Saturday, March 23, 2019

Exploring L.A.

On Saturday morning, we headed out for a morning of briefly exploring around L.A. before beginning the long drive home. We walked out onto the Santa Monica pier, drove by the Living Waters headquarters, drove down Rodeo drive and saw the Regent Beverly Wilshire (Pretty Woman!), made a quick stop at the Chinese Theater, tried to find the Hollywood sign (and failed-which was very disappointing), and lastly, stopped at In-N-Out for one more burger fix, before getting on the road around 1:00! It was a whirlwind of a morning, and I really wish we would've had one more day in LA, but we had to get back home by Sunday night since the kids had school on Monday. We were gone from the Friday before Spring Break, until the Sunday at the end of Spring Break...10 days of vacation with my very favorite people in the whole world! I was hesitant about this trip, mostly because of money, but I am so very thankful we did it and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.
We laughed at this fancy Beverly Hills poodle sticking his head out of this fancy, expensive car!
The Chinese Theater was cool, but it was so crowded that you could hardly move. We didn't stay long at all.
This was as close as we got to the Hollywood sign...traffic was so bad that we couldn't make it up to the observatory & we had to get on the road. We should have just taken the extra time to find it!
Our little travelers are troopers! We drove until after midnight before stopping for the night, and then we made it home around 6:00 p.m. on Sunday.

Friday, March 22, 2019

Welcome to Radiator Springs

Radiator Springs left us feeling like we were INSIDE the movie set! It was absolutely amazing!! We stayed at Art of Animation in the Cars section on our last DW trip & I thought that was awesome...but Radiator Springs at California Adventure was off the charts! And the Radiator Springs Racers ride is definitely in my top 3 favorite Disney rides now! We managed to get a FastPass for it mid-morning and then again later in the afternoon, so we got to ride it twice. I was really hoping to ride a third time once it got dark, but the line was 2 hours long, so that was a no-go. We also rode Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters & Mater's Junkyard Jamboree. And we ate dinner outside at Flo's V8 Cafe, while listening to music and watching the lights come to life in Radiator Springs as the sun went down! 
We got our Kicks on Route 66!

Watch out! Jonah's at the wheel!! 
His big sisters love him!
Mater & Lightning McQueen actually drive around Radiator Springs...how fun is that?! 
Best. Ride. Ever.
Later in the day, FastPass #2:
There was a photographer at Flo's when we ate dinner & I love these pics!
And we couldn't leave Radiator Springs without a visit with Lightning McQueen!