Christmas 2018

It was our "off" year for Christmas, i.e., it wasn't a year the extended family gets together, so we did a trip to Universal Studios Hollywood. We drove down on the 23rd and enjoyed the lovely decorations at the LA temple grounds that evening, including this ball o' lights:

Our 3-visit $130 Costco tickets got us into Universal on Dec. 24, 25, and 26, which was lucky as a limited number were allowed each day and you could only register one day at a time. The park was very busy, but not miserable, and we kept getting express passes when rides broke down.

We all liked The Simpsons ride, which had you wearing 3D glasses in a car that moved to mimic what was happening on the screen in front of you; several of the rides were like that. Here's my husband with Milhouse:

Kids with glasses for the Minions 3D ride:

My favorite was the studio tour that take you past current and past movie and TV sets and gives all sorts of interesting facts and history. I especially liked the flash flood, subway earthquake, Jaws, and the guy dressed as Norman Bates holding a knife staggering down the steps of the Psycho house toward the tourists.

The live shows were fantastic too: animal actors, Waterworld, and special effects were all SO well done.

There was a City Walk area nearby with convenient shops and restaurants. They also had a big screen blaring music videos with teeny-bopper versions of Christmas songs. They got old REAL quick and made me daydream of an iron-fisted government that only allows Christmas to come every other year.

Harry Potter land is the big draw for many visitors, and it's what got  me thinking about going after the boys re-read the books in spring 2018 and were really into it again. Here's 1st Brother holding butter beer:

And Sister with the $56 interactive wand we bought her, casting a spell to make things in the window move. The boys chose to share the Hogwarts Great Hall Lego set as their souvenir.

It's hard not to take pictures of girl dolls that look like men, especially when they're real expensive: 

We opened stockings Christmas morning, played family Mario Kart and went swimming before going to Universal for part of the day.

Christmas morning breakfast in our hotel room:

There was a lot of screen time in the hotel room. The kids stayed in the morning of the 26th while my husband and I had a date to Universal and got lunch at the fabulous Spitz. I got a bit nervous when The Mummy rollercoaster stopped when we were on the back row, and we didn't know if the next car would crash into us. What if we were freakishly hurt or killed and our kids were back at the hotel? I sent 1st Brother a number of texts after that making sure he has contact info for friends and family in case of any emergency.

We went to an LA Clippers vs. Sacramento Kings NBA game that evening after seeing Ralph Breaks the Internet and doing a little more time at the park. I had found $20 tickets on Groupon that I put in their stockings. Basketball is a crowd-pleaser in our family.

He permed me!

As usual, after deciding to grow my hair out and REALLY GIVE IT A TRY THIS TIME!, I determined it was not working. It's thin, flips out weird on one side, and I'm too lazy and cheap to make it look good when it's "long," which for me is about chin length. Before cutting it though, I decided to try perming it--that's what old ladies with thinning hair do, right? And I felt I had been losing a lot of mine.

The stylist made me feel better by commenting that I had many areas of new growth. She asked, "Have you been through a stressful time recently? Because that can really affect your hair, and it looks like you've lost some." Yes. My husband and I had been through some difficult months in our marriage prior to my August 2018 appointment. Turns out the racing thoughts and up-and-down emotions of all kinds did a number on the health of my hair. Duh! Here's how I looked the day of the perm:

I was glad I tried it. Doing my hair was easy, but the ends were sparse, and it wasn't a look I wanted to stick with. My sister gave me a cut and color during Thanksgiving break--the before and afters are below. Short hair it is!

Bonus perm pic: red-faced and sweaty after playing pickleball, I decided to run a pick through my hair and then took a selfie because I looked so kooky:

P.S. The title of the post is from the movie Troop Beverly Hills with Shelley Long, which was very popular when I was around 10 years old. Remember it?

Thanksgiving 2018

Since we were going to LA for Christmas, we spent Thanksgiving in Utah. We decided to drive the southern route and stop in Zion National Park early in the week, where we hiked Lower Emerald Pool, the first part of the Narrows, had lunch at the hotel that's in the park, and enjoyed a memorable moonlit walk back to our car from the shuttle at the end of the day.

Thanksgiving Day was decently warm, so some of us went up the canyon in the morning:

The boys helped Gramps collect helicopter leaves to throw off the bridge, a fun tradition:

My sister and I (ironically) doing "heart hands:"

My Husband told us to give the camera our best annoyed and frustrated look. He said my sister won:

A few of the girl cousins coloring the kids' tablecloth: 

I lost at Yahtzee. This really is one of my favorite pictures of my mom and me:

Here's another recent one I love that also demonstrates how we both can do Elvis lips:

I introduced some of the kids to Twister after getting a haircut from my sister: 

Kyle D LA trip

I regretted not seeing Professor Blastoff comedian Kyle Dunnigan when he came to a club in San Francisco a few years ago. I again regretted not seeing him at the Sundance film festival when my sister went to his short film and Q&A session. So when I saw his "Kyle Dunnigan Experiment" show was going to be happening at Largo, I planned another LA sisters' trip.

Kyle posted about the show on Instagram, I commented that my sister and I were flying in for it, AND HE LIKED MY COMMENT AND REPLIED!! I AM PRONE TO BEING STARSTRUCK! It made me so nervous and excited. 

The show was a lot more than just Kyle: Tig Notaro, Whitney Cummings, Bill Burr, and Demetri Martin also performed! Neither of us liked Whitney Cummings much, but we loved everyone else. We hung out after the show so we didn't kick ourselves for missing a photo opportunity, but it was a ghost town after about 10 minutes; it was a Wednesday night. Here's the only crappy photo I got:  

We passed the time earlier in the day at the Getty Villa, saw a lot of impressive Greek and Roman art created 2000+ years ago, and enjoyed the lovely grounds:

This is a "herm" i.e., a "pillar with an attached head and phallus that served as a boundary marker, door guardian, and emblem of fertility." Much more interesting than a welcome mat:

These busts without eyes look a lot like the kid they keep in the attic in the movie version of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children:

I booked our hotel on Priceline using the "name your own price" feature I love so much. It was in an area near the airport, and I figured it couldn't be too bad. We were happy with the hotel itself and the price of $72 for our one night there, but this was the view from our window: 

It was in the Inglewood neighborhood, and as we got closer my sister said, "Isn't there a Tupac song that says, 'Inglewood, up to no good' ?" Things turned out fine, but I probably wouldn't stay there again. 

We had scheduled our departing flights for Thursday evening, which gave us time to meet up with my best friend from college at the cleanest and most beautiful shopping center I've ever been to, the Irvine Spectrum. I had lunch with her and her new-ish baby girl, and then my sister and I stumbled across this at the Brookstone store that was going out of business:  

I'd wanted one of those weighted blankets for awhile but had balked at the price. Here at $38, we both had to get one, even if carrying them around the mall and eventually on to our flights was a pain.

Our last stop was the Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery. It's small and a little hard to find tucked behind some buildings, but since Tripadvisor liked it and it combines two of my favorite things, cemeteries and celebrities, it made the itinerary.

I knew in advance it's where Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Hefner, Dean Martin, and Don Knotts are buried. But we came across many others like Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder, and favorite author Ray Bradbury:

Dummy gladhands

I was behind a truck this summer that had a sign I'd never seen:

Ha!! What does that mean? Apparently, dummy gladhands fit pressurized air hoses together to connect a truck trailer or train car to air brakes, and they look like two people shaking hands:

The term could be used so many ways: "Nice job, dummy gladhands!" "Look at this dummy gladhands weaving in and out of traffic!" It may have also come to mind when I was recently prompted to create a new password.

Summer 2018 houseguests

We had several visitors stay with us this summer, reaffirming to my surprise that I mostly like hosting houseguests! First it was two high school friends who flew in Mother's Day weekend to check out our new place and attend a reading by author David Sedaris.

They posed with my scary dolls:

We went on a hike near the beach and stopped at this fern grotto:

and of course attended the show, which was fantastic. David read various unpublished essays, speeches and answered questions from the audience but didn't even mention he had a new book called Calypso coming out! I gobbled it up and am counting it as my very favorite of his, and that's saying something.

My husband went to Canada for a week in late June to spend time with some of his high school friends. Three of my sisters and the 5 kids they have between them, including 2 preschoolers and 2 babies under a year old, visited while he was gone. My kids were in cousin heaven!

We made it to the beach: 

 

Mothering in the forest: 

The older cousins watched The Greatest Showman. (Credit to my short-haired high school friend for the ventriloquist dummy snuggie they're sitting on)

2nd Brother especially adored the babies: 

 

Mid-July brought us my husband's cousin, his wife, and their 5 kids from Canada. We had good times shopping downtown, going to the beach, and playing Drawful and Why'd the Chicken, but the only pic I took was at the Boardwalk:

In early August we hosted my husband's college roommate and his family. 1st Brother was at a Scout camp, but the others enjoyed marshmallows together:

and by the time of their visit, we had discovered the wharf, so moms and boys headed down to check out the sea lions while dads golfed and went to lunch: