Pioneer Day Weekend...Zoom! It was Gone!

Pioneer Day is usually not that big of a holiday for us, though we do enjoy Richard's time off and spending time together doing SOMETHING...usually last minute planned. This year was a lot more fun. Thursday morning, we took the kids down to the parade and watched them ride the little hay trailer down the road and then participated in the races at the park. After that, Richard and I packed the kids, took them to our family's (Mike & Kristine's - who are wonderful by the way), and packed ourself for a fun weekend. We decided to go to California with some friends and they were going to show us around and take us to see Wicked in LA. They use to live there so they knew their way around very well.

Let me tell you how wonderful it is to visit somewhere when A) You don't have to drive B) You don't feel lost because you aren't driving C) You get to see all the cool things you probably wouldn't have seen if you were driving because you were too worried you were going to get lost!

Anyway, it was a blast. Thursday night, we shopped a little and drove through Beverly Hills and around town and then went and got some really awesome icecream smooshed between cookies at a fun little shop. The next day was jam packed full of fun stuff. We went to the Garment District in the morning and spent a few hours shopping and looking at all the cool stuff. Let me tell you...that place is AWESOME! I could've spent a few days there. If you've never been there, you should definitely go. Next, we (they) drove us out to Malibu to Zuma beach and we spent a few hours hanging out and knee boarding in the water. This was a blast. Trent and Richard went out to the bigger waves and were getting the crap beat out of them, but when Misty and I finally made it into the water, we decided to ride the smaller ones into shore. We had a lot of fun sliding all the way up the sand and I even accidentally wiped a little boy out once...not my finest moment. It was a lot of fun, though. We left there and headed back to the hotel so we could get showered up and dig all the sand out of all the places that sand gets to when you are playing in the ocean. It is crazy how much sand a swim suit can actually hold!

That night, we headed to the Pantages Theater and watched Wicked. It was fantastic and we got to sit on the 3rd row which was really cool! We loved the play and we will definitely have to come back and see another one there. That theater was beautiful! After that, we drove down Hollywood Blvd and went to the Chinese Theater so we could take a picture of John Wayne's boot prints to bring home for Kayle. We then went over to Universal City Walk and tried to find a place to eat that was actually open at midnight. We were starving! We finally decided to go to the Saddle Ranch which was kind of a club/restaurant thing and we ate some really bad food and watched all the drunk people trying to make their way around the place. It was quite entertaining I must say. We got back to the hotel REALLY late and had no problem falling asleep!

The next day we drove through Beverly Hills (this time in the daylight) and then down to Venice Beach to check out the sites. We walked...a really long way...down to the street vendors that perform and sell and do crazy things and then to Muscle Beach where they work out in the gym outside (which I think is crazy in the middle of the hot day). Let me tell you how crazy these people were. There were people preaching, performing, selling paint splattered peace sign rugs, dancing up on their decorated travel trailer with drums and incense burning, skating with signs taped to their head, flipping over peoples backs, giving tattoos right on the street, and any other weird thing you could imagine. I mean these people are nuts. There was even a guy holding a sign that said "I want to become a porn star - need audition" Is that cuckoo or what? These people are in their own little world. We saw the Muscle Beach gym and there was a Nickelodeon slime truck which was kind of cool. We then walked...a long way...back to the car and headed out of California. We stopped in Primm, Nevada, and did a little shopping. Misty and I found some fun gifts and then we headed the rest of the way home. We were tired when the weekend was over, but it was well worth it and we had a blast! Hopefully we'll get to do it again sometime!