LA 2014

Our adult trip was to LA this summer. We were celebrating Veronica's graduation from law school and Avery's graduation from nursing school.  We arrived on Friday morning and went straight to the beach.  I was able to meet up with my cousin Amir for lunch.  I was so happy to see him. We spent a couple of hours at the beach while we were waiting to check into our rental house.  Once we got to the house we were so disappointed.  The house itself was perfect but it had not been cleaned since the last people left.  I was so annoyed trying to get in touch with the guy.  Finally the cleaning crew showed up while we were all getting ready to head out for the evening.  We went and had a nice dinner and tried to hit some bars but that was a mess. We finally just went home to start over on Saturday.

We got up the next morning to head to Venice Beach.  We had breakfast on the beach.  We walked down the boardwalk just watching and checking everything out.  We did get to see a few muscle guys working out and even a little bit of a bikini contest.  They had a lot of shopping and street performers.  We went down and hung out on the beach for a bit before heading back to the house.  We had dinner reservations in dowtown LA and a VIP table at a club.  We had an absolute blast.  Unfortunately a couple of us had a little too much fun because we were supposed to get up early on Sunday to go to Universal but didn't make it out the door until 10:30.

We went to have some lunch but it didn't help Randy feel any better.  He dropped us off at the park and went back to the house to hang out for the day.  We had a good time at Universal.  Randy, Veronica and Lauren met up with us after we left the park to have dinner on the Boardwalk.   We headed back to the house after dinner to hang out and pack to leave on Monday.

Virginia

Grandma passed away last year.  It took a year for it to work out for all us to be able to get together and be in Virginia for her internment.  I am so glad that Mom and Gerald pushed for this to happen. It had been too long since the Bakers and Sharghis had been together.  I am sad for the reasoning though. We flew in on Friday afternoon and went straight to Aunt Ann's house to have dinner and visit with everyone.

On Saturday, we had breakfast and headed to the gravesite. It was a rainy day, but we made it work. Mom and Gerald both spoke about their memories of their mom.  It was very emotional and I know Grandma, Grandpa, Jan, and John were looking down on us smiling and happy we were all there.  When we got done, we all went back to the hotel to get a few family pictures while we were all dressed up.  Afterwards, we went back to Ann's to eat and spend more time with the family.  There was bbq, fireworks, cake and a bounce house for the kids.  It was a great time with family.

We are so thankful for Ann's hospitality.