Day 2

Through some miracle we managed to wake up early enough Tuesday morning to get on our way by 9:00 am. We have a little system when it comes to free hotel "Continental Breakfasts"*** and that system is, Pie and the children stay asleep in the beds and I sneak out early to gather provisions for our brood. I think my children actually believe that the muffins and juice materialize right there in our room each morning. They don't know that Mom is the Muffin Fairy. And if you ask my children what their favorite part of sleeping at The Best Western, The Quality Inn, The Good Night Inn, etc, they will shout with glee "The Muffins!" (My children lead very mundane, muffinless lives when not on holiday.) And I will rue, RUE the day they discover I have been holding out on them all these years, never once bringing them back a single Belgian waffle. Because Belgian, Eggo or what-have-you, I draw the line at waffles.

Day 2 on the road honestly seemed much better than Day 1, and I think this might have had something to do with crossing a time zone and much fewer hours spent in the car. We pulled into Simi at Apryl and John's house around 3:30 and spent a lovely afternoon together eating ice creams, swimming in the pool and discussing various Thomas the Tank Engine characters (this last part was mostly between Tommy and Sam, although personally I can talk Percy and Gordon all the live-long day). After dinner we ran off to Ventura beach to catch the sunset. The children were all strictly instructed to not get wet, so naturally they ran directly into the Pacific. Jon is looking sheepish and is freezing in that last picture.

Calvin and Jos





After gathering wet, sandy children and strapping them into their seats YET AGAIN, we made the drive back up the 101 to Calabasas, were we settled into our rather seedy Good Nite Inn, content in the knowledge that even though the room was tiny and smelled--and not in a good way, like say, donuts--it was was only $65 a night and 9 miles from Malibu. Ka-Chow.

(***How many of you, upon reading "Continental Breakfast" immediately thought of Christopher Walken and his SNL "The Continental" skits? If you did, know that I love you more than the others.)