California Trip: Days One & Two

We headed to Dallas last Saturday and got to meet up with David's parents for dinner at the Olive Garden by our hotel. They were in town for a quilt show...it worked out great! The next morning we headed over to DFW to catch our flight to LA.

Benjamin was excited to bring along Flat Stanley, his class project from school that was able to spend Spring Break with us. You'll be seeing Flat Stanley in lots of our photos! ;)

The airplane ride was great...we had the BEST seats ever. We were in the last two rows of the plane, behind the partition that stored the service cart...so basically our own private area. It was perfect! I used to love flying places on vacation with my parents when I was younger...but in the last ten years, flying has given me a ton of anxiety (flying with kiddos probably has some to do with it). So, the awesome seats were fabulous for me! {Except for the fact that we had no view...we were right by the engine, which is what we saw/heard the whole ride.}

Poor Benjamin had horrible ear pain the whole plane ride...the pressure drove him nuts (even with LOTS of gum). But as soon as we landed, he was all better! :)

The rest of Sunday was a bit cRaZy (and we have no photos to prove it)! We headed to the car rental place (we rented from Hertz and NEVER will again....awful) and spent two hours until finally getting the correct car we reserved. Long story...we were over charged (by a lot) and had to go back to dispute it. Not the best way to kick off vacation. By the time we left Hertz, both David's phone and mine were low on battery. We plugged one into the car with the one car charger we had brought (which yesterday we realized could charge more than one phone at a time). We barely had enough time to get to the hotel to check in and then to church to meet up with grandma and everyone else. We had relied on our phones for gps navigation (which had always worked flawlessly until then). The low batteries couldn't even work on the charger with the gps running. After checking into the hotel, we got lost trying to get over to Downey to church. And of course, we couldn't make any calls since our phones were dead. It was a bit frustrating. We finally were able to get enough charge on David's phone that we were able to call everyone and get quick directions to the church. We arrived as church ended. But, we all headed to Casa Gamino for a great dinner. (And I ran off and left my camera in the hotel in the mad dash....and my phone was dead...I do not do well without access to photographically capture moments!)

The next morning we picked up Grandma and took her over to the cemetery so we could all visit Grandpa's grave site. It was a very emotional morning. But we are so glad we were able to head up there for a visit.

After the cemetery, we headed to In-N-Out for lunch. And of course, Flat Stanley joined us. Grandma, David & I sat at a table and the boys were thrilled to sit on the barstools by our table. They felt so grown up!

After lunch, we headed up to Dodger Stadium for a visit.

The biggest Dodger fan I know!

The boys made Dodger pennies.

The view of downtown from the stadium parking lot. 

After Dodger Stadium, we headed to Little Tokyo so I could do some Bento supply shopping (there aren't any Bento supply places in Texas). I didn't find a ton of stuff...but there were lots of fun things to look at!

After Little Tokyo, we took grandma home....we think we wore her out a bit with our busy morning. But she insisted she was fine! :)

After we rested up a bit, we walked to the little area by our hotel with lots of restaurants (we stayed right by Disney were there was SO MUCH FUN stuff going on....lots of choices)! We ate supper that night at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company (Benjamin's pick). We had a hilarious waiter that made the evening super fun. {Flat Stanley even got his own shrimp boat....pictured above}.

Our waiter begged us to take a silly picture!

On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped by the little rock wall fountain for a quick picture. Then headed to bed early for a good night's sleep so we could be on our shuttle by seven the next morning for Disneyland!