California

Jeff and I had a little getaway at the end of April.  Jeff had a conference to go to in Los Angeles, and he convinced me to come along.  I'm so glad he was persistent because it was a wonderful long weekend for just the two of us.

 This is the only picture I have from the entire trip. I never even took our camera out of the suitcase. This is obviously from someone's phone, super bad quality, but it captured one fun moment of the trip. We went out for Mexican one night with two other teachers from Jeff's school attending the conference. We ended up at this super authentic restaurant that had been there for 80 years. We sat outside and had a mariachi band serenade us. The waitress insisted we order en espanol, yikes!  It was a super fun night, with great company and excellent food!

The next morning we were looking for a place to eat breakfast and came across a place called The Original Pantry.  Another cool find in downtown LA with a lot of history.  It's just a little diner that serves breakfast all day, open 24 hours, and they say they've never closed their doors or been without a customer since 1924.  If you ever find yourself in downtown LA I highly recommend you try this place out.  You will most likely end up standing in line outside waiting to be seated, just like we did, but it will be worth the wait.

After Jeff's conference was over on Saturday we switched hotels to be closer to the beach.  We've spent a lot of time in Southern California in the past but this time we explored some areas we hadn't spent time in before.  We walked along Venice Beach Saturday afternoon which was interesting to say the least!  It was unnerving, heartbreaking, and interesting to see all the different types of people there.  I was definitely out of my comfort zone!  It was a gorgeous day but not really warm enough to be in the water, although Jeff would probably disagree with that.  But we laid on the beach anyway  reading our books and soaking up the sunshine for a couple of hours.  It was heavenly!!

Our last night there we went up to Santa Monica and explored the Pier and the shops.  We had some delicious pizza from a little tiny pizza place that knocked my socks off!  I seriously dream about that pizza now, it was soooo good!

We were up very early the next morning to head back home.  It was so great to get away with Jeff, away from the daily routines, but we were both VERY excited to get back and see our boys.  It was awesome to see those three smiling faces pick up us at the airport!  A big thank you to Grandma Lori and Great Grandma Norma for taking such good care of our boys while we were gone!