shred it: California Adventure- Day 9

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Tonight you are going to get my inner most personal thoughts on the thing we were most fearful of when we set forth on this great adventure. Los Angeles traffic. Everyone warned us of the traffic, and our friends were placing bets on how long it would take Jon to lose his mind sitting in the giant gridlock that is LA. But I must say that we were inaccurately warned. The freeways in LA are not parking lots as they were repeatedly described to us. No. A parking lot rouses images of stillness. Of physical safety because no one is moving. And though you may never reach your destination and instead go psychotically mad in the baking sun, you will not physically die. At least not right away. This, my friends, is not true. The reality of the matter is that driving in Los Angeles will instantly thrust you into a classic 1980's video game... except that this time YOU are the frog and you do not have three lives. You will enter the freeway- any freeway, they are all quite the same- on the right hand side. You will wait in a line of cars at a red light strangely located at the bottom of the entrance ramp. Then, when it is your turn, you will enter traffic. It is not going fast, so you will have a moment of blissful hope that you may reach your destinaion alive and well. But it is only going 15 miles per hour and you quickly realize that you need to make a mad dash for the car pool lane if you have any hopes of reaching 30 miles per hour and making it to your destination before sunset. Six lanes of traffic is a daunting task- cars are darting in and out of spaces not even big enough for the boys' back yard big wheels. Apparently the foreign car companies (you'd be hard pressed to find a good old fashioned Ford here!) do not have the modern technology of turn signals, so the $200,000 Maserati next to you is physically unable to give you any warning that he is going to jump in front of you, which he will do while you are scratching your head and trying to figure out who in the world would pay a quarter of a million dollars for a car without a turn signal. Congratulations! You have safely made it into the second lane. One down, four more to go! You look to the left and think you have just enough space to make a quick jut into the next lane without taking off the front panel of the Jaguar just behind you. But when you take one more quick look in your mirror before making your move, your heart will jump into your throat when you see the motorcycle speeding up in between lanes at 65 miles an hour. By the time he passes, you are at the same time thankful that you did not end his game of Frogger and cursing that you missed what may have been your only opportunity to change lanes. If you have a toddler in the back seat, he will repeat your curse words. If you have two toddlers, they will both repeat them! Eventually you will make it into the car pool lane. You will then realize that you need to exit a half a mile ahead and it is time to reverse the game and try to make it to the exit without becoming a squished frog.

Oh. And one more thing. You must, MUST pee before you get in the car. No matter how far you are going, it is simply imperative that you stop to pee before your departure. Because you will want to say "Hey, we're only 2 miles from home" but no matter how light you think the traffic may be and how short the physical distance of your drive, I promise you that it will take just long enough for your bladder to pass its maximum capacity. And that, my dear friends, is simply no fun!

Ok- on to today's adventure!!! Today we drove up to Pasadena to visit the Kidspace Children's Museum. We were able to check out the Rose Bowl on our nap drive (when all else fails and you are pathetically losing the nap game- just cheat and put them in the car) both up close and from far, far above- as Jon wanted to drive the road up into the mountains that warned "Impassable to larger vehicles". It was quite beautiful though! But it never fails- every time we drive these unbelievably steep winding mountain roads where the rich people have houses on the edges of cliffs with driveways at a 45 degree angle I can't help but think to myself... How on earth do they get in and out when it snows?! Doh.

Anyways- the children's museum was great. The boys got to run loose for 3 hours without us telling them they couldn't do this or couldn't touch that. Afterwards we went out to a place called Souplantation for dinner per the recommendation of my Uncle Charlie. It was a fantastic place- an enormous salad bar, 8 different soups to choose from, and more breads than you can imagine. And until today, kids 2 and under ate free! Sadly, I think they may be changing that policy :) The boys were so overjoyed at the selection of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, noodles, etc. that they wanted everything on their plates. I was carrying and serving Caleb and tried to keep his plate to a reasonable size. Jon and Matthew did no such thing! Matthew arrived at our table with the biggest plate of food I have ever seen in my entire life! He had layers upon layers of food stacked up! And I'll be damned, the kid ate 3/4 of it!!! I think he ate more than any one of us adults- for free!!! Sorry Souplantation, but thanks for the free meal!

Self-explanitory :)