Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!: Part 1

So for a few years now, every time I see a select few of my high school friends, we always say "We should all get together sometime and hang out for a weekend." Well, last November, I got tired of just saying it and I set out to actually organize the event. So the First Annual Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Weekend just ended a few hours ago. (Okay, I just made up this name on the spot about one second ago. The Girls may chide me for this....I can just hear it now)

Claire Daly (soon to be Mrs. Rathburn), Allison Hammer, Erin (Ryan) Friedline, and Erin (Erb) Jensen traveled to Los Angeles to come visit me. I organized the trip so I made everyone come here. ;-) Everyone arrived Thursday evening. The fun commenced at Don Cuco's Mexican restaurant. I had professed my love for their margaritas and the Girls could not resist. Of course, in my haste to actually put stuff into a purse instead of the diaper bag, I grabbed my Barnes and Noble reader membership card instead of my ID. Can you believe the waiter and the manager would not serve me a drink?! I decided to take that as a compliment, and then proceeded to sip from Erin and Erin's margaritas. I was worried I was going to be the only camera happy person there. But when Claire and Erin F. pulled out their cameras before me, I knew I'd be fine.

On Friday morning, Andrew (who was super wonderful and took the day off from work to watch Ella & Lily so I could galavant around town) made all of us breakfast. Then we visited the Getty Museum. I have been looking forward to seeing this museum the entire time we have lived here. Don't ask me why I haven't been before. But I do believe I will go back! It has fantastic views of Los Angeles and the buidling itself is interesting to look at as well as its artwork and gardens.

From the Getty, we traveled to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. We were on the hunt for a good sushi restaurant. Yes, for those of you who know me well, I had my first sushi experience. Although, not really. I don't eat fish. So I had kappa maki (cucumber rolls) and some veggie tempura. But I was assured by the rest of the group that the sushi was tasty. We then walked around the Promenade and shopped a little bit. I was hoping there would be some fun/weird street performers. In the past, we've seen a guy dressed as Yoda dancing. But there were only a couple guitar playing singers. We had one actor sighting. I'm not even going to say "celebrity", because I have a feeling most of the blog's readers will not have a clue who is he is. But we saw Justin Long, probably most known for his appearances as Warren Cheswick on the tv show Ed and he was in the movie Dodgeball. Here is his entry in the Internet Movie Database

From the Promenade, we walked along Ocean Avenue to Santa Monica Pier. Then back to the car to drive to dinner. We ate at one of my favorite restaurants in LA, Taverna Tony's in Malibu. Love the food there! As you will read on, the majority of our activities centered around eating wonderful food!

After dinner, we traveled back to Glendale, where Claire promptly took a nap. Little did she know we had some fun Bachelorette activities planned for her. :-). She wasn't too happy about being awakened. She actually thought she was going to sleep the rest of the night. We played a few games and then headed out to Universal Citywalk. We had planned to go to several places there, but ended up getting there too late (the cabs suck here in Los Angeles! We waited forever and then ended up driving anyway). We ended up at B.B. King's and listened to a fun R & B band. Had a few drinks and called it a night. I will refrain from posting any Bachelorette pictures as this is a family friendly site.

More in a little bit....