Our Last Day in Southern California

Sunday morning everyone was soooo tired! Including Sparky, he had quite the set up, his own sleeping bag and dad's hat for a pillow.

We checked out of the Hilton at noon and drove towards Venice Beach. It's funny how things can seem so much different when you're younger, I haven't been to Venice Beach for a long time and I was insistent on going again even though John kept giving me that look like are you crazy? Turns out what I remembered what quite different! The beach was really dirty and surrounded by street sellers. John has a hard time telling people "no" (this is why we have a no soliciting sign posted at our house, because he has been known to invite alarm salesman, kirby vacuum salesman, pest control and many more into our home to pressure sell us) anyway, we were approached 3 times from different people who apparently made their own cd's and were selling them, and yes, of course John purchased every single one of them, and then was not given back his change, they totally swindled him!! So $40.00 later we ended up on the beach.



Jaidyn was so funny because she wore her swimming suit underneath her clothing but put her underwear on top of the swimsuit (silly kid). Here are a few pictures of the sand castle we managed to build.

Mom's Sand Dragon to guard the castle.


Little Beach Girl!!

From Venice Beach we decided to go to Beverly Hills and check out Rodeo Drive and a few other places. We drove down Rodeo Drive, the street was lined with Ferraris, Rolls Royces and limo's.

Jaidyn was hungry and wanted of all things a cheeseburger and a chocolate shake, John pulled over to the nearest hamburger joint we found called Hamburger Mary's. The funny thing was the longer we were there the more we realized that we were a little bit out of our element. It was definitely a locals hangout and we were surrounded by men that enjoyed being around other men (if you know what I mean), luckily John and Jaidyn were facing the opposite direction when 2 of them were kissing each other goodbye. It was quite entertaining! Anyway, the food was pretty good and while we were sitting outside enjoying our lunch I noticed that a lot of people were getting up and reading this sign that was posted. So after we paid (the check was delivered in a bright red stilletto shoe, hopefully unused :0) I went over to read the sign posted. Apparently everyone in the restaurant was being filmed for some type of movie! GREAT, so here we are in a gay restaurant being filmed! We're not quite sure if this was such a good thing.

At one point on Rodeo Drive we were driving down the road and across the street I saw this dark haired woman, I swear it was Sandra Bullock ( I guess I'll never know). But we did manage to drive by Courtney Cox & David Arquette, Jack Black, Ozzy Osborne, Michael Jackson (by mistake) and Jennifer Aniston's houses. I really wanted to make a trip to see Johnny Depp's but unfortunately there was no time left before we had to catch our plane :( Next time!

Courtney Cox and David Arquette's House

What a GREAT trip we had!