Sunny California

I mentioned earlier that Br's gift to me for my birthday was taking me to California to go to Let's Make a Deal. No that's not the one with the suitcases, it's the one where people dress up in crazy costumes and pick between what's behind the curtain or what's in the box. I dressed up like a cupcake and Br was "a game show host". A few people thought he was dressed as Obama. Come on people, just because he's in a suit doesn't mean he's trying to imitate the president. My good friend Pfister and her husband Mike met up with us. They were a chef and a dude with a handlebar mustache (Actually he looks a lot like Matt Damon so I said he was dressed as Matt Damon with a crazy mustache).

Anyway, Br did his very best to make my dreams come true. While I didn't get picked to actually make deal, we did have fun sitting in the audience and getting a sort of behind the scenes experience.

Besides the show we had tons of fun. The weirdest/most amazing thing was traveling without kids. I'd forgotten how much of a bigger deal it is to travel without little ones. I mean there is no stroller, no car seats, no kid sitting on you lap on the plane, no kid to try to keep from kicking the seat in front of you, no huge bag full of "just in cases" to lug around, going to sleep and waking up when we decided to, no need to order a meal that a kid can pick at, no need to go to a kid friendly locations, wearing an outfit all day without having a little hand or face smear yuck all over, etc. Don't get me wrong, I actually LOVE taking trips with our kids, but I'm not going to lie when I say I REALLY enjoyed this trip with just the hubby.

By the way THANK YOU JOJO for taking such good care of my kids so we could have this experience. I swear my kids were happier when I got home than when I left and I know my house was WAY cleaner than I left it.

Okay back to the trip. We stuffed out faces at a few celebrity chef's restaurants -- two Top Chef Master's restaurants (Jar and Border Grill) and one Iron Chef (Mario Batali) dining experience. Batali's Pizzeria Mozza is by far the best Italian dining experience I've ever had. So flavorful. We ate TONS but I did have that yucky overly full feeling at the end. MMMMMMM. Our second best meal was actually some blueberry banana pancakes with the best maple syrup ever that we got from room service the last morning we were in town. We also did some "research" at an ice cream place and Sprinkles. Oh, and I decided I wanted to eat at a food truck and luckily that was the only place to get food on the studio lot when we went to LMAD (that's short for Let's Make a Deal for those of you who skipped through the opening paragraph because this blog post is too long).

Luckily for my waistline we did more than eat. Our hotel was in the same complex as the Kodak Theater, Walk of Fame, the El Capitan, and Grauman's Chinese Theater. We had an amazing view from our room.

While in town we did a lot of driving around. It was fun to people watch in Beverly Hills and Hollywood.

We had a lovely afternoon at the Griffith Observatory which provided a nice view of Hollywood, and Downtown LA.

We then headed to Santa Monica for some dinner, fun and games on the pier, and a brief walk on the beach so I could touch the ocean.

Before leaving town we hit the farmer's market (which looked like it had been turned into a high end shopping area since they built the Grove next door). Once we got in there we were happy to see that it still had produce for sale as well as other traditional farmer's market type vendors.

Right before heading to the airport we went back out to Santa Monica to say hi to Br's cousin. On the way out we just happened to drive past the LDS temple.

I have nothing to complain about this trip. We had the time of our lives and shockingly enough we in the vicinity of a Disney theme park and didn't actually go (I guess we've proved we do have some self control). Thanks Br for all your hard work planning this adventure. Thanks Brit and Mike for making the trip that much better. And THANK YOU JoJo for the priceless gift of watching our kids.