to sleep" when they hadn't even stirred. I'm such a mom.

The next morning was to be spent in the parks again...this time with Gramoo and Lauren! It was also Valentine's Day and I had some little things I'd stashed for the boys...some of which needed batteries which I did not bring. Oh well. Today was one of the days the park opened at 8:00 instead of 10 like the other morning so after showers, checking out of the hotel (but leaving our car and perishables safe with them), and a stop at the McDonald's on our walk to the park we were off! We got there quite a bit before Gramoo and Lauren so we did a few things in Disneyland that we'd missed. Like J and E did Space Mountain now that we knew E was tall enough. Funny thing is, the height requirement is 40" but he's not quite that tall. I guess with shoes and his hoodie he passes, though. Exciting! Dalton asked to do the Buzz ride again while E and J were off doing things we couldn't do and we did the Astro Orbiters again as well. Naturally Easton loved Space Mountain and planned to do it again with Lauren later. Apparently while walking through the queue, E pointed at some darkness and said to J, "You see that over there? That's a little bit annoying." :)

We met back up and headed for a walk through the castle on our way to Fantasyland:




The Peter Pan ride had closed early on Thursday when we were there before so we had to go back so we could check it off our list:




Then it was over to Mickey's Toontown for a bit and ran right into Goofy!

We did a ride all together and then J and E went off again on a roller coaster that shorties like D and preggies like me couldn't ride. We explored Minnie's house and some other stuff instead.

We all met back up and I had everyone pose in front of a fountain but the sun was too bright to get them to look at me where you could see the fountain behind them. Oh well:


Finally we got word that Gramoo and Lauren were about to make it through the gates
and we told them to meet us at Tarzan's Treehouse. So we hopped on the train and it took us to Adventureland or wherever. And then we did Tarzan's Treehouse:




Followed by Jungle Cruise:


We did some other stuff, ate some churros, everyone but me and D went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. At that ride, a cast member gave our little cutie a "cut to the front of the line" pass good for up to 6 guests that you could use on ONE ride. We saved it for something special later. How exciting!

Once we did all we'd wanted to do in Disneyland, we used our Park Hopper passes to head across to California Adventure to see what there was to see there. First stop, though, was lunch! We ate at a little Italian place. Here is Easton swordfighting me with a breadstick:


Dalton had fallen asleep in the stroller on the walk over so we just tucked him under the table and saved him some leftovers:


We headed to check out a bunch of rides, the highlight of which was Toy Story Mania. It was a highlight for everyone else apparently too so the line was quite long. When we were at the parks on Thursday it was still one of their "off peak" days but as soon as President's Day Week (and weekend) hit it was all of a sudden "peak season" again. And you could tell. The difference in the crowds was so amazing and we vowed to make any future trips during off-peak times once again. That's how I'd done it at Disney World both times I've been. It really makes a HUGE difference.

Anyway, we finally got to the front of the lines:






It was a pretty cool ride, I will say that. And the boys loved it, of course. Jason finally had Lauren to go on some of the more "extreme" rides that California Adventure is known for while Gramoo and I took the boys on some of the tamer stuff:




Lauren and J met up with us again before very long and we did some more things as a group or, if it was something I could do but Dalton couldn't, then Gramoo would stay behind with Diddles. So sweet. And then she treated us all to Mickey ice cream bars:


We did a bunch more stuff. Gramoo staying with D again so the rest of us could ride Soarin' Over California that we had Fast Passes for. After that Jason and Lauren had to run off to make their Fast Pass time for Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Gramoo and I took the boys to the Bug's Land area where I stupidly did another one of those 3D movies with Easton. I'd done the same one in Florida and remembered a lot that I could warn him about and he did great...until the giant spiders dropped from the ceiling causing everyone around us (including Easton) to scream and squirm. Oops. Forgot about that one. So he took his glasses off again. D was pretty much oblivious. :) We then strolled over to the bumper cars which neither D nor I could do so Gramoo took Easton on:


D is showing how he's definitely not tall enough yet:


Jason and Lauren found us at that point:


Walking to another ride Dalton amused us all. He's certainly having a good time:

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We did a few more things including waiting in the very long line for the Monsters, Inc. ride and realizing that Easton needed to poop very badly...he hadn't been since we'd been home yet he was refusing to try.

This was about the last time we saw him happy that day:


A silly one:


Gramoo and Lauren:


We went back over to Disneyland at that point with big plans, including dinner but the crowds were insane. Moosie treated us to a mediocre dinner which Easton slept through. Jason woke him up to try to have him go to the potty but it wasn't happening even though Easton needed to so badly. He was so upset and so tired that we had to tell Gramoo and Lauren we were just going to have to call it a night. I was bummed because E had wanted to ride several things with Lauren and Gramoo, including Star Tours but this was our last day. And at that point as miserable as he was, he didn't care that he'd be missing it for who knows how long.

We all parted ways at that point remembering to stop to get the boys some souvenirs. Easton was refusing to pick anything out until Jason told him that Dalton would be getting something and he wouldn't if he didn't pick. So they each got a "soft friend". D got Woody and E got Buzz. On our way out we remembered that we'd never used our "go to the head of the line" pass. BUMMER!!! But we noticed a large family coming in and gave it to them. They were so thankful and shaking our hands and everything. I hope they got to put it to good use. Then we walked back to our car parked at the hotel.

We put the boys in their p.j.'s (Easton woke up at this point) because we knew it would be a long drive late at night for our drive to the next hotel. And it was. It was made even longer because after we followed all the directions to get to our Embassy Suites in Pasadena we realized that oops, Jason accidentally put in a generic "Pasadena, CA" for our destination. And so we drove right by Pasadena's City Hall. Nowhere near our hotel which was actually in Arcadia and we had to stop to ask for directions. So that was a bit of an adventure but the kids slept through it and I stayed in the car with them when we finally found our hard-to-find-as-it-is hotel, while J checked in and got our room and a crib all ready for the boys. We carried them up and plopped them right into their beds without them ever waking up. That is really saying something about how exhausted 12 hours walking around the Disney parks can make you! :) I got ready for bed soon after that, happy to finally be at our hotel.