LA: The Getty, Temple and Diddy Riese

Before school started, we took a day trip to LA:

The Getty Museum

The LA Temple

Diddy Riese.

They are all really close by each other, and for that amount of driving in that amount of traffic, it was perfect to hit all three in one day!

The Getty is one of the most visited museums in the US.

It's free...so that is a bonus. It has quite an impressive collection!

I'm not an art history major, so I felt like a lot of the importance was lost on me. Still, I was impressed.

Loved the outdoor gardens.

Kids are very welcome there. They even have a kids section with a bunch of cute activities.

They created a still life

Created a sculpture

Slept on a royal french bed

and jumped on it

Here's the real one, they didn't actually touch-

Speaking of touching things. When we first got there Macey touched one of the paintings. I didn't even realize it and she had no idea how serious it was. One of the security guards saw her and ran over, calling in a code red on his walkie talkie. He very seriously inspected the painting and then gave me the lecture of a lifetime. I was sure he was going to make me pay $10,000 for microscopic fingerprint repairs.

Anyway, after that the kids were so well behaved, whispered, walked, never touched anything. It made my job easy. In one of the other rooms we saw a kid hanging from a sculpture and you could hear audible gasps from all three of the kids.

I get it though. This painting, Van Gogh's Irises, was last sold for $53 million (it is unknown how much The Getty paid for it).

I let the kids just stand by random favorite things they chose in a room and get their picture taken:)

(Someone was unhappy about someone touching them-)

 A famous still life. I should know who/what. and I forgot.  

Was this the kids favorite thing we did this summer?

No.

(We did this on a weekday so Ben wouldn't have to come, he would never want to go!)

But they got a little culture all the same.

They liked it a little, and got to ride a tram to get here, and no one complained! Win!

 Diddy Riese on UCLA campus is well known for having delicious homemade ice cream sandwiches for really cheap so we stopped to check out all the hype.

 After all the chaos of those it was so great to come here:

 I told the kids to go touch the temple. 

 Our prophet said "Touch the temple and the temple will touch you."

So we took it literally.

 The temple was closed so we were the only ones there.

It was so peaceful and quiet compared to the rest of the chaos we had been to before.
The kids could feel the difference, too.

The temple really is a peaceful place.

Not sure what the theme is in the next pictures, but the kids were into it 

 We made it over to the visitors center for just a few minutes before it was time to go to beat rush hour. 

A perfect day trip before school started!

Doowylloh

I've always wanted to hike to the Hollywood sign

 I told the kids we were going on a hike

But I didn't tell them how long it was

 I just promised them slurpees when it was done.

 They were so awesome.

Round trip (with an extra mile tacked on at the end) they went almost 5 miles! 

 Don't get me wrong, it took us a long time.

And let's be honest, I didn't even want to try to make our youngest.

We called her "Giant Baby." (that could have a double meaning in this case-she hates walking very far:)) But we'll cut her slack since she's only three.

 The hike lead us up to the top of the mountain and to the back of the Hollywood Sign, spelling "doowylloh."

 Seeing the view at the top Mackayla kept saying she could see a rainbow which turned out to be the awesome colorful SMOG. bleh.

 Since we were basically there I really wanted to go see the Griffith Observatory too.

It ended up being a half of mile hike to see it...but once again the kids were troopers and giant baby even walked.

The building kind of looks like the great and spacious building to me. There were even people in the balconies looking out and pointing.

 Inside we weighed ourselves to see how much we would weigh on each planet and learned a few facts about each one.

 At night they open the roof to see out in this enormous telescope.

 We didn't stay that long, but just long enough to run into rush hour. yikes.
Ben was missing us!

 I went on a stair run the next morning that made my legs even more sore,

but we had fun running through these arches:

We had a mourning dove nest in our rafters on our balcony

 our diligent doves spent a month gathering supplies and making their nest

and another month sitting on their nest

until a HAWK swooped down and attacked one of the birds.

We heard a crazy scuffle

and then I saw my neighbor sprinting across the lawn trying to save the bird

but it was too late.

I was sad for our birds-the parents and the eggs :(

Their mourning dove cries sound especially sad now (they kind of sound likes owls).

We've loved all our bird friends this year, especially our squeaky flying doves.