Hollywood Stars

After 2 solid crazy weeks, we are finally getting settled back home and snapping back into our routines.    August has been packed full already.  We started out the month by attending our nephew Henry's baptism and our other nephew Charles' blessing.  Scott flew out that Sunday night (the 4th) for work in San Jose for the week while I was home holding down the fort with the kiddos.

Tuesday (the 6th) I had girls night with my old roommates to celebrate Tara's birthday and to wish her off on her new adventure--moving to Ohio!  Her husband arranged for us to surprise her and pick her up and then we went off for pedicures and a quiet kid-free dinner!  (What could be better?!)  After dinner we called Brielle who now lives in the middle of nowhere with chickens and stuff. ;)  It was fun to have us all back together.  And, as usual, we picked up right where we left off.  They are such wonderful life-long friends.

Brielle's husband took a picture of her talking to us from the other end! ha!

Wednesday (the 7th) was mostly spent packing and preparing for our leaving on Thursday, but that evening my dad picked us up and we met Patrick and Megon at our grandparents house to eat dinner and swim together.  It was a little chilly but Bridger loved jumping off the high-dive.  He wants to be just like Uncle Patrick and jump backwards. Unfortunately this "mean mom" won't let him.  If you're wondering why, just look at the scar on Patrick's chin. You'd think he would have learned his lesson by now. haha  As Patrick says, he is just fulfilling his roll as uncle. ;)

On Thursday (the 8th) morning we left about 6:30 for California.  My mom was nice enough to volunteer to drive down with the boys and me.  The drive went well and we had a good time until we hit L.A. where we waited in traffic for 3 additional hours to go a whopping 30 miles.  Seriously.  We finally made it to our hotel with the crying/starving children and were grateful that there happened to be a Burger King within walking distance so we didn't have to get back into the car again.  Of course Bridger wanted to go swimming when we got back even though it was late, and so we enjoyed the outdoor pool to ourselves since no one else was crazy enough to be that cold!  I was surprised at how well the boys did.  We only made a couple of stops and there were limited tears until the traffic toward the end.  Mom and I were grateful all went well.

We stopped at Swig at St. George on our way through.  And yes, we took care of those rather quickly. ;)

The next morning (the 9th) we decided to head over to Hollywood Blvd and see the stars.  We made it, found the perfect parking spot, walked for a couple of hours up and down, took pictures of some of our favorites and then decided to drive up and find the Hollywood sign.  And yes, maybe I'm naive but I thought you could actually see the Hollywood sign from here....nope.  So we drove up to where you can actually see the sign and, there it was, with a whole bunch more tourists.  I must say, it was a little disappointing.  But, at least we can say we've been there.  And, it is just a sign after all.

Bridger's favorite singer! (And looking like a star himself in Gramma's sunglasses!)

The rest of the day was spent relaxing, more swimming at the pool and waiting around the hotel.  Scott flew into LAX that night and took a shuttle over to our hotel.  The boys and I went to meet him at the shuttle drop off and we were all happy to see him after a long week!

Dawson kept trying to sneak a sip of Gramma's Diet Coke.

Saturday (the 10th) we hung around until checkout and then wished my mom goodbye as she went to catch her flight back to SLC.  Bridger was in tears.  He was so, so sad to see her go.  We tried to distract him with a happy meal but he repeated "I miss Gramma" more times than we could count.

The rest of Saturday was pretty much a stressful, frustrating, boring disaster.  We spent 90% of the day in the car going in circles and the boys were not happy.  Scott helped his brother move into their new place in Pasadena while I entertained kids at a nearby park.  Dinner wasn't had until almost 10.  Let's just forget Saturday and skip to some of the better parts of our Newport vacation....in the next post.