Coast to coast

One crazy sleep-deprived wedding weekend deserves another, as I always say. So after returning from my brother's wedding and getting us all somewhat back into the swing of things at home for a few days, we were off to Los Angeles for our friends' R and M's wedding this weekend. On the plus side, LA is the same time zone and a much shorter flight (a little over 2 hours). On the minus side, little man was still travelling as a lap infant, and I was bringing my viola along as one extra carry-on (I'd organized and was playing the ceremony music).

Thankfully, Alaska Air is pretty aggressive about offering fairly exclusive seat selection options for their frequent flyers, so I had snagged bulkhead rows both directions. At checkin, there were a bunch of available seats, but as I feared, it was more about them not yet freeing these seats for general assignments than it being an empty flight. So we did end up with an occupied third seat in our row, but Zachary didn't mind as he had plenty of (questionably vacuumed) floor to play on before and during the flight. Only one nuisance - he fell asleep in the ergo, and as we prepared for landing, the flight attendant told us we had to remove him from the ergo, even though he was fully secured and Meh was holding him. Thankfully he stayed asleep, though he remained in the exact same position as in the ergo - goofiness to make such a random requirement.

Our LA trips are always fairly hectic, with so many friends to catch up with in compressed timeframes. This trip was no exception; after the prerequisite stop for lunch at In-N-Out (surprisingly disappointing - how did they manage to let grilled cheese get cold?), where Zachary enjoyed his first grilled cheese sandwich (while foresaking the french fries), we immediately headed off to meet up with Aunt K (Zachary's great aunt K) in the Hills of Beverly. She intended to take us on an LA cupcake tour; two of the big ones are right down the street from each other. I was surprised that the first one was a familiar site from our NY trip the week before -- even the cupcake shops are franchising now? Meh and I had a jelly-filled cupcake that was far superior to her NY one, so Crumbs is back in our good book. We then made multiple attempts to hit the other Beverly Hills cupcake shop, only to be stopped by out-the-door lines each time. Zachary wasn't happy to stand still, so we meandered around and up and down Rodeo, grabbing a whole milk for him from an ice cream shop before stopping at a giant planter for him to laugh, play with, and occasionally try to eat the rubbery leaves of a funky southern California bush.

From there, we were off to dinner with a few friends at a kid-friendly burger joint. Well, it would have been even more kid-friendly if we didn't have to wait 45 minutes for the one 'big table' at the restaurant, which they had decided our group of 8 plus 2 kids required. On the plus side, it worked out well for everyone to arrive and enjoy dinner together. Zachary made friends with young L, and of course continues to love and respond to friend J with crazy near-hysterical laughter: