California Trip... There

We got in late Friday. I didn't take any pictures until Saturday, and my mother's rose garden still going strong seemed like a good place to start. :)

Orion found this praying mantis in the yard. They sure are cool!
Forgot to mention in my Great Wolf post that Ron hit a huge bonus in the arcade. Orion chose this mini pool table and dang he loves this thing! It was so great to have a new toy like this at Grandpa's house.
Grandpa demonstrating how to whistle with your hands.

And saying, phew, out of breath lol.
Putting some kisses on Akasha.

Can you believe this guy is 80? Not only does he have all his hair - it isn't even all gray!!!

I am so tickled I got this picture because one of my all time other favorites of the kids is in this chair. Maybe I can do a series...
The plans for the surprise party came together pretty well. The picture taking was a bit stressful, but it was all worth it. Yes, that is my dad crying when I brought out a birthday pie lol. He is such a softy.
What's up with the hand dad?
Old Softy.
Hmmm, what's up there?
Sarah took all the pictures this day. She liked this one, saying Akasha looked like a spider lol.
When the guests were gone, it was time to put Sarah's new friend to work. Best meet the mom story ever lol. I had read about a cache in the park behind my dad's house, and knew it would be a climbing cache. I had scouted it out the day before, and thought I could do it if I could only get to the bottom branch. But I wanted a backup plan.... So here I am carrying a stepstool to the park and wearing my dad's vest so I would have something to carry a pen in lol.
Orion stayed on the swings.
Surveying the situation and pointing out the location.
I decided that one branch was still a bit too high for me, but the young blood went up like a monkey!
Um, yeah, it was WAY the heck up there!
Love the sense of motion in this photo!
No idea what this strange expression was all about. I guess this is my "he got the cache happy dance" going on lol. But it made for a great transform into a zombie photo.
We decided to go to LA since the museums at Exposition Park are also free with our OMSI membership. And the Natural History Museum had a cool live spider exhibit going on. They were amazing! Some of them were HUGE. The kids were both thrilled with them! Here is one with a big egg sac.
If you look closely, you can see a white thicker part of the web under the spider. One of the employees told us this was the type of spider Charlotte was based on. And I always thought that web writing business was 100% fiction!
Got my hand in a shot just to give an idea exactly how big these beauties are!
The kids liked the animals too. I thought this exhibit was cute with the nursing baby.
Akasha was quite taken with these walrus. Orion ran around and looked at everything in the room while she was glued to this one spot.
More playtime with Grandpa...
doing some silly magic trick.
And feeding Akasha ice cream. I don't think he ever did remember which foods I told him not to give her. :/
I could not believe the weather had been so great for ages before we got there, and then it rained all week! We had one day of sun the day before we left, and I wanted to get out to Coriganville, where I had loaded some caches. My dad didn't get the whole caching thing lol, but he just goes along with most things.

Going for a little walk with Grandpa...

The trail...

We had also stopped at Penny Pinchers, where my mom used to consign antiques, and Orion picked up a few little things.
Part of one of the old buildings. I think that rock in the back might have a name, like Skull Rock or Skeleton Rock.
View from the cache.
He got it!

Meanwhile Akasha got her fill of one of her favorite things - Muddy Puddles! Well, they weren't really muddy, but she always calls them that because of Peppa Pig lol.
Phew, another week in CA seemed to go by really quickly. We did get to see Rose, Christine, Carter and Sedona briefly at Chuck E Cheese but didn't get any photos that day.

Oh yeah, almost forgetting the video! Could have sworn I took more than one, but this is all I ended up with. Orion made up a game to play with Grandpa they had fun with for quite awhile!