Our trip to L.A. a couple of weeks ago was great-- a perfect end-of-summer, gear-up-for-school vacation from real life.
We did lots of things! I'll post some pictures to tell the story.
My brother Abe was home between semesters at BYU, although he had to leave the very next day. I loved hanging out with him for a while, even though I got no pictures. Argh! He went swimming with the boys, and in the evening he and Eva and the boys played a piano concert for Grandma and Grandpa and me (and Uncle Christian-- Abe recorded it to send to him on his mission). Abraham is amazingly talented.
On Wednesday, our first full day in L.A., we went to La Brea Tar Pits:
A display case of, oh I don't know, a WHOLE BUNCH of dire wolf skulls, all excavated from the tar pits. I remember this display case making quite an impression on me when I was just about the boys' age.
They got to look into the lab where people were actually digging bones out of tar, and sorting and classifying tiny fossils. Interesting!
Another animated display that I remember from being a kid-- the saber tooth cat and the sloth both move.
Here's Brigham in front of the biggest of the tar pits. Water sits right on top, which is how so many hundreds of thousands of animals met their deaths. They went up to drink from the "water hole," and got stuck in the tar. Then predators spotted the helpless creatures, attacked, and got trapped themselves.
A really cheerful scene of a baby elephant (although I don't actually think elephants ever lived around here! Maybe Woolly Mammoths are too hard to sculpt) getting stuck in the tar while its mother watches. Joseph is thinking about jumping into the tar and becoming a fossil himself.
Ahh, beautiful Southern California. California has its own set of problems, but the weather is not one of them.
Posing inside of some modern art on the grounds of the L.A. Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Why did they make these things?" my boys asked. Well, I just don't know. To give tourists photo-ops?
Trying to ascend a giant grizzly bear.
"Look, ma, no hands!"
There were great climbing trees all through the beautiful grounds, just begging to be climbed. On our way out, the boys were each allowed to choose one to climb.
Brigham was seriously so high up. I was nervous.
In the evening, Joseph got out his flute that he had brought along so that he and Grandma Frandsen and aunt Eva could play together.
I had forgotten that Eva even plays the flute!
We went to the Getty Museum on Thursday. This is a really awesome art museum in the hills overlooking the 405 freeway between the Valley and the west side. I had never been here before, but I want to go back every time we go to L.A. Beautiful grounds, and lots and lots of famous art.
I'm not sure what Mosey is trying to convey here. Any ideas?
The museum grounds were just as much a work of art as anything in the galleries.
Joseph contemplating a statue. It had creepy white eyes. Joseph's favorite word these days is "creepy," (everything is creepy), so it was appropriate.
Why is it that walking around art museums always makes your feet tired? As much as I love art museums, my feet would always get tired! Well, I wasn't doing too much walking, but I sure got tired of sitting in that darned wheelchair. Looks like Brigham wishes he could trade places with me. :-)
My mom knows a lot about art and artists, and really, about everything, and she explained a lot of interesting things to the boys. From the Getty website:
"The nude woman represents Fortune, or Lady Luck. She holds a cornucopia, flaunting the bounty that she could bring, but sits on a bubble because her favors are often fleeting. The billowing drapery is a reminder that she is changeable like the wind. Her single shoe symbolizes her ability to bring not only fortune but also misfortune.
The man on the left personifies chance. He looks over at Fortune and holds up a stack of lottery tickets, which he is about to place inside a golden urn, a timely reference to the civic lotteries that had just become popular in Italy."
The fact that my boys weren't running screaming from the room in embarrassment from looking at a picture of naked people with their grandmother says an awful lot about the level of interest this museum held for them, and the awesomeness of my mother in engaging and teaching children.
That evening we went up to Chilao to camp for the evening. Two years ago L.A. had a horrible, devastating fire that burned up a great deal of the San Gabriel mountains. La Canada is right at the foot of these mountains (our main street is "Foothill Blvd."), and it was pretty horrifying for everyone to see these beautiful mountains burning up before their eyes. Angeles Crest Highway, the big road that goes up over the San Gabriel mountains up into the Mojave Desert was pretty well wrecked from the fire, and has been closed for the last two years, and just barely opened back up again. We drove up to Chilao with trepidation, wondering what we would find. It was interesting to see the way the fire propagated. There were big swaths of the mountains were everything was incinerated (Tujunga Canyon was decimated), but then there were other areas where the fire seemed to leap from one place to another, leaving little pockets of forest unscathed. We were so happy to see that at least part of Chilao was spared. It is so beautiful up there. I do really, really miss living by mountains.
Our campsite was surrounded by gigantic granite boulders. My boys were in absolute heaven, and immediately went clambering about the rocks.
They did stop by camp long enough to help set up the tents.
Climbing around giant rocks is dangerous business, and Brigham got a bit scraped up. It didn't slow him down a bit, though.
When it was time to build the fire, my dad showed the boys how to make the perfect teepee with tinder and small sticks, and then supervised as the boys lit the fire. They did it without using any of the newspaper!
We kept it simple and had hotdogs and chips and fruit and s'mores for dinner. How I love sitting around campfires, talking and singing. My best memories from childhood involve campfires.
The boys slept like logs (like rocks?), and didn't wake up until the scent of sausage and grandma's fluffy hotcakes wafted over to their tent. During this camping trip, my boys discovered the fabulously delicious elixir known as "Tang." :-) They drank cup after cup after cup of the stuff.
Grandma's hotcakes were good.
Mosey did stop drinking Tang long enough to eat a bit of solid food.
Joseph also loved the Tang.
While we were eating breakfast, a bluejay kept hanging around, scoping out the situation. He was thinking it might be his lucky day, and he was right!
Pretty little thing. Too bad they can also be vicious little creatures.
He absconded with at least half a pancake, when all was said and done. He was amazingly fast, and I had to be quick with the shutter finger to grab this picture.
Joseph drinking more Tang.
Chilao was also a fabulous place to collect rocks, one of Brigham's most passionate past-times. He spent a lot of time that morning agonizing over which rocks he was going to take back home with him. I told him he had to leave at least a few for other campers to look at. :-)
Silly Mosey showing off his Tang moustache.
Mosey looking cute, and Joseph drinking more Tang.
I told you Joseph liked the Tang!
At this point, it was getting to be time to leave, but Brigham still couldn't decide on his rocks.
Here he is showing me the finer points of one of them.
Finally, it was time to pack up. The boys all helped Grandma put away the tent.
Then they went and climbed around some more while my mom packed the car. I sat there uselessly taking pictures. :-)
Look how high up they were!
On the way down, we stopped at Switzer's Falls. This was another holding-of-the-breath moment as we waited to see if this beautiful little gem was also spared. The mountains surrounding the canyon were pretty burned, so I wasn't too hopeful. The road going down is still closed, so I waited up top while my mom took the boys down into the canyon. To our joy, it still looks pretty good down there! I have lots of memories of hiking down the Switzer's Falls canyon when I was a kid, and also when the boys were little. I'm so glad it's still there!
For me, one of the highlights of the trip was the Hollywood Bowl concert we went to that night. John Williams conducted the L.A. Philharmonic in a whole program of movie themes-- most of them his. My boys love and adore and idolize John Williams. His movie soundtracks are playing all the time around here, on the stereo and on the piano. We have a John Williams piano song book, and the boys are working their way through all the songs. And they played every single one of the songs the boys have played in that book, plus a lot more. It was a long program, and he have three encores. It was so exciting, and such a thrill for the boys, and for me.
We got really great seats, thanks to my wheelchair. We paid for the cheap tickets way at the top, but the handicapped seating was down much further, just behind the boxes. We had to get there more than an hour before the concert started, so we could get handicapped parking, but it was worth it.
They only let me bring in my crappy little point-and-shoot camera, so I don't have any good pictures. Enough to jog our memories, anyway.
The Hollywood Bowl has big screens positioned at intervals up the mountain side so that people can see better. That was the only way I got a "closeup" of Mr. Williams. He doesn't have wings, he was just moving his arms too fast for my camera. My shutter speed was way down at like 1/8 of a second or something, and the ISO was super high, so it's a wonder I got anything even remotely passable.
A lot of people brought light-up light sabers, and it was so fun to see the sea of colorful light sabers waving around in the air during the Star Wars themes. Kind of like a much cooler version of waving lighters. :-)
I took no pictures at all on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday morning my dad took the boys kayaking and canoeing out at Santa Fe Dam. They loved that. I wish I could have gone. The weather was really nice when I first got there, but it got pretty hot over the weekend, and I knew I couldn't sit in a boat with no shade for any length of time. The boys had fun! Even Mosey tried his hand in the kayak! In a couple more years, they'll all be experts.
My mom was gone to training meetings all morning long, and I stayed home and continued working on sorting out a few boxes of treasures from my childhood. My mom kept a lot of my old artwork and school papers, and I had letters and journals and all kinds of stuff that I sorted through to take home with me. Talk about a walk down memory lane! I was actually pretty surprised by the emotion a few of the things I found in those boxes brought back to me.
In the afternoon my mom and I went to the L.A. temple, and the boys hung out with Grandpa, swimming and playing soccer and going to eat dinner at In-n-Out Burger.
Sunday we went to church. I love going to church at my old church building. I went there from the time I was 5, till I graduated from high school, and of course every time I go home. There are still lots and lots of the same people who live there and go to that ward from when I was growing up, so it always feels like coming home.
On Monday, my mom had a class she teaches at USC, so she dropped us off at the California Science Center before her class. This is new since I left L.A., and it's another great place. And free!
I'm such a dork-- it took me about 5 minutes to realize that was a cut-out of the shape of California.
We had about a 15 minute wait before the museum opened, so the boys climbed around, chased pigeons, and I took pictures. Of course.
I think Mosey looks particularly adorable in this picture-- I love how he stands sort of pigeon-toed. Don't grow up so fast, baby!
This big dais in the courtyard had interesting inscriptions on the stones--pictures and poems and such. Joseph is examining a giant fingerprint.
Of course as soon as he sensed me with my camera, he had to strike a pose. :-)
Brigham looking pretty happy.
The inside of the museum was great. We stayed for more than 2 hours and only saw a part of it. Here Joseph is saying some sort of spell over this "cauldron" of water vapor.
The infrared camera was a blast!
I even got into the fun!
Mosey serenaded the museum patrons with a rousing rendition of "Book of Mormon Stories" in the sound studio. He's getting good on the piano!
Another favorite place was the Kapla Block station. Because my boys don't get enough opportunity to play with Kapla blocks at home. :-)
The museum employee posted in this area watched with interest as Brigham constructed this dome. Brigham's pretty handy with the blocks.
There were also big foam architectural blocks that Joseph loved. He built several free-standing arches as tall as himself, and then delighted in destroying them with gusto. I tried to get a picture, but he was too fast.
After the museum, our final Southern California hurrah was going to the beach. We ended up going to the beach right next to the Santa Monica pier. A board walk there gives pretty good wheelchair access very close to the water. It was pretty crowded there (Santa Monica beaches are always crowded), but that didn't faze the boys a bit. The weather on the beach was picture perfect. I miss beaches, too. I love ya, Texas, but the gulf beaches just don't cut it. :-)
Mosey found pieces of giant kelp washed up on the shore.
They also found lots of mussel shells. Mosey was very intrigued by the iridescent mother-of-pearl inside.
Pretty crowded for a Monday afternoon, huh?
I really like Mosey's smile here. He's not quite grown into those grown-up teeth yet!
Joseph discovered that the big columns (what are those called?) under the pier were covered with colonies of mussels. He had a great time investigating, and bringing things over for me to see.
Of course, as soon as Brigham caught wind that there were mussel shells to be collected, he was all over that. :-)
One of my new favorite pictures of Brigham. I love your freckles, handsome!
Again, the agonizing decision of which shells to bring home!!
Finally it was time to dry off, de-sand ourselves, and head on back home. It was Eva's first day of school, and I felt bad that Mama wasn't there when she came home, but it was sure a great trip to the beach for the boys.
We went back to Texas the next morning. Our last Southern California experience was our brush with stardom as we were going through security at LAX. We were interviewed on camera for Fox 11's Good Day L.A., talking about airport security. We were on T.V. for a full 20 seconds! We're famous!
Anyway, I loved being home. My mom had ripped out all the carpet in the downstairs, cleaning up the hardwood floors she found under much of it, and it was really nice because I could use my wheelchair a lot more easily. I loved hanging out with Eva and talking to her about high school and studying an offering her all kinds of unsolicited advice. I love you Eva! Thanks for humoring me! I love being with my parents. It's amazing what a few years post-teen years can do as far as that goes. :-) I love that my boys have such amazing grandparents who can do so many of the things with and for them that I can't. I love them so much for that.
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