Weekend Visitors

Last weekend my mom, sister Lori, and nieces Brooklyn and Savannah came to visit me! They decided on Tuesday to come, and left Utah Thursday morning to make it here in California by Friday. Very spontaneous! We celebrated my 4-day weekend by doing a little sightseeing and just hanging out and spending a lot of time together. They came at the perfect time too... it was 75-80 degrees the whole weekend they were here!

On Friday we headed to downtown Riverside. We went to Mission Inn, which is a hotel that was built in 1876 but has since been restored. It's a really beautiful old building that still has the hotel along with a spa and lots of restaurants.


There was also an old museum that had a Chinese exhibit and a nature center with some live animals that the girls had fun looking at.


Saturday we ventured into downtown Los Angeles to the FIDM (Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising). There was an exhibit there of movie costumes made by students at the school. We saw the clothes from Star Trek, Julie & Julia, Where the Wild Things Are, Amelia, and many other movies... pretty cool! We headed to the Scholarship store where they had clothes and accessories for pretty cheap... like skirts down to $1!


Those good deals got us excited to go to the Garment/Fashion District. None of us had been there, so we didn't know what to expect. But once we got there, it wasn't quite what we were expecting! Let's just say it was a little trashy and the crowded shops reminded me a lot of China Town in NYC. I realized that I'm used to living here when Lori asked me "Did you feel like we were minorities there?" and I could honestly say that I didn't even notice!


Our last stop on Saturday was to the beach. We planned to go to Huntington Beach, but ended up at Sunset Beach instead. It was pretty cold and windy, but Savannah absolutely LOVED playing in the sand and Brooklyn loved looking for seashells.



We later found out that there was an earthquake on Saturday 6 miles from where I live... too bad we were in L.A. and didn't feel anything!

Some other things we did that weren't documented with pictures:
fish tacos at Rubios, fresh oranges in Redlands, watching the Opening Ceremonies, experiencing true Los Angeles traffic (which was horrible!), lunch at In-N-Out, church on Sunday... it was so fun having them here!