4th of July in California

Our summer was already full of vacations but I decided we needed to go visit my parents while the kids were out of school so we took advantage of a long weekend off work for Jason and went to California for the 4th of July.  We arrived late at night on the 3rd after a long day in the car with too many stops for the kids.  Andrew, Jason and I were up early the next morning to run the Surf City 5K in Huntington Beach.  I wasn't expecting too much out of the race since I had done a hard workout Tuesday evening and then spent all day Wednesday in the car.  I forget how nice it is to run at sea level on a flat course and it was quite a bit cooler than the summertime heat in Utah.  I was hoping to be able to keep up around a 6 minute mile pace but I felt great running the first mile in 5:50 and just hoped I wouldn't die.  A 5K really feels like a sprint to me now compared to all the longer races I've run.  I kept my pace pretty steady and was thrilled to finish in 18:15 in third place for the women.  That is only 13 seconds slower than I was running in college!  I won my age group and Jason placed third in his.  Jared and Kaitlyn ran the mile after we finished our race.

Then we stayed to watch the parade at our friends, the Taylor's, house.  It was a nice morning for a parade although our kids were slightly disappointed to find out Huntington Beach doesn't throw any candy in their parade.

After a barbecue with the Taylors, we headed to the beach in the evening for fireworks.  It was such a fun place to watch fireworks.  They lit up the pier and the ocean.

 We were happy to meet Spencer's girlfriend, Janelle.

As always, Jason had to catch a baseball game.  The Angels were playing the Red Socks.  It was a great game although the Angels ended up losing.  The kids didn't mind too much.  There were fireworks at the end of the game and the highlight of the night is when the rally monkey came out and the kids were shown on the jumbo tron!

At the end of the weekend, Jason flew home to get back to work and I stayed with the kids a few more days.  We took several trips to the beach.  The kids decided this year they were more interested in body boarding than building sand castles.  Skyler loved the water.  It was a little cool the last few afternoons that we were there but that didn't stop him from wanting to be in the water.  When he was up on the sand he would scoot on his bottom down to the water.

Jared and Andrew digging a hole to China

One afternoon we went to Hollywood to the Griffith Observatory.  I think the kids were most excited about seeing the Hollywood sign on the mountain although the observatory was fun and had a lot of neat exhibits.  The kids really liked the ones that had a scale that told them how much they weighed on different planets.  They were excited to see a moon rock and get to hold an asteroid.

In front of the observatory at Griffith Park

Kaitlyn would weigh about 9 pounds on the moon.

Jared and Einstein

It would be a beautiful view of LA if you could get there on a clear day.  Maybe after a rain storm...

We finished at the planetarium just in time to hit rush hour in LA.  So instead of sitting on the freeway going nowhere, we found a Roscoe's in Hollywood to get dinner.  Jared had been dying to introduce us to this fried chicken and waffles place that my brother, Spencer, took him to in June.  The good thing about Roscoe's is that it was only a couple miles from where we were.  The bad thing is that in that couple miles we drove out of the really nice part of LA into the part you really don't want to be in.  We felt safe enough during the daylight though and everyone enjoyed their meal.

After dinner we realized that we had parked the car near the walk of stars and decided the kids would have fun looking at the sidewalk.  We told the kids to stay close since it isn't the safest part of town.  The kids liked finding stars that they knew.  They were determined to find Johnny Cash.  I had no idea how they knew who he was or why they wanted to find him.  (Since I'm not a country fan, I didn't even know who he was.)  Luckily for the kids we stumbled across his star.  They were thrilled!

We wanted to make it to the Chinese Theater where the hand prints and Star Wars actors are.  Unfortunately we had no idea how long the sidewalk went and how far we were from there.  Dad got tired and we ended up leaving him on a park bench to rest.  We kept going thinking, it must be the next block.  Two miles later the kids legs were awfully tired and we finally made it only to find that part of the sidewalk blocked off for construction.  The worst part was that it was starting to get dark, all the people were disappearing and we had a long walk back to the car.    I had to almost drag Kaitlyn to try to get her to hurry back.  The later it got the scarier it got and I started to panic.  My dad was sitting on a park bench, ALONE, (later he told me he was fine since he had his cane) and my mom and I were walking through a scary part of LA with the four kids.  I was never so glad to get back to the car.

It was a great week.  All too soon it was time to go home.  I was a little nervous about the drive home but the kids were fantastic and it wasn't bad.  In fact, they do much better in the car when we are there all day than when they get in for 10 minutes to drive across town.