Happy New Year/Birthday/Sunshine/Family - Day 3

DAY 3 - THURSDAY

The California Science Center is a huge interactive  science museum for kids and it's free! Something like this in SLC  would cost $20 or more per person!

We spent the rest of the day at Santa Monica  Beach. It was lovely!

He was drawing me in the sand so the surf could destroy me!

 

Interesting creatures

 Under the pier

This was such a fun trip! There wasn't much fighting even with all the time we spent packed like sardines into our van. We are so grateful to Kree for spending so much time with us. If we had been on our own we wouldn't have been able to see nearly as much. Figuring out all the freeways was so confusing but she was able to help us get to so many places we wanted to go.

We drove all night Thursday to get home Friday morning so Sonny Pie could get to work by 4:00 Friday afternoon. That was a little crazy but we made it and are so glad we were able to make this trip with our whole family!

Happy New Year/Birthday/Sunshine/Family - Day 2

DAY 2 - WEDNESDAY

Waiting to get on the boat to go whale watching.

On the boat

Watching

Dolphins!

More waiting

It was cold and windy on the boat. Of course we were sitting in the open going more than 20 MPH so what can you expect? Of course,as DaVinci just pointed out to me, compared to coming home to single digit temperatures in the middle of the day it wasn't really that cold!

Pelicans

We took lots of pictures on the boat. What else would we do during the long time in between  seeing sea creatures?

Sea lions

Gray Whales!!!!

We went to the Aquarium of the Pacific which was really awesome. We spent the rest of the day there.

Moon jellies

leafy sea dragon

penguins

a cool hanging wave sculpture in the entrance

Happy New Year/Birthday/Sunshine/Family! - Day 1

DAY 1 - TUESDAY(New Year's Day)

All of us at Union Station

 Juice invited me to go to Hawaii with her for her birthday! As much as I would have loved that we convinced her that Southern California would do. So on Monday, Dec. 31 we drove down to LA. My wonderful friend Kree lives in the area and shared her tiny apartment with us for three nights. She fed us and took good care of us. She was the best tour guide! We appreciate her so much! Here are some highlights from the trip

Olvera Street is a historic street in LA that has been preserved. It had really interesting buildings. We told pianoman we were going to Zorro's house. He loves the old 1950's TV series about Zorro.

Inside Union Station. 

Olvera St. was having some big celebration with these cool dancers.

At LACMA

This sculpture is called Music. So of course it was pianoman's favorite!

These hanging plastic spaghetti noodle things were outside at LACMA. The boys really loved playing in them.

Cool tiles inside the farmer's market.

A surprise bonus fun find next to Grauman's Chinese Theatre was this piano staircase. It really played as we walked up and down the stairs!

Grauman's Chinese Theatre--We didn't even know what that was. It was kind of fun to see all of the movie stars' hand and footprints in the sidewalk. And Elvis impersonators, Winnie-the-Pooh, Mickey Mouse, and Captain Jack Sparrow walking down the street.

Griffith Observatory. They had big telescopes set up outside and inside that we got to look through for free. We saw Jupiter which was very bright right above us.

DaVinci standing on the observation deck. Can you tell where the land ends and the ocean begins?

Cutie on the heat camera inside the observatory.