Saturday, May 24, 2008

It's a good day to be a Survivor fan!

We've had such a good weekend! On Friday, we went down to Huntington Beach to visit Mr. and Mrs. J and Heidi, who were there with the rest of the J's. It was an unusually yucky day in SoCal, but we made the best of it. The boys went and played frisbee golf in the drizzle, while Mrs. J and I stayed back and talked girl talk and took care of the babies. Then we went to the library, and let Heidi and Kendall rat around on the floor. Heidi is so mobile now - practically walking, while Kendall just rolled all over the place. It's amazing how much ground a baby can cover just by rolling!

Then, we all went to In-N-Out Burger. Everyone except for John and I got the animal fries, and I think we're the better for it. Animal fries are french fries that are drowned in the famous In-n-Out sauce, grilled onions (that was the deciding factor for me), and cheese. Nasty!

After a while, I helped Mrs. J make a delicious dinner, which we all enjoyed. I realized during this time, that we have now successfully crashed family functions on both sides of their family - New Year's 2007 at Mrs. J's parents house, and now this time with Mr. J's family. Oh well. Here's John, Kendall, Watley, and I sitting with Mr. J's niece, Ellen.



Today, the J's came up here to LA, along with Andy, Megan, and Joey, who came up from the San Diego area. We quickly realized that it takes a long time to do anything with 3 kids, and 3 sets of still-relatively-new parents.



Once we were finally ready to leave our hotel parking lot, the weirdest thing happened. All the girls were in one car, following the boys in another. We were literally about to leave the parking lot, when the boys' car stopped and started talking to people in the car coming into the parking lot. Megan yells out, "Those are Andy's cousins!!" How bizarre is that? Out of all the hotels in all of LA, his cousins are staying at the same one we are, and we happen to cross paths right at the same moment. 30 seconds earlier or later, and we would've never known! So, they decided to follow us, and spend the day with us, which was great!



First, it was off to Venice, where we checked out the canals first. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the canals, and in the spirit of the real Venice, there were plenty of Italian words being spoken by everyone.




We eventually made our way to the freak show that is Venice Beach. It did not disappoint. We saw people holding signs saying, "Will work 4 marijuana," and a guy balancing inside a giant hula hoop spinning around, and a street performer doing something with knives while begging for money. It was very interesting. John met up with us there, and we just took our time strolling up and down the strand.



Then we wanted to see some of Hollywood and Beverly Hills, so we made our way to Rodeo Drive. All day long, Mrs. J was determined to see a celebrity. So we thought Rodeo was a sure thing. Well, it wasn't. Until, we were just about to leave Rodeo, and we were walking back to our cars. She, along with Megan and Grant thought they saw someone famous in a restaurant. It turned out to be Ali Larter from Heroes. Mrs. J was so incredibly happy that she finally saw someone famous! I even walked back with her so she could snap a crazy stealth picture - which turned out to be more obvious than stealth.



Our empty bellies started talking to us, so it was time to find some grub. We drove up to Sunset Blvd, and were trying to find something close to Pinkberry, since I've been talking that up so much. (Oh, by the way, by this time, all the single guys left us. I think after being around us crazy parents and kids, they're vowed to a life of celibacy.) We spotted Baja Fresh, and all agreed that was a perfect spot for us to stop. Once we were inside, we were all up at the counter checking out the menu when Megan, very excitedly, pointed to someone and said, "That's Jeff Probst!" Then, apparently, I said in a not-so-quiet whisper to Grant, "That's Jeff Probst!" To which Mrs. J responded, "No it's not. Are you guys making fun of me?" That's referring to her trying so hard to think anyone and everyone we saw was a celebrity. We kept trying to convince her that it was, indeed, Jeff Probst (in case you don't know, he's the host of Survivor).

By this time, he was sitting down, eating his burrito and reading a newspaper, shielding his face from the group of crazy people whispering his name. Then, the discussion started about if we should talk to him or not. Megan and I were against it, strictly out of embarrassment. Mrs. J and Grant were all for it. Grant finally got up the guts to go over and talk to him. He said, "Jeff?" Jeff nicely responded, so that was my cue to start making my way over to him. Then, one by one, we all started surrounding him. He was so nice the whole time, and we probably talked to him for about 5 to 10 minutes. He met all the babies, and asked what we thought of the season ending, which was just last week. We were even able to tell him about SixBit, to which he was very sympathetic. And somehow, Mr. J got in something about hippos in Africa - I'm not really sure what that was about. Since Andy is not a fan of Survivor, we got him to take a picture of us all.



We finally left him alone to eat his now-cold burrito, and made our way over to our corner. We couldn't see him anymore from where we were sitting, but as he was leaving, he was on the outside of the restaurant, and he walked out of his way to the window that we were sitting next to, and waved good-bye. He proved himself to us, and now Megan says she'll start watching Survivor again! Seriously, he couldn't have been nicer.

Anyways, so that was our weekend. It was so much fun!

13 comments:

  1. You are amazing! I can't believe you posted that already. Well done. What a crazy, fun day that was yesterday!

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  2. SO stinking JEALOUS and A says that Megan pulled an ERIK! but in all honesty she said that is exactly what she would have done!

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  3. When A showed me the Jeff Probst picture on her phone, I had to have her tell me twice before I really believed it! (kindof like Summer). Seeing this makes us almost as happy as if we'd been there!

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  4. Thanks, Kelly -
    Summer has been so busy traveling and having fun I haven't talked to her in about a week - so was so glad to see the pictures - and find out about your adventures. Looks like they'll be out to visit you more often, what with all the celebrities and fun things there are to do in that area.

    Hoping you get your house pretty soon.

    Mrs. T

    You can crash our parties anytime - we look forward to meeting little Kendall Elizabeth one day!

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  5. Pinky...What is "pulling an Erik"?

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  6. AAAAAAAAAAAA! I am so jealous. I can't believe you guys met him. But didn't Andy already meet Jeff since Andy was on the show? :-) Very Cool.

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  7. oh Megan - if only you had watched the whole season! weren't you here for the time when they had the family challenge and Erik's brother came out and Erik was jumping up and down - saying "dude! it's jeff probst! jeff - he's right there!"

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  8. oh Megan - if only you had watched the whole season! weren't you here for the time when they had the family challenge and Erik's brother came out and Erik was jumping up and down - saying "dude! it's jeff probst! jeff - he's right there!"

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  9. Pinky...Hahaha...I do remember something about that. I totally did that, but my defense is that I was totally excited for Summer to see a celebrity. :-)

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  10. What happened to my eyes?

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  11. Anonymous9:08 AM

    i'm still waiting to see someone cool in nyc. i'm not really good at paying attention though, so it's unlikely i'll ever have a fun post like this ;)

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  12. That is so cool! Unfortunately where we're at, you don't run across cool people like Jeff.

    I am still giggling about hippos in Africa. I'm not sure why, but it's got me all silly.

    And when I saw on Pinky's blog the "there's Jeff Probst!" part, I immediately thought of Erik, too! I thought that was so cute on the show!!

    I always joke about sending in my audition tape for Survivor... tell N that maybe if I had a couple more kids I might be a shoo-in... "LaughterThoughts, mother of 10" ...and then I realized last season that I'd probably be in the "old people" group now... and that is depressing.:) That and the fact that I probably wouldn't last very long.

    *sigh*

    What an awesome trip. It looks/sounds like you had a blast!

    (and surely now, especially after the out-of-the-way-window-wave, Andy will be a fan, too, right? I'll have to head over there and ask the Treasure gal!)

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  13. That is so cool!
    That picture is so hillarious! Summer is so super excited and the baby girls are just looking at each other wondering what in the world their parents are up to.

    What a fun time you all are having! So glad to see everyone together! Wish we were there!
    Keep up the Cali posts, we love to see pictures and keep track of you guys.
    PS Kendall just keeps getting cuter!

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