California - Mommy and Daddy only Trip

Warning: there are no photos of Nicholas this time around. We had a mommy and daddy weekend all to ourselves and yes I desperately missed my little boy but it was some much needed hand holding going on for the two of us. Anyway I was away from Nicholas for 6 days it was terrible. But I guess you got to do what you have to do so you can do what you WANT to do. I had to got to California for work last week and my little brother Mikey lives in Redondo Beach. So I was in San Deigo and Riverside from Tuesday until Thursday and I used some frequent flyer miles I have accumulated to get Keith a ticket to come meet me Thursday night. That is when the real fun began because we both took Friday off to play. What did we do....well let me tell you:

Mikey had to work Friday but ended up taking a half day to come hang out with us. So Friday morning we went to the Long Beach aquarium. And let me tell you, what a great exhibit that was. That had some really cool things to look at, and watch. They had tons of fish ofcourse, jelly fish, sea lions, otters, diving birds, octupus....Here are just a couple of pictures from there on the coast.

These are my 2 favorite pictures from the aquarium: The plant life and coral:

And ofcourse the Dori's and Nemo's: Just keep swimming...

Here we are at the marina in front, they have whale and dolphin watches you can go on, but we ran out of time.


After Mikey got off of work we decided to go to the La Brea Tar Pits. If you haven't heard of it, you really should look it up. It was SO cool. I don't know if you can tell in this picture the bubbles in the water. This is a little pond right in front of the museum and near the actual tar pits. Anywa ysupposedly this is one of the world's most famous locations and still active dig sights for old animal bones. These tar pits were around some 40,000 years ago. I tried to imagine what that area looked like that many years ago. I couldn't. Ha. Anyway the bubbles in this pond are methane escaping from deep underneath the earths crust supposedly. And it wasn't like you had to sit and wait for it to bubble up, it was like soda fizzing. Really strange. Reminds me of those sci fi shows that talk about hug gas bubbles being released int he ocean and sinking huge battle ships, and I think they possibly said that may be what causes those mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle.




Giant replica of some anchient sluth. Wouldn't want to meet up with something that size.
I don't know if you guys watch Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe or not. But if you do then you saw the episode where he was actually here at the La Brea Tar pits. This guy with the yellow hair was on TV. Except I think he had purple hair at the time. anyway this is the "fish bowl" where they clean all the bones. We were there to see them pulling out the part of a femur bone for a wolly mammoth they call "Zed" or maybe it was a vertabra. I can't remember now, but it was huge. The piece Mr. Yellow hair is holding is a broken off piece. They were all excited in there. Pretty neat stuff.

I'm not much for being "star studded" but we found ourselves taking a walk down Rodeo Drive. We were not going to at first, just drive it, but the 2 boys and their silly cars wanted to get out and walk around and take a gander of the CARS that cost 3 times what our house costs.

So in homage to boys and their cars: No idea what this is.

And here is the Bently that the 2 boys were literally drooling over. I see nothing awesome or worth drooling over where someone has SO much money that they need to go buy a 1/2 million dollar car built entirely by hand. But whatever. I'm just a silly girl. We did see a bunch of people running down the street w/ cameras. Apparently they spotted someone famous. Whatever. I will say though, I felt a little out of place walking down the street in my jeans and tennies and Old Navy sweatshirt.



Saturday we went to DisneyLand!!!!!!!!!! FUN FUN FUN!


Mikey's girlfriend Melina met us there. We had such a good time together riding all the rides. I think we spent 12 hours there total. Did all the rides we wanted, but boy were my feet hurting. Lines to wait in line....I'll tell you one things though. Fast Passes are AWESOME!

First ride of the day. and Yes I did really get Pooh Ears! LOVE them.



Space Mountain was my favorite. AND we got to ride in the VERY front. it was awesome!

We ended with a ride on the merry go round. No amusement park is complete without a ride of the classic.