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!

Pepperdine, Point Dume and great friends!

We arrived in Los Angeles around noon Thursday and went straight to Pepperdine University, a private Christian college in Malibu overlooking the ocean - wow! Gorgeous campus. This is the chapel. The blue in the background in this photo is the ocean!
This is a view of the stained glass inside the chapel. I didn't get many other photos of campus but it was really beautiful. Paige is a teacher and when she taught high school she took some of her kids to look at this and other colleges so she gave us a tour and told us about the campus since we didn't have a formal tour set up. We visited the library, the chapel, the student center and ate lunch in the cafeteria. Savannah loved the college.

Next we drove a couple miles to Point Dume, which is where they filmed part of Ironman (his house was CGId onto Point Dume). This is Lu, Sam, Savannah and Raleigh.
My friend Paige!At the edge of the sandy beach there were some rocks and though the tide was up and we couldn't see any tide pools, we climbed over the rocks to another beach around the corner.
The lava rocks were sharp! We went back and got our flipflops...
The water was a beautiful emerald/blue color. We even saw a couple of harbor seals on the rock that is teeny tiny in this picture. Paige saw some dolphins playing in the waves.
And this is the beach around the rocks.
Savannah taking photos as usual! :)
They were even filming a commercial. The one guy kept yelling out "Rolling - quiet!" which I found very annoying when my son started climbing off on the rocks and it was windy and he couldn't hear me tell him to not go off too far... I was like, forget you dude, my kid is more important than your dumb commercial!
At the end of the day, we headed back and had a few friends over for dinner. This is Dana and Paige!
And this is Bruce and Paige. Love all those gorgeous orchids in the window! Their house is amazing - love it. It was an overall great first day in Cali! I am so grateful to my friends who I love so much.

Tomorrow my kids and I are heading to Universal Studios and meeting up with my second cousin Daria and her two kids. I haven't been there since I was a kid so I'm excited to get back and see what it is like now.