What a Day!

You find the strangest things around the house as a mom. I pulled back my bedroom curtains this morning and found a nice little pile of CheezIts. Emily and I decided to carry on the Reynolds' tradition of weekly adventures. Emily drives by Pink's Hot dogs regularly and we've heard so many people raving about it that we decided to go have a hot dog. Pink's started as a little hot dog stand in 1939 and this is what it looks like today. You will always see a line of people down the street waiting for a hot dog. Jake was fairly impressed with his chili dog and insisted that we buy another after he finished, which we did.Dan, as usual, was only in it for the ketchup. Yes, he's licking the ketchup out of the bowl.By far the most enthusiastic hot dog connoisseur was Miss Libby.The only plan we set out with was to eat hot dogs but it seemed silly to not take advantage of being in LA. We pulled out Emily's trusty guide to LA and discovered there is no admission to La Brea Tar Pits on the first Tuesday of each month, which happened to be today. It seemed divine and thus we headed to the tar pits. Here are Dan and Libby hugging a giant sloth statue. I saw this bush with beautiful flowers and thought I might get a good picture of the kids. Daniel is a natural in front of the camera, Libby just smiles when you smile and Jake would have no part of it.Jake was determined to find a dinosaur, none have ever been found at La Brea though. We'll have to look elsewhere. A street performer was singing children's songs and playing the banjo so we had to stop and dance for a while.

Libby just had a great day being held and walking outside.

We finally headed back to the van and loaded up. It was so beautiful outside that we put the windows down and left the sunroof open. As we drove we noticed a strange clicking noise and finally pulled over to investigate. Emily found a large screw stuck in my tire and we realized that quickly heading home was not about to happen unless we felt like experiencing a tire blowout on the freeway. So of course this is the day that we ventured out without the Garmin and were back in the Stone Age with only maps and cell phones to guide us. Since tire stores aren't on the map we just roamed until we found a PepBoys. They informed me that I needed a new tire because of the size of the screw and its location on the outside edge of the tread. We unloaded the kids and had a party at CVS Pharmacy for lack of something better to do. We bought Cheetos and ate until the boys were indistinguishable beneath a thick layer of powdered orange cheese.

I feel so blessed today. What a blessing to have Emily here! What a blessing from God that we heard the screw in the tire and were saved from a horrible experience on the freeway. What a blessing to have text messaging and get to "talk" to Erik all day even though he's in another country! What a blessing to get a call from Stacey tonight! What a day! God is good!