California winter days

Me in Santa Monica at Will Rogers State Park. Copyright Paige LaCombe Photography
Paige and I spent yesterday together, and we went to visit our friend Dana who lives in Topanga Canyon. First though we stopped by Intelligentsia, a coffee shop on Sunset Blvd. A random person took this one with my cell phone.
Next to Intelligentsia there is this graffiti mural wall that says I never hated anyone. We loved it. Next we stopped at a great foodie restaurant - True Food Restaurant - in Santa Monica where we met up with Dana! It was a beautiful day and we sat outside on the patio and took photos and Dana and I exchanged our respective turquoise necklaces because it was Monday, the "day of giving and receiving" according to the 7 Laws of Success by Deepak Choptra!This is a self-portrait of me and Paige at the beach in Santa Monica using Paige's awesome new Canon Mark 2! She is starting a photography business and is really excited about it! (Copyright (c) 2011 Paige LaCombe)This is a phone photo I took of the beach. We just sat and listened to the waves for a while. I meditated both with my eyes closed, and open watching the sparkles of the afternoon sun dance on the indigo waves. I had the most peaceful feeling that things were exactly right in the universe at this moment in time.
Next we went to Dana and Ron's house in Topanga Canyon for dinner. I love the meditation room Dana designed there - isn't it cool?
Dana's 13-year old daughter Rachel Riley played guitar and sang for us - wow! She is an incredibly talented young lady! Check out her Youtube channel - it even has original songs. I would say I thought it was even more powerful in person though! Dana made us an amazingly delish dinner, and we played "20 questions" and it was a lot of fun. Then we headed back home (to Eagle Rock)
Renata, Paige, Kim and me hanging out at Paige & Renata's place!

Universal Studios fun!

Saturday me and my kiddos went to Universal Studios. I have fond memories of the "behind the scenes" Studio Tour from when I came here as a teenager and I hadn't been since! My grandparents lived in North Hollywood so I would come to Cali regularly to visit. It was exciting to get back!
The first thing we did was go right to the Studio Tour. We had "Front of the Line passes" which get you to the front of the line passed all the people who wait for... 25, 25, 75 minutes depending on the ride. We got tics courtesy of Universal Studios and a discounted media rate for the passes. The front of the line passes were awesome! These photos are frolm my phone so they aren't good quality but just show what we saw. This is a set of some street. The vehicle we were on would show scenes from movies filmed in the different sets we drove by which was pretty cool. This is the Courtyard Square which was made famous by Back to the Future! It's been in several other movies too.This is called Little Mexico. It floods!Sam, me and Savi on the Studio tour.

Savannah in the Uglydolls!
So they have characters and of course I saw a guy doing a chest bump with SpongeBob SquarePants and I HAD to follow suit. My daughter HATES SpongeBob with a passion so she had to get a funny photo with him too but these are just my most favorite photos ever. Here I come - running at him. His expression cracks me up!

Chest bump! My daughter thought the photos looked "inappropriate"! I thought that was too funny!

Hug!
The fam with SpongeBob
Savi with Shrek and Fiona.
Me and Savi with Scooby Doo.
I got a hair wrap! It isn't permanent but gets put in with a braid. We also went on the Jurassic Park ride which goes through a lush jungly land with dinosaurs and then has a big drop at the end where you get wet (like a log ride). They had several shows (kind of like Seaworld has) including an Animal Actors show, Special Effects show and a couple of others. All in all it was a lot of fun!
I had to take a photo with an E.T. I loved that movie!
At the end of the day, we left the park and went to Universal CityWalk which is just a shopping-eating district right next door. We shopped at the magnet store, the candy shop, and a couple other fun places, and were going to possibly eat dinner at one of the restaurants and then realized we were really not that hungry because we'd been munching all day in the park - especially on the yummy cupcake-flavored popcorn from Popcornopolis!

Chillin in L.A.

Open door on Thorne Hall, Occidental College in Los Angeles. President Obama went here for a couple years.A shot of Thorne Hall from the outside. A lot of concerts and presentations are held here.
Another building at Occidental or "Oxy" as they call it. A terrible photo taken by a phone but I just wanted to present a couple snapshots from the day yesterday. We hung out by Paige's gorgeous pool! Savannah and Dana's daughter discovered some blackberries in the yard.The original Charlie's Angels - ha ha! Me, Dana and Paige.