The Birthday Trip.

So sorry for not blogging.
I have been having health problems.
By "health problems" I mean, I have lost the desire to eat anything healthy.
Ever since the vacation.
I ate so much garbage on vacay.
And my body said "hey...I remember this crap...this crap is good crap!"
And now all my body wants is Ding Dongs and Sugar Babies.

Don't fear. Ponica is getting me back on board the health wagon.

I gained three pounds, but I believe a lot of it was from Vacation Bowel Anxiety.

We started off the vacation early. An early flight to Los Angeles. It went off without a hitch. Me and the kids got first class, Sam and Mikayla were in the cattle car. The plane was so small, and the flight so short, that the only perk for first class was to pompously sneer at the lower class passengers behind you, and also the stewardess gave us THE WHOLE CAN! of soda, without us asking.

And I think you could take two treats if you wanted.

We checked into our hotel, and headed straight to the beach.
We went to Zuma beach.
It was fabulous.

We spent the whole day there.
Just relaxing.


I got to just sit there and read a book, for my birthday.

PS Notice my white-ness. Niiiiice.
I even fell asleep at one point.
Then we went back to the hotel on the PCH, and saw lots of really ritzy houses.

I am not a fancy person.
My idea of a good place to eat is Chick-Fil-A.
My favorite outfit is jeans and a really old tee shirt.
I don't need a fancy hotel.
I don't really mind if there is an occasional cockroach, or mold in the bathroom.

As long as the hotel has a do it yourself waffle maker, I will always, always rate it four stars.
Five stars if they give me shampoo AND conditioner, not the shampoo/conditioner mix.
Anyway...the waffles...
First you fill the cup with the batter.

The egg-y delicious batter.
Then, you pour it into the waffle maker.

Then you flip the waffle maker over, and the timer counts down. In 2:50 you have yourself a hot waffle.

I have learned to NOT spray the maker with the Pam, then your waffle will be extra crispy.
Sometimes you have to dig it out with the fork.

Then, the delicious waffle is ready for butter and syrup, and your mouth.
Five stars.

So we started the day off right. With breakfast.
And off to Universal Studios!

It was my birthday. Again.
In fact, I milked it the whole trip.
It was my birthday every stinking day of the trip. HA!
I made up for a lot of disappointing birthday years.
I made the children fetch me things.
And give me foot rubs...

Who's your Mummy, Jayden?
(Yuk, yuk)
We rode rides:


And saw shows:



At one point Sam was interviewed on the red carpet:

And then I got bit by Edward the token hot vampire.

That was awesome.
Even awesome-er was the fact that the kids were so pooped they fell asleep as soon as we got back to the hotel.

The next day, after waffles, we went back to Universal Studios.
We did our favorite rides again.
Mikayla couldn't meet the height requirements for some of the favorites so I offered to watch her in Curious George's Ball-pit Hell, while Sam took the rest of the kids on those rides.
I was there for over an hour.

It was the longest hour in history.
The noise.
The kids.
Getting ponged in the head with random foam balls.
More noise!

MORE NOISE!
The smell of feet.
Sticky everything...
Nowhere to sit.
I truly thought about slicing my wrists and bleeding out in the corner.
Sam came back.
Then the kids went to the Curious George water play area, and Sam and I snuck away and left them there.

We pretended we didn't have any kids.

We went through the House of Horrors, and even held hands.
Then we bought some six dollar ice cream bars and ate them all, and threw away the evidence.
We went back to Curious George.
The kids were still there.
We all left after that, and went back to the hotel pool.
They had a luke-warm hot-tub.
It was perfect for Mikayla, our non-swimmer.
Then to bed we went.

All that pollution makes for some purty sunsets...
The next morning, (still my birthday) we drove into Beverly Hills to embarrass ourselves on Rodeo Drive.

No. We did not go into any shops.
We were truly rednecks here.
May I remind you that we are on the last day of vacation.
We were all dressed in the cleanest clothes we could find in our suitcases.
The kids had thrown their wet swimsuits on top of their other clothes.
They were wrinkly and smelled like stale socks something bad.
I did go into Tiffany's.
I wanted to show Shianne the little blue boxes.

The sales lady was genuinely nice even though she knew we were idiots.
Especially when I asked her to show us "that bracelet that locks on your arm, and the person who gave it to you keeps the key "and she informed me that the particular bracelet was from Cartier.
We skedaddled out of there.
With our straw hats.
The Beverly Hillbillies theme song playing in the background...
Here we all are in the reflection of the store front at Dolce and Gabbana:

On to "Ollywood!"

We drove around the block three times to try to get a picture of the famous letters, and this was the best I could do. Through the windshield too.
Dang, I am good with the drive-by shots.

Another drive-by shot of the Walk of Fame.
All the famous stars in the sidewalks:

None of us wanted to get out and walk around.
We were tired and hungry.
Sam merged onto the wrong freeway, and drove us in the opposite direction for about a half hour. That was a good time.
So we had to get the rental car back, and our flight was looming.
And then it ended...our LA extravaganza.
Thus ended my four day birthday.

And we are back to our normal character-free/ waffle-free life.