Welcome Back!
Last week, we took off for Spring Break and headed to sunny Beverly Hills, California! What a week!! We did A LOT, but didn’t even make a crack in all that you can do out there.
Our first full day in California, I woke up to texts sharing how it was snowing here. Honestly, there’s nothing better than waking up to the sunshine knowing it is icky back at home. Makes getting away even better!
Before we headed on our first adventure, a Starbucks was in order.
There is a Starbucks on every corner. In Santa Monica alone, there are 22 Starbucks in their 8.4 miles. There are over 150 Starbucks in the LA area. Even with those options, we still seemed to be on the wrong side of the road when we would find a store. Why not just turn around? It’s definitely not that easy to do in LA traffic. Finding the next one is much easier!
As soon as we had some energy, it was off to Santa Monica. About a 20 minute drive due to it being a Sunday morning! The next time we went it took over an hour to get there because of traffic!
We arrived to Santa Monica and it was fogged in…which lasted all day. Not a good hair day for this mama. This place was packed and I mean packed with people.
We needed to get a few pictures of the boys “seeing” the Pacific Ocean for the first time! They were pretty excited.
Then the shoes were off and into the water to wade. It was super duper cold BUT, there were lots of people swimming in it! Brrrrrr!!!!
It’s amazing how two boys can entertain themselves by running in and out of the water for 30 minutes. :O
After the impossible task of trying to get the sand off the feet…we walked on the pier and check out some rides, views and souvenirs.
I must admit I did not realize the Route 66 ended at the Santa Monica Pier!
This is the view of the ocean looking from the pier. A bit foggy!! Jason looked at me and said, “Don’t those swimmers know there are sharks out there!” He was serious.
A look at the amusement park at the pier. We didn’t ride anything that day. Lines were long. 
We did walk to the end of the pier and looked out onto…fog. There were a lot of people fog watching. 
We stopped for a few quick games at the arcade.
Zoltar did not tell Jacks fortune because he was out of order…of course!
After the pier, we walked up to the beach area. Let me share there are many interesting people in this area. Very free spirit.
These 5 boys were running around and joining in on the street performers and dancing. This little girl is on the dolphin statue. The 5 boys were all “worshiping” her. Her dad, whose hand can be see on the left side of the picture, had absolutely no idea..he was focused so much on his phone! Soon, they were off to their next “performance.”
This is the Santa Monica Beach. It’s like Venice beach without all the muscle. There’s all these little work out areas, like a huge jungle gym. (This isn’t my picture)
The boys loved these rings!
Click on the link below to see Jack working the links!
This entire area was filled with people doing yoga stunts! I decided it would be a good thing just to watch and not participate.
What was amazing, is that we left Santa Monica, drove about 10 minutes and the sun was shining! Who knew!!
Side Note: The homeless population is very high in LA. It raises about 10% every year, which was very apparent in this area and quite an eye opener to the boys. Substance abuse and mental illness is also high in this area Obviously many of the homeless are dealing with these issues.