PART FOUR...The END of our Vacation!
Valentine's Day was our last "real" day of vacation in California. We spent it with the Buckleys and went into downtown Los Angeles to the Natural History Museum. Henry had been asking for awhile when can we go see dinosaurs. Julie thought ahead and this museum visit was part of our Christmas gift from them. Thanks, Julie!
It was warm enough for shorts and capri's at 80 degrees.
Henry and Benjamin checking out some dino bones.
The first part of the museum we walked through had a bunch of animal exhibits. This was quite confusing to Henry like it was for Benjamin when he first visited a few years ago. I think Benjamin's comments following his first visit to the museum was, "we saw a lot of dead animals."
Henry and Cedric enjoyed the Dinosaur Hall exhibit.
We ate lunch outside in a nice picnic area. Benjamin is always busy!
Emma, Benjamin and Cedric in a cool tree.
Oldest and youngest sisters
Ahhh, Benjamin is going to be eaten by the dinosaur!
After lunch we headed back into the museum and checked out the Nature Lab exhibit. This had some neat stuff such as turtles, birds, geckos, bull frogs and interactive stations and some yucky stuff like snakes, spiders and rats too.
There were a couple of giant walls with all kinds of fun facts about California:
After we finished exploring the Nature Lab we headed outside to the Nature Garden area. While outside we saw an airplane sky writing, "I love (a heart) Julia. Julie was in great suspense thinking it was her name. The kids happily walked around barefoot in a very shallow fountain. We didn't get any pictures in this section either...oops.
After we finally got the kids back inside we went to the Museum Shop and then our last stop was the Gem and Minerals exhibit.
Henry's favorite mineral is the black one.
This mineral looked like it had cotton balls growing out of it.
Pretty purple minerals and a cute guy too who didn't want to bring shorts.
On our way home from the museum we experienced the not so fun part about living in Southern California, the TRAFFIC. It was a Friday before a holiday weekend (President's Day). It took us almost 2.5 hours to get home and we left at 3:24 pm in hopes of avoiding some traffic. I guess it would have been a lot worse if we left any later. On our way to the musem it was just over an hour drive.
Cousins: Alex, Emma, Henry and Benjamin
Saturday, February 15th
Boohoo, our departure day arrived. We had a 1:20 PM flight. Once Alex and Emma returned from their track practice we loaded up the van with a lot of stuff. After dropping us off at LAX, Julie and the kids were heading straight to the condo for a weekend of fun. Sean had flown to Iowa on Friday for a wedding.
Henry did really well on the plane again. We suprised him with the option to watch a movie. Of course he took us up on our offer. He watched Happy Feet. Good choice since we were heading back home to the "frozen tundra".
As you know, I LOVE sleeping pictures of Henry. Henry covered himself up with his frog blanket and passed out not long after we were in the car.
Mother Nature was so kind to greet us with snow flurries on our way home.
Ahhhh, home sweet home!
We got home around 9 pm. We picked up some Old McDonalds for dinner. We got Henry a Happy Meal but he slept right through dinner. We thought for sure he wouldn't transfer well and then we took him upstairs and put him in bed with his clothes on. We thought he'd wake up really early in the morning. Nope, he slept through the night and woke up at his usual 7 AM. Woohoo!
When you ask Henry what his favorite part of vacation was it depends on the day what his answer is: "looking at the dinosaurs" or "seeing all the gems" or "going to the Buckleys" or "the beach" or "taking a picture with a transformer".
We had an AWESOME trip! The weather was beautiful! The hospitality was great! We can't wait to go back again some day to explore other areas of California as it definitely takes multiple visits to see all there is to see in California.
