And We're Off! School, That Is.

Summer is off with a bang. The kids celebrated their last day of school on Thursday, and I picked them up with surprise guests: my sister-in-law, nephew and niece! They were here for a brief visit from Arizona. We quickly hightailed it in the car, and made the hour long trek to Los Angeles to visit the La Brea Tar Pits.

This place was awesome. Smack dab in the middle of the city is an area of asphalt pits that hold gobs and gobs of prehistoric bones. There is a small museum with fossils of sabre tooth tigers, Columbian Mammoths, wolves, condors, lions- you name it!

The next day, we took George to the infamous dog beach, and managed not to lose him. It was hilarious to once again see all of the pooches in their element. Even better- around 3pm we saw a pod of porpoises swimming by. They even started body surfing in the waves. The kids dug in the sand, screamed at the waves and got their toes wet. At one point, Annie came running up to me, kissed my cheek and said "Happy Summer Vacation, Mommy!". I'm sure next week I'll want to rethink my idea of a camp-free summer, but right now? We're in the honeymoon phase of summer.

That night, I arranged for a babysitter so the grownups once again made the trek to Los Angeles- this time to try Craft, Tom Colicchio's restaurant. We ate fois gras, homemade pasta, pork belly, shortribs, steak, risotto, morels, bread and butter pudding and a blackberry tart. This doesn't count all of the "amuse bouches" they kept gifting the table---- a mushroom custard with onion marmalade to start, a lemon meringue shot glass before dessert and pate de fruits and truffles after dinner. With the check, they brought us all blackberry muffins to take home. Excessive, but fun.

Today, we took the kids to a minor league baseball game in Long Beach. We ate hotdogs and roasted peanuts, and tried to explain the game to a 3 and 5 year old. We made it through 4 innings before they grew tired of eating and got bored. Minor league is pretty hilarious- kind of like watching the first half of the movie "Major League" in person. Sans Charlie Sheen.

So that's the last four days, in a nutshell. Methinks the next week will be a bit tame by comparison.