CA Day 6

We spent our last day in California packing in all sorts of fun. We started off with breakfast and Mimi's Cafe with the Giglias and somehow forgot to take even one picture! It was so good to see Erin and Bryan and meet PJ and they spoiled us with lots of clothes for Creed. I also had the best pumpkin pancakes. Everytime we eat out, Larry takes a bite of my food and says something like, "Oooooo, Steph, I'm sorry you lost. Your food is ok, but mine is way better!" and I roll my eyes, but this time Larry actually said, "Wow! I think you made a good choice! My food is good, but you won!" Now I NEED a recipe for pumpkin pancakes.

After breakfast we headed to the Orange County Children's Literature festival. This is Creed checking out a baby zebra at the petting zoo. Then Larry decided Creed needed to be introduced to Ikea. I can't believe that I took this picture with my old point-and-shoot camera!

Then it was on to our second book signing of the week to meet Jon Scieszka author of the several fabulous picture books including the oh so wonderful The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, as told by A. Wolf. I'll have to blog more about it on my child lit blog later.

Afte rthe signing went went to and ice cream social for Larry's mom's ward. We left a little early to visit the parents of Larry's best friend from high school so Larry could show off Creed. I love seeing how proud Larry is of Creed.

Did I mention that this was Larry's birthday? Larry's mom told him to pick any restaurant he wanted for his birthday dinner and of course he decided to go back to In N Out. After scarfing it down we made it to see Transformers at the dollar theater, which may seem like a lame way to celebrate, but Larry really wanted to see it so I think he was happy.

Experience Columbus Days

I just wanted to let all the Ohioans reading this know that Experience Columbus Days begins this weekend (it's always over Columbus Day weekend). You know those things around town that you always mean to go to, but you never do because you're not a tourist? Well, this is the perfect time to do them because with a copy of the Experience Columbus Days Flyers, most of them are 50% off. And this year several original Columbus restaurants have joined in and dinner for one or two will be discounted 25% so it's another chance to try a restarant that you've been curious about. Check out the site here and be sure to print out the flyer and bring it with you (just click the yellow button at the bottom).

CA Day 5

So Hollywood has the Hollywood sign and now Irvine wants a landmark of its own, The Big Orange Balloon (although it's not really a landmark when it's in the air). It's actually a marketing ploy for an upcoming development, but there is a giant orange hot air balloon that you can ride for free so had to go see it and take Creed on his first hot air balloon ride. The metal base that you see is actually a big circle that can hold thirty people.

It went up a lot faster and higher than we expected, and it was a little windy so it made us both feel like Larry in this picture.

Once you get all the way up in the air, you can walk around to the other side so here's the view across the balloon.

And only that little cord was keep us connected to the landing pad way below.

After the balloon we had a late lunch at PeiWei. Oh I am so glad that we have a Peiwei in Ohio now, I just wish that it was closer to us (It's like PF Chang's only cheaper and you order at the counter so you don't have a waiter and it's much faster so it's a lot easier than PF Chang's with Creed). Good thing one is opening in Salt Lake too!

Just a few hours later we met up with the nicest people that we know, The Goodlings for dinner at the Cheescake Factory. It's always so fun introducing Creed to our favorite people.

CA Day Four

Larry and I wanted to see Disney's California Adventure Park, and I really wanted to buy some Disney pieces for my Mr. Potatohead collection that they only sell there and Disneyworld, but we didn't want to spend a whole day there with Creed because they have a lot of bigger rides that we prefer to ride for the first time together so we picked up shopping passes. You can get Shopping passes to spend an hour in any of the Disney Parks and the best part is, it's free! They actually don't even tell you not to ride any rides, but we didn't because we really were shopping. It was the perfect amount of time to shop a little and walk around a good portion of the Park.They have a really fun kids area with A Bugs Life theme. Everything is huge so you feel like a tiny bug.As long as we were in the area, we checked out Downtown Disney for some more shopping. Creed tried to convince us to buy him these glasses.And Larry tried to convince me that he could use enough Legos to build a giraffe like this (I couldn't even fit the whole thing in a picture).Then we picked up Larry's mom and went to Sprinkles for some delicious cupcakes. Those little dots indicate what flavor they are. Clever, eh?

And last, but not least Larry's mom babysat Creed so we could go see Hairspray at the Dollar Theater. If you haven't seen it, you should. You leave the theater smiling and singing.

Reminder

Just a reminder to anyone in the Ohio area:

Only 14 more days until the Circleville Pumpkin Show!!!!!! It's not to be missed!!!!!! This year I heard they are selling pumpkin Buckeyes, something I think I must try!

CA Day Three - Creed goes to the beach

Larry's mom took Wednesday off of work to spend the day with us. We decided to take Creed to the beach behind the Montage hotel in Laguna Beach. We weren't sure what Creed would think about it, but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

At least until he tried to eat the sand . . .After the beach we picked up lunch at In N Out (which was at the top of Larry's list of things we must do while in California). Then Larry's mom took us to tour three of Standard Pacific's model homes at their new development, The Tides (she works for Standard Pacific). Umm. . . WOW! Larry came out of the first one and said that if he could go back in time and specialize in interventional cardiology he would because even though his job would bite, it would be worth it to come home to that house every day. The pictures on their web site don't even begin to do it justice. If only we had an extra $7,000,000.00!

We ended the day shopping on Balboa Island. I love Balboa Island. I love just walking around looking at all of the fun vacation homes and browsing through the stores. We stopped to get some famous Balboa Bars while we were there too. They take a brick on vanilla ice cream on a stick and then they dip it in chocolate and roll it in whatever toppings you request. Yum!

CA Day Two

What better way to try to top day one of our trip than to spend the day at the happiest place on Earth, DISNEYLAND! We thought Creed was really too young to appreciate Disneyland, but we went for our own enjoyment and were surprised at how excited and happy he was all day.

We've never been there in the fall before so we were impressed that the whole park was decked out for Halloween

I think the real reason behind the trip is that Larry LOVES The Nightmare Before Christmas and every Halloween, the Haunted Mansion (Larry favorite place on Earth) is converted to a Nightmare Before Christmas theme.

SPOOKY!

We had a great day. The weather was perfect, but since it was Tuesday there were hardly any lines. Disney has a Baby Swap program for all of their rides with height requirement. You check in with the cast member at the beginning of the ride and then one parent rides while the other waits at the exit with the baby (or babies) and when first parent gets off of the ride the hand the second parent the Baby Swap pass and the second parent walks straight up the exit and hops on the ride without waiting in line. We were happy to spend the day with Creed, but we did Baby Swap to check out the new Space Mountain, which was really fun.

Creed seemed to enjoy all of the rides and never looked scared.

His favorite ride (besides the tram ride to and from the parking garage) was It's a Small World. I've always thought that ride was lame, but it was totally different being there as a parent and watching how interest Creed was. Here he is on the boat staring intensely at the building.And here I am unsuspecting that I'm about to receive a big slimy kiss.It was a magical day. We stayed until the park closed.

Creed in his baby mouse ears may be the cutest thing that I've ever seen in my life!

California here we come!

So several exciting things have happened around here. The most important are: 1) We got a new camera. We been saving up and I finally bought a new camera while I was in Utah, but I still haven't really learned how to use it so we used both cameras this week. I bet you can tell which pictures we took with the old camera.

2) We decided to celebrate Larry's birthday with a trip to Southern California. We decided not to spend much on birthdays this year so we could buy our camera, but we found $10.00 tickets to Burbank on Skybus and that fit the budget. Yes, I'm totally serious; we flew from Ohio to Southern California for $10.00 each!!!!!

We flew out Monday morning and spent most of Monday around LA. We started off by visiting the house Larry lived in until her was 12.

Next stop, Tito's Tacos. When we first got married, I didn't really understand the joys of tacos from this hole in the wall, but with Larry tutoring me, I've really come to appreciate it. As you can tell, Larry was pretty excited.It's been several years since either of us had seen the Walk Of Fame so we headed to Hollywood next. Here are Larry and Creed at Grauman's Chinese Theater. We had to look for some of our favorite stars. I found Doris Day.Larry found Johnny DeppAnd Creed found Jimmy Stewart (he appreciates the classics). Here he is trying to explain to Larry the many merits of Jimmy Stewart.And here's Larry trying to teach Creed some of Fred Astaire's moves.And last, but certainly not least, we drove down to Irvine just in time to catch a book signing with one of my favorite author/illustrators, MO WILLEMS!!!!!!! I think I'll blog about that on the childlitbookclub blog soon, but here's a picture of Creed in awe of Mo (as he should be!)
Then we made it home in time to greet Grandma from work and pick up some Carls Jr. Pretty perfect day one, huh? More vacation details to come . . .

Something's Brewing

Have you seen the Martha Stewart Halloween items at Michaels yet? They are so cool. I wanted to buy them all! Like these creepy Halloween party invitations that say, "Don't Forget!" and have a plaster finger with a black bow tied around it. And the big silhouette window clings like this.

And the best part is that you can now use Michael's 40% off coupons on their Martha Stewart products!