Monday, February 18, 2019

LA, Baby!

We're just back from a few days in LA. We took our kids (and one of Pumpkin's friends) to Universal Studios. Pumpkin has become quite the Potterhead, and has been longing to go visit Universal Studios to see the Harry Potter world.

Long time readers may remember that when we were planning our trip to Disneyland for Petunia's 6th birthday, Pumpkin thought about the fact that turning six warranted a trip to Disneyland and decided that this must mean that we'd visit on birthdays that were multiples of six, too. I don't know why, but this seemed obvious to her. Mr. Snarky and I decided to roll with it, because with our proximity to Disneyland having a method to limit trips to the magical money-sucking kingdom seemed like a good idea.

But then Pumpkin decided she didn't much care for Disney, so we modified the rule to be that the kid turning 6, 12, or 18 could pick a special destination (subject to parental veto, of course). For several years, I assumed we'd be returning to Yosemite this year, because Pumpkin really loves it. Then she fell for the Harry Potter books and so it turns out we visited Universal Studios, instead.

We went over our long President's Day weekend because she has other plans for spring break, and our "Friday before President's Day" trip to Disney worked so well last year. We didn't have such good weather luck this year, but it was still a good trip. It rained off and on most of the afternoon and evening, but we'd managed to see the big outdoor attractions before it started raining and the rain didn't seem to bother the kids at all. I thought it was a little cold, but I survived.

I'll write up the trip over on Adjusted Latitudes before too long. Universal Studios only needs a day - unlike Disneyland/California Adventure, there didn't seem to be any point to extending the visit to two days. So we also spent a day exploring downtown LA and then a morning checking out some sights in Griffith Park: Travel Town (cool trains, but this would have been better to visit when the kids were littler) and Walt Disney's Barn (we happened to be in town on the one day of the month it was open, and so Mr. Snarky felt strongly we should see it - it is the barn/workshed where Walt Disney did some of his early work on Disneyland).

One of the things we did in downtown LA was take Petunia to see where the video to one of her favorite songs was filmed - The video for Play That Song, by Train, was filmed in Grand Park. Both kids decided to get their feet wet in the fountain even though it was not at all warm! 
One of the things I learned on this trip is that it isn't a good idea to work right up until the time I need to leave to pick up the kids. Doing this meant that we had to get everything ready the night before, and while we managed to get the kids packed well, I got up on Friday morning and discovered I hadn't brought any contact lenses and so would be wearing my glasses all weekend. And I didn't have my prescription sunglasses with me, either. Oops. I also did an incredibly bad job of picking jackets for the weekend, ending up with two pullovers and a raincoat and spending a lot of time awkwardly trying to get out of the top pullover when it was too warm inside for me.

Luckily, I did better on the other end. I took today off work (I don't automatically get this holiday - for some reason, we get the day after the 4th of July, instead). I spent most of my day doing laundry, buying groceries, and doing the other chores that would normally fall on the weekend.

I also took the kids shopping. When we were trying to pack Petunia's suitcase for the weekend while also saving aside some long pants for her to wear for the rest of the week, I realized that she does not have enough long pants to make it through a week. This was a very Southern California moment. However, we're having uncharacteristically cold weather here right now (the highs are only in the high 50s/low 60s) and she needs to wear long pants most days. When I said we should go buy her new pants, Mr. Snarky pointed out that all of Pumpkin's pants are about an inch too short so she needed new pants, too. So the kids and I went to the mall today to buy pants.

All in all, it wasn't my favorite way to spend a day off, but it was much better than trying to cram all of the chores into the evenings this week!

I did get to spend an hour drinking tea and working on my projects this morning. This is my Sunday morning routine, and I just transported it to Monday morning. I also found time to write this blog post... so the day was not all chores.

Still, I hope those of you who had today off had more fun than I did!

3 comments:

  1. Socal dendrite8:41 PM

    Ha! We've been having the same "not enough pants" SoCal problem too. We're actually having some winter this month!

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  2. LOL pants
    Greetings from the land of the Polar Vortex and -50 F windchill.

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    Replies
    1. Yes! We're ridiculous. It hailed here today and apparently everyone in my daughters' after school program had to run outside to see it because most of them had never seen hail before.

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