Kevin was going to get into LA at 11:00 and the only ride I had into LA was at about 1:00 so I had them drop me off at a coffee shop near the airport and I was just going to wait for him. I spent about 4 hours there working on emails and such. Then the store closed at 7:30 so I had to find a new location to hangout. I decided to walk down the street to see what I could find. I came upon an IHop that was open 24 hours. Great! I went right in bags and all and sat down at a booth by myself. It was interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever taken my self out to dinner before. :) It was relaxing and I actually got a lot done while I was there. Then Kevin called to tell me he had landed I started making my way to the airport when he met me with the taxi which we road to his Grandma’s house.
His grandma was so sweet! I really enjoyed being around her. Her name is Helen. She loves tea and doing puzzles. We went to church with her on Sunday and she was Miss Popular. It was cute. :) That evening we meet up with Kevin’s aunt and uncle (Lynn and Steve). They have a great house only a block from Hermosa Beach which is one of the LA beaches. We took a walk along the beach and up on the pier. It’s a really pretty beach. We pretty much had dinner plans with them every night, either at Helen’s house or theirs.
Here is the view from the pier looking back at Hermosa beach.
The next morning Helen took Kevin and I to the Incredible Café for breakfast. This is where Kevin’s Dad always goes every time he comes to California. It was actually really good. But after eating such a big breakfast Kevin and I decided we needed to do something physical. We usually tried to find something active to off set our sitting and relaxing. :) Some days we went for a short run which was great since I haven’t done that since it got cold and snowy. This day Kevin and I borrowed bikes from Lynn and Steve to bike up and down on the strand along the beaches. There is this really nice bike path that goes for miles. It was a great day and really fun to see all the different beaches.
The next day we woke up early to help Helen at her church. They were putting together Thanksgiving baskets for those in the community who couldn’t afford a meal. It was great to see all that their church had collected and to see everyone come together to help. There was a lot of food! One funny thing was that with every basket they put about a dozen or more oranges. I wouldn’t think of oranges as a Thanksgiving food but they are so fruitful here they just wanted to get rid of them.
After helping out Steven offered to take Kevin and I to the Getty. It is a beautiful art museum in California. We had to take a shuttle to get up there which is well worth the ride. The building alone is beautiful let alone the art work inside of it. Here are some photos of the building and the gardens. It was so pretty! Kevin and I also decided to take some silly senior photos. It was fun. Our favorite part of the museum was the exhibit they had for you to try our own drawing skills. Kevin sketched a marble statue and I sketched Kevin’s profile. Of course being the art major he is, he’s blew mine out of the water. It was still really fun and we had a great laugh.
This is the garden with the building in the background.
There's where we had lunch. Beautiful view huh?
This is me with down town LA in the background.
Here's Kevin being silly in the garden.
After the museum we went back to Steve and Lynn’s to hangout before dinner. Their house has a ladder that goes to the roof where they have a spectacular view of the sunset. Steve invited us up to check it out and really, instead of telling you should just see the pictures. Gorgeous huh? Mom, are you a little jealous? :)
Once the sun went down we had a wonderful dinner that Lynn put together. After that Kevin and I plunked out some crazy notes on the piano and serenaded the others with our voices. Ha! It was a hoot. Later we played cards for a while. Helen’s favorite game is Kings in the Corner so we played a few hands and then switched it up with some Golf. Golf was fun! I had never played that with more than one other person. :)
One Wednesday Kevin and I finally just relaxed. I mine the whole week was relaxing but this was just one of the days we didn’t have to do anything. We slept in, worked on puzzles, and I worked on my blog while Kevin graded some assignments. (PS- that’s another thing I love about my job. I don’t have anything to grade! aww!) For lunch we decided to treat Helen to an In-n-Out Burger. This is a little Mc Donalds with the burgers but they just keep it simple and don’t have so many sandwich options. The burgers were really good and it was cool to find out that their hamburgers come from real ground beef not preformed patties and the fries are real potatoes. It was pretty good. I figured I had to try one since its such a west coast thing and Carolyn had talked about them so much.
That night Kevin and I went out for a couple drinks with his two cousins, Stephanie and Devin. They are great! We had so much fun! They both live in San Francisco and came home for the vacation.
Then it was Thanksgiving! Yeah! All the family came over early in the afternoon to play some lawn games. (I know, I was playing lawn games on Thanksgiving Day. Ha!) We played a couple games of crocket. It was fun. Then we went in for dinner. Helen pulled out all the stops. It was great! We had all the fix’ns! Kevin and I tackled all of the dishes, they were pretty impressed. :) It was great to be welcomed into some one else’s family on such a holiday when you can’t be with your own. Thanks Kingdon’s!
Then it was time to go home the next day, but I really didn’t get home until Sunday. I bummed rides from some of my co-workers but since I didn’t have an agenda we weren’t in any rush. Plus it snowed a ton and so we wanted to go up the hill at the right time so the roads weren’t so bad.
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