California

Sean had a patent law conference in Beverly Hills last week. Lucky for me, we had a free Delta companion ticket that needed to be used, so I got to tag along! My parents were gracious enough to take the munchkins while we were gone, so it was a real vacation!

Welcome to sunny California! On our way to the hotel we happened to drive by a temple. Thought it was cool and kind of reminded me of the Idaho Falls temple.

When all of the cars seemed to turn into Mercedes, Range Rovers, Lexus, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis, we knew we must be getting close to Beverly Hills. We felt like we fit right in with our awesome rented Chrysler 200 ;)

Sean was pretty excited when he saw this Bugatti Veyron parked on Rodeo Dr. Apparently it costs more than $1,000,000!

We were lucky enough to stay at the famous Beverly Hills Hotel for the first night of our vacation. 

The hotel itself was pretty amazing. The bathroom was my favorite part:

It was HUGE! It had a TV in it and the longest, deepest tub I have ever seen. Somehow the water came out already hot and there was so much water pressure it filled up in like two minutes!

I was always the little kid who took the shampoo and soap home from hotels and secretly wanted to raid the maid cart so I was pretty excited when I saw these:

 

They are full size! They even include bath salts that smell amazing!

More pictures of the room:

 Our little living room

 View

Walk-in closet

The turn down service included cookies and bottled water. Yes, I ate both cookies.

The pool was AMAZING.  Sean and I went swimming that night and we had the whole place to ourselves. It was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip.

We decided to go to Grauman's Chinese Theatre to see the handprints in cement and the Hollywood stars. When we got there we saw a red carpet and learned it was for the premiere of Will Ferrell's new movie, "Casa de mi Padre." We hung out for a bit and got to see the leading man himself!

We are big Will Ferrell fans, so it was cool to see him!

We also saw these girls filming some sort of reality show. I have no idea who they are or what show they are from, but from what I saw, their "reality" was totally scripted. Anyone know what show they are from? My guess is nothing too classy… haha

Had to take a picture with Shrek to send to Jackson

We went to dinner at a place called "Hugo's" in Los Angeles after seeing good reviews on Yelp. We both loved it and it was cool for Sean because everything on their menu was gluten free. Wish there was something like that here at home!

We spent one day at Disneyland and California Adventure. We went last February but since I was pregnant with Bode, I didn't get to ride any of the big rides. We have plans to take the boys again next year, so I didn't feel too guilty about it just being Sean and I. I will admit though, I did think about and miss the boys a lot while we were there!

 

It was overcast but there was no rain or wind the day we went. It was weird because when we got there in the morning it was like we had the place to ourselves! We walked right on to rides and when we got finished with some of them, the workers asked us if we wanted to ride it again since there was no one waiting. By noon, the crowds had increased a lot, but throughout the whole day our longest wait was about 15 minutes. We did have one 45 minute wait for "Midway Mania" at the end of the night, but that was it. Pretty awesome.

We finally got to ride Splash Mountain! It was closed both times we were there before.

 We LOVE the Astro Blasters ride. We rode it three times and kept trying to improve our scores! Sean was victorious every time.

Excited to take the boys to the new "Cars" section of California Adventure when it opens!

Mmmmm… Dole Whips!

We spent our final day driving up and down the Pacific Coast Highway and shopping in Newport Beach at Fashion Island. Sean got some new work clothes and I got this little beauty:

We finished the day off with a nice dinner in Laguna Beach at a cool restaurant called "The Lumberyard." Cool atmosphere and yummy food.

Overall, it was a really nice vacation. I am so grateful my parents were willing to watch the boys so we could go! Jackson keeps telling me about how much fun he had at grandma and grandpa's. They had ice cream, story time, a trip to the dinosaur exhibit at the museum, etc. For us, it was fun being able to do things on a whim and not having to worry about putting on shoes, jackets, packing snacks, working around naps, etc. As fun as our vacation was, it was nice coming home to their little faces.