LA/Hollywood Adventures

My brother, Jimmy, recently moved out of his super small apartment in Santa Monica and into a super nice apartment in Hollywood called Park La Brea. I miss him living so close to the beach but his new neighborhood is awesome! It felt really safe walking around- it's a HUGE gated community with a ton of security guards patrolling all the time- and it was beautifully landscaped with lovely fountains and courtyards. He's kept the same roommate (although they have separate rooms) but Jonny moved to Denver and is staying with Tammy until he gets his own place. Meanwhile Jon's brother, Kelby has been starring as Lancelot in Camelot at the Glendale Centre Theatre and Jon really wanted to go and see his performance. Unfortunately, Jon didn't have fall break so we couldn't leave until Friday and we had to be back by Monday. We invited my mom to go along with us because we had an extra seat and knew she would like to spend some time with Jimmy (plus, we needed a babysitter so we could see Kelby's show sans kiddos). We had a great time!

My mom drove up from Tucson Friday morning and we were on the road before noon. We only had to stop once for gas and a potty break and we got to Hollywood sometime around 6. There was a little bit of rush hour congestion but nothing too horrible. True to bachelor form there was hardly anything in his fridge/cupboards so after we unloaded the van, Jon watched the kids while my mom, Jimmy, and I walked around trying to figure out what to do about dinner. At first, we were thinking we'd get some groceries to make something but when we got to Ralph's my mom decided she'd rather treat for KFC. So we trekked over a few more blocks to the KFC Jimmy located on his iphone's GPS app.

The weather felt amazing! It was just the right amount of cool. So after we got back and everyone had eaten, Jimmy took us to a really cool playground inside his apartment complex that had giant dinosaur bones sticking out of the sand for kids to jump and play on. All the boys (Shule, Shazer, Jon and Jimmy) timed each other to see who could jump over and race across the top of all the bones the fastest. I don't remember the exact times but Jon and Jimmy were pretty close at somewhere around 15 seconds, then Shule came in just behind them (my mom was shocked to see how fast Shule was) with Shazer coming in last but improving his time every time he tried. The girls had fun playing in the sand and the guys enjoyed a few throws of the frisbee in the dark before we headed back inside around 10pm and settled down for the night. I wish I had some photos of that night but I didn't think to take any. I'm pretty sure Jimmy did, though, so I'll see what I can get from him.

On Saturday morning, we took the kids to play with their cousins and visit with Kelby and Daina- giving my mom and Jimmy some alone time to shop and visit. Jenn. Whetton was visiting Daina so we were able to visit with her too, bonus. Daina laid out a nice spread with fruit and everything to make awesome sandwiches for lunch. We had a nice visit even though it was very short. We're looking forward to seeing them again at Thanksgiving in Tucson.

The boys had a blast playing the newest Lego Indian Jones for wii. Here they're checking out a free online video game making program Kelby told them about. They were using the program all day yesterday and love it. I love that it was free :) Daina commented about the height difference between Ethan and Shazer who are only about 6 months apart- Shazer's birthday is April and Ethan's is this month. 

I think this difference is more significant- Sally is only a year younger than Maddi. 

All the girls.

Traffic was pretty bad getting back to Jimmy's from Kelby's to drop off the kids with my mom and then driving to the theatre. Then once we got there we had a absurdly difficult time finding parking so we ended up being almost an hour late to the show. Fortunately, they still allowed us in and showed us to our seats. We weren't very sneaky though, right as we came into the foyer, Kelby came rushing through the curtain for a quick costume/prop change. We totally got caught! The show was great and Jon really enjoyed it-he'd never seen it before. He was really liking King Arthur's character and felt the injustice of it all very intensely. But he forgave his brother for being such a scoundrel ;)

More trip to come...