Road Trip

We took a road trip this past weekend up to visit Sara. She lives on the north side of LA in Westlake Village. With no traffic it's about a two and a half hour drive (but no traffic is hard to come by in LA). On Saturday morning we actually split it up into two drives and stopped in Long Beach to have a late breakfast with my cousin Jody and her husband Chris. They live on the east coast but were in town for a couple of days on their way to New Zealand! It was so great seeing them and we had a delish breakfast at a place called Starling Diner. Chris picked Caiden right up and threw him on his shoulders. Caiden was pretty cool with it for a few minutes then kind of looked at us like, "Why are you letting this stranger pick me up. I'm ready to get down."

After breakfast we finished the rest of the drive up to Sara. What should have been about an hour took almost 2 hours. Caiden was so ready for his nap by this point and fell asleep about one minute in. He only slept for an hour which was a bummer but when he woke up he was really good and kind of in a daze sitting quietly in his car seat.

Sara and Dustin met us at our hotel and we headed to Underwood Family Farms. They have all kinds of farm animals and acres of land that you can pick your own fruits and veggies, whatever is currently in season. Caiden was really in heaven with all the farm animals and hearing all the sounds in real life that he's been learning.

There was an animal show where you could pet the animals they brought out. Caiden touched the rabbit and sheep.

They built a slide in the center of this combine. Dustin and Caiden went down it together!

This was the front of the combine. Caiden would have stayed in there forever if we let him, he had no desire to get out when it was the next person's turn.

On Sunday morning we went to breakfast at a place called Old Place, in the Malibu hills. It's an old cabin in the woods, off the beaten path, with superb food (I had the best biscuits and gravy I've ever had). You'd never be able to find it if you didn't know about it in advance. It's actually one of Sara's accounts so she knew we needed 9am breakfast reservations. There are only 6 booths and a bar to sit at and it's always packed. 

Sara is here about once a week and sees a celebrity or two pretty frequently....Orlando Bloom, Sean Penn, Rebecca Romign. It's one of those places surrounded by secluded multi-million dollar homes in the Malibu hills and canyons (the Bachelor house is just a mile down the road) but you'd never stop in if you didn't know about it. We had our own star sighting when we were there -Sean Penn! When we were getting up to leave he was waiting for our table at the front door. My sis was already at the door with Caiden when he walked in and she said that Sean and Caiden had a quick conversation. Sean said something like, "Hi buddy", to Caiden.

If you're a celebrity junky like me then you'll know that Sean is currently dating Charlize Theron and Charlize has an adopted son. The below pic is Sean holding his hand. Charlize wasn't there, just the two of them. I'm way too much of a chicken to ask for a photo and Sean is actually quite a rugged, "not friendly" looking guy, so this was as close as we'd get to a picture. ha.

After breakfast we went to Paramount Ranch and took a walk through Western Town. This place was in its prime in the 30's, 40's and 50's to shoot western movies. It's now a public park but you can still use all of the buildings to shoot movies.

By noon Caiden was ready for a nap. He was actually ready by 10, but I'm trying really hard to forget the terrible night of sleep we all had in the hotel room the night before. Reminiscent of when Caiden was a newborn -it was that bad.

We hit no traffic on the way home and made it in record time. Bonus -Caiden slept the entire time! He even propped his foot up on the passenger seat for awhile.