Day Two California: Hollywood Baby!

The second day was beautiful just like the first, sunshine and warm temperatures. We decided we wanted to go into the city and took the 1 hour drive into Hollywood. I tell ya, they're not kidding when they say California has crazy drivers and lots and lots of traffic!!! After spending what seemed like hours (maybe it was??) stuck on I-5 then off to 101 and our exit Hollywood Blvd, we drove into Hollywood and Aaron was completely amazed at the Hollywood sign up on the mountain. He said "Momma, it's just like in the movies, it's REAL!!!!" Well, I'm not so sure how much of Hollywood is " REAL " but it certainly was interesting!! We found a place to park ( not cheap ) and walked around until we found Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I  have ALWAYS wanted to come here and see the hand and foot imprints of my favorite stars.I was hoping Michael Jackson's was there, but it wasn't :( I did take a pic with the imprints made by my favorite actor-JOHN TR...

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Our Hotel in Orange California

I've had several people ask where we stayed while visiting Cali and here is the link to the hotel Best Western Meridian Inn and Suites . I highly recommend this for families as they are suites and they are nicely appointed and best of all they are AFFORDABLE!! Ok, people I am not getting paid to endorse them on my blog but I really, really enjoyed my stay here. It's close to Disney (even though we didn't go) and close to all the major freeways and shopping is nearby too. Plus you get a complimentary HOT breakfast (not just stale pastries but eggs, sausage, freshly made waffles, cereals, etc.) Here are some pics of the room we stayed in from their website: Virtual tour of hotel http://showhotel.com/bestwestern/9286801/flash/panorama11.htm They also have a nice little fitness center and pool with hot tub. We booked thru expedia and since our vacation involved us staying at different cities along the way there and back we got some REALLY sweet deals like $50 off at the BW...

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There's gold in them hills!! On the road to Cali

Bright and early on Monday, we set out to LA, the city of angels. It was a long drive from Albuquerque, made even longer because it had snowed that night before. We were a little dismayed but we found ourselves enjoying all the beautiful scenery. Once we entered Flagstaff the snow disappeared and all we saw was sunny skies above. We didn't get to Anaheim until late that night but we were pleasantly surprised at our hotel. The Best Western in Orange was great. I got a great deal through Expedia and we got a suite!! The room was all decked out with 2 flat screen tvs, a heated pool, jacuzzi, free hot breakfast, gym, the works! Josh declared it his home away from home. We spent the night deciding what we'd do the next day and we decided to go whale watching at Newport Beach. The next morning, Tuesday, we woke to hear on the news that there had been an earthquake just a few hours before!! We didn't even feel a thing we were so tired!! So we set out to get breakfast and it was s...

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First Stop Albuquerque

Our first stop was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Driving in was beautiful. It was fun to hear the kids ooohhhs and ahhhhs with all the mountains surrounding us. We stayed in a little hotel near Old Town. I really wanted the kids to see some local artists. As luck would have it, we walked into a little gallery where a local Native American artist was hard at work. His name is Danny Ramirez and he showed us around his gallery and told us a little bit about his work. Sergio started talking to him and it turns out that he knows Sergio's art teacher Amado Pena!! It was nice to have a real working artist talk to my kids about following your dreams and how you can make a living with your art. He was so kind as to give us one of his litho prints and autographed it to our family! Check out his work here http://sites.google.com/site/studio13site/ Here's some pics of his gallery and the art work he gave us: FLORAL DANCER We did some shopping...

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Spring Break 2010

For this year's Spring Break we decided to take a road trip out to California. Along the way we wanted to stop and see some other cities. I will break up our trip into three blog posts: 1st stop Albuquerque, NM 2nd stop Orange/Newport Beach CA 3rd stop Roswell, NM It was a long drive but breaking it up into these stops gave us time to rest and enjoy these cities. The kids all had a great time looking at the snow capped mountains as we drove into and out of New Mexico. We had fun shopping at local/native american shops in Albuquerque, taking pictures with street performers in Hollywood and learning all about the "Roswell Incident" in Roswell. It is a trip I highly recommend. We got great rates at all our hotels using Expedia. We can't wait for our next adventure.

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Stupid Inventions

Here's something to look at if you are bored. http://www.nydailynews.com/money/galleries/most_inane_inventions__ever/most_inane_inventions__ever.html

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Kitchen Table Redo

I know I have these posted somewhere in my blog last year but I figured I need to keep these labeled correctly so I can quickly access them when I need them. This is a project I started but the hubster (the carpenter/artist/painter, etc.) extraordinaire finished!! Thank goodness for him and his trusty paint sprayer otherwise it would have taken me twice as long to paint this gem! We got this late 70's solid wood dinette set from a lady who was moving- FREE!! That's the best kind huh? For a few months I had been thinking of either painting it white or restaining it and I just couldn't make up my mind.                                         BEFORE                        ...

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Hey I think I live with this kid!

Lately I've been passing time by reading this: I had originally bought this book for Aaron since we have to work on his reading "fluency". He was diagnosed with a reading disability by the doctors at Scottish Rite Hospital. That place is just phenomenal and the staff there is great. They recommended that Aaron read more and gave us all types of materials and ideas on how to get him to read more fluently. So anyways, I was at the place I hate the most-Walmart-and happened to walk by the display of books. The cover and yellow color immediately caught my eye. I opened up the book and flipped through some pages and found myself laughing hysterically out loud right there in the store. The greeter just gave me a blank stare. I decided to buy this book for Aaron. When I brought it home, Josh immediately took it from the bag and exclaimed "YESS!! This is the next one in the series!" So apparently these are popular books. Josh said this guy has a whole series of them. So...

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Working from home Alpine Access

Lately I've been getting a lot of questions on the name of the company I used to work for when I worked from home. The company's name is Alpine Access and it's essentially a place that big companies such as Office Depot, 1-800-Flowers, and others contract with to do their phone service, such as customer service, order taking, etc. These are INBOUND calls, they call you, no telemarketing. I was on the Office Depot National Desk center. This is for BIG time customers, like Fortune 500 companies that use OD as their office supplier. It was a great company. Don't expect to get paid more than $9 per hour and you have to meet their technical requirements, such as a land line phone, specific headset (which I found on ebay), high speed internet, not SATELLITE, a pc that meets their specs and a VERY quiet environment. You have to go through some rigourous paid training and just to get hired you have to undergo a background check including criminal and credit check. You also have...

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FAMILY NIGHT

Last night was Family Night or as we LDS people refer to it-Family Home Evening. We are instructed to have one night a week, specifically Monday, in which we read our scriptures, teach a lesson, play a game or do something together as a family. We sometimes do this on Sundays but I have to get back into the groove and do it Mondays again. We used to do this "religiously" (no pun intended) when I first joined the LDS church 6 1/2 years ago, but as life happens we've been slacking off. Well I decided it's time to get back into the game. Literally. So after cooking a yummy alfredo pasta dinner, I took the kids into the study to read from the book of Ether in the Book of Mormon. This year we decided to read the Book of Mormon backwards since we always start it and never get to finish it!! Our mission is to read it from cover to cover all this year. After reading a few chapters we went into the dining room to play with our new game: This is such a fun game that kids of all...

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