Kristin's LA Adventure

My stepmom Kristin came down to LA for the weekend for some "non-kid" fun. Basically that means shopping unencumbered, but we did manage to do some other cool things too.

After picking K up from the airport yesterday I showed her around Pasadena. She had never been to my new apartment before either so I introduced her to my humble abode. We met up with my Uncle Donnie and cousin Toby at a park down the street from my apartment.

 After some Luce time, K and I went to the Grove, the real reason why she came to visit. K and I both like American Girl dolls, so hitting up American Girl Place was a major destination and goal. It is easier to shop there with just us instead of taking my dad and Ryan. Dad gets bored and RR only pretends to like dolls while we are there so K will by her something. A good sport, right?

We spent about an hour perusing the store, checking out all the outfits. Kristin got a cute little dress for her doll and some things for RR. I got to see the doll hair salon, home of my dream job of braiding doll hair, so it was a quality visit.

Once our shopping was done we ate dinner at the Farmer's Market. I love that place. I am glad it isn't closer to where I live or work or else I would choose to eat every meal there! There is so much food to choose from, but this time we went with Greek food in mind. Moishe's is my favorite Greek food in LA.

After the Grove we wanted to go up to the Griffith Observatory. I was expecting it to be a quick 15 min trip to check out the view of Downtown LA. I couldn't figure out why there was traffic going up the hill, but it turns out everyone else in LA was going to the Observatory too on the first weekend of summer. It was perfect clear night and the view was awesome of the entire city.

While we were walking up, Kristin and I couldn't figure out why everyone was standing around on the lawn. Kristin suggested maybe they were looking at the sky, and low and behold, they were!

Nice astronomers had set up telescopes all over the lawn to look at the different stars, the moon, and planet. We got in line for a telescope, not knowing what it was pointing at and then over heard that the people were looking at Saturn.

K: Does Saturn have rings, or is that Jupiter?
C: Good question. (Clearly, we needed this astronomy lesson more than anyone at the Observatory last night. ha)

Then it was my turn to look in the telescope.

C: It has rings!!

WOW. Looking at Saturn was so cool. I am going to look for a picture example of what it looked like and post it later. I was amazed at how clearly you could see it through the telescope because looking at it with the naked eye it just looked like a bight star. I couldn't believe how clearly you could see the rings and even Titan one of it's moons. Totally worth the traffic and the hike from the car in the dark. K thought so too.

It was fun to catch up with Kristin and hang out in LA. I like playing tour guide and showing people around so it was a nice treat on this three day weekend.