California Dreaming

My Man had to squeeze in a few days of consultations in LA before we headed home for Christmas, so the kids and I made the tough sacrifice of going along so he wouldn't be lonely.

When he was off enjoying training, traffic, and meetings, we were stuck back at the hotel just playing in the pool, soaking up sunshine, and reading. I tell you, it's a tough life.

The hotel also gave us a code to a vending machine with unlimited candy bars--we didn't tell the kids it was unlimited, we told them two a day. Still! Also, the breakfast buffet was unreal. We hadn't yet had the buffet at the Conrad in Bangkok, so we were feeling pretty spoiled.

We didn't have a car, but we enjoyed walking a couple miles to grab dinner at an authentic Mexican place. Yum. On the way home, we accidentally stumbled upon Candy Cane Lane! 

It was great. The whole street closes down and each display is even better than the one before it. There are electric trains, more lights and ornaments than you can even imagine, Christmas music, and one house even had Elf playing on the big screen at "Santa's Theater." With all the craziness of packing and moving, Christmas has been a bit on the back burner, so it was a fun way to get into the Christmas spirit.

We also snuck in a trip to Venice Beach. We got dropped off a bit early (at our insistence) because we were so excited to get to the beach.

At the dunes before the boardwalk, we met a local Venice Beach mom and her baby who had brought a sled to slide down the dunes.

They were generous enough to share and the kids absolutely loved sand sledding! Darling Daughter was even more enamored by their cute puppy. In fact, they would have loved to stay there the rest of the night.

But I really wanted to take them to the Venice Beach boardwalk (something I remembered from growing up in southern Cal) so finally we convinced them to leave. The Venice Beach local convinced us to leave the beach for a while, though, to walk through the canals the town is named for.

It was great. Although the water was pretty low, there were lots of cool bridges and lots of houses were decorated for Christmas.

There was a kissing bridge that My Man and I took advantage of :-)

Finally, we got back to the beach, just as the sun was starting to set.

It was so beautiful. There was a great park and we played and enjoyed the perfect evening and gorgeous sunset.

By the time we left, it was starting to get dark and most of the vendors were packing up and leaving. We did get to see a few musicians still performing and a few glass pendant vendors (My Man snuck-bought a couple to give me for Christmas).

We had planned to walk down to the Santa Monica pier to eat dinner and ride the Ferris wheel, but we hadn't anticipated so much time playing at the beach and park. When an ambitious bicycle rickshaw driver offered to peddle our whole family the 2 miles or so down the pier, we jumped on the opportunity. He turned on Christmas music and we enjoyed the lazy (for us, not him!) ride down the mostly dark boardwalk.

By the time we got down to the pier, though, the Ferris Wheel and carnival had closed (apparently it closes early if there aren't enough people around). Funny Guy was very disappointed, but for the rest of us, the evening had been almost perfect. We finished by having more Mexican food out at the end of the pier under the stars with the sound of the waves crashing all around us.

It was enchanting, one of those evenings you just have to grab hold of in your memory to cherish forever.