Not JUST Another Road Trip

Well, it wouldn’t be summertime without a road trip… and this weekend Kristina and Kevin (along with a half-dozen or so of our closest friends) hopped into their cars and made a trek down to southern California for the weekend to see the sights, and of course, visit ME.

I thought I’d share a few of the pictures (taken by Jeremy, of course) and give everyone a quick rundown of the fun times that we had…despite the many misadventures we had getting stuck in traffic, getting lost in the not-so-safe areas of L.A., being pretty hot, and staying up WAY too late.

First, we all met up at Bruce’s parent’s house in Diamond Bar for a big sleepover on Friday night. Of course we stayed up til 2:30am catching up, recounting good times at K&K’s wedding (our last big trip together), and making fun of each other…which is always entertaining. Kristina and I got up early Saturday morning and took a nice hilly run around Diamond Bar before rallying the troops to get packed in cars and head down to the Getty museum. At the Getty we went on a tour of the Collections and checked out the views. I think we were all most impressed by the Impressionists (as is to be expected) as well as some of the fun European art work of from Louis XIV’s time.

Next we headed over to Westwood (the location of many a movie premiere) and opted for The Corner Bakery for lunch and, of course, a stop at Diddy Riese for some ice cream cookies sandwiches. Yummy!!

Following Diddy Riese we all caravanned over to Venice Beach, in lots of traffic, with the goal of finding a pair of L.A. sunglasses for Kristina. After many stops trying to decide between the $4 and $6 sunglasses, Kristina found a pair she liked. We met up with the rest of the crew, and checked out the crazy people that make Venice Beach unique…and there were quite a lot of them.

After Venice we headed down to the Home Depot Center for the MLA soccer game (Chivas USA vs. LA Galaxy). We got lost on the way there and got to see some of the nice sights in Carson. One highlight of this game was that Kevin was able to work his magic and score a free ticket, since we were short one for Jeremy. Luckily for me, Kevin also was able to give us all a play-by-play throughout the game of highlights, history, and commentary, thus keeping the game MUCH more interesting.

We headed back up to Santa Monica after the soccer game, taking one small unplanned detour through downtown Los Angeles where we saw what appeared to be a drug bust of sorts. We headed over to the Pier and got on the Ferris Wheel so we could take in the views of the city and ocean at night (which is always my favorite thing to do in Santa Monica). Since we were starving we then headed over to the Promenade for some yummy pizza and to find our friends. Finally around midnight we started the long trek back to Diamond Bar (which involved another small detour through the not-so-nice areas of East L.A. and lots of traffic on the 60). When we got back to Bruce’s we were surprised by a plate of cookies, created by Bruce’s mom, and tried to stay up and chat once again…but it was too late and we all fell asleep pretty quick.

Sunday morning, before heading our separate ways, we made an appearance at Bruce’s ward for sacrament meeting…which involved a talk from a Reese Witherspoon look-a-like and lots of droopy heads as everyone on our bench tried in vain to stay awake. We took a picture to remember the trip and I headed back to L.A and the rest of the crew headed back to Bruce’s and then later, back to Palo Alto.

Overall, it was a great weekend of fun, sun, friends, and food…as well as a lot of traffic and wrong turns. But, we’re lucky to have such a great group of friends and it made the trip even that much better to see everyone. Hope everyone has a great week!

p.s. The little pic is from this year's trip and the big pic is from last year's.