Fun Parents.

This has been our last week before the kids start going to their camps, and so everyone's been trying to get as much swimming and lazing it.

Last Friday, I left for Chicago for a long weekend to hang out with Becca and Brian, Benjy and new baby Hazel. No real plans on the agenda, just being a third adult in the house and lending my hands where I could (oh, you need me to hold this sleeping baby and smell her head while you shower? Twist my arm, why don't you?) I remember how wonderful it was when Becca stayed with us after each of our kids was born, and I'm glad I was able to do the same for her.

Clearly a struggle, but someone has to do it. It was also a good reality check about my own kids. They're frustrating, sure, but they're not quite as irrational and hard to deal with as a newborn and a two and a half year old. Benjy would be giving his parents the business about bedtime, and I'd be in the other room trying not to laugh out loud about the ridiculousness of it all, even though when Adam pulls the same kind of crap with me, it takes all I have not to just lock him in a cage under the house (I would make him dig a crawl space first, downside of not having a basement.)

Meanwhile, Tim was able to take the time off from work and stay home and be Fun Dad. Which, turns out Fun Dad Tim is basically college Tim - seeing as many movies in the theater as possible and eating fast food. Whatever works, right? They saw the Incredibles 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3, they got to have Happy Meals and sleep over one night at Gigi's house, and spent some time hanging out with Mimi and Poppy as well. Plus met friends for pizza at the park on Sunday night, which everyone reported was a blast. I appreciate that Tim gives me no guff when I book my plane tickets - I think it helps that he remembers too what a blessing it was to have Becca come and sit with me when I was in the depths of post-partum hell.

Not to be out done by Fun Dad, I did my best Fun Mom impression yesterday. Kristen and I took the kids up to LA to bum around Miracle Mile and all the museums for the day. Again, I'm grateful my kids are the age they are - it was nice to know we could all power through without a nap. The girls can wear their safety vests (they make the adult seat belts go correctly across a smaller body) so that they can sit in the third row of Kristen's car and we could all go together. She drove - I threw snacks back to the kids.

We started at the Petersen Museum, which I thought the car loving boys would really dig. I worked there from 2006-2008, and my last week was actually exactly ten years ago this week. They've done a total renovation, inside and outside, since I left, so it was quite a trip to see how different things were, and what's still familiar. The biggest downside is they took out the first floor Streetscape exhibit, which was about the history of the car in Los Angeles. And they've made the vault something you can pay to tour on the regular, so it felt like a lot of the most interesting cars were downstairs, for $30 more a person (and our kids were too young to go on the tour anyways.) But the kids had a great time looking at everything - they mostly loved the dates on the vehicles and figuring out how old I was and Kristen was when whatever car was built. And they loved the kids area, especially coloring, and building lego cars to race.

I feel like the amazement on my kids' face when I told them this used to be my office is probably the coolest I'll ever be to them.

Afterwards, we went over to LACMA. I hadn't realized that it's closed on Wednesdays, so we didn't go inside. Which was fine, the kids were starting to get tired and crabby, and being at Urban Light and Levitated Mass is probably enough weird art stuff for them at this age. We also peeked at one of the Koontz statues, so plenty of goofball times.

We also walked around the outside of the La Brea tarpits and learned about all of the creatures that met their death there.

Here are the girls being sad about the mammoths. Again - another one where the outside part is almost as good as the inside museum at this age and time of day.

Afterwards, we took them to my favorite restaurant (now Ellie's favorite as well) Bottega Louie, for dessert snacks and a small happy hour break for the moms. The girls were delighted to have their own table, and I overheard them toasting to "a long day." Kristen and I cheered to the same.

They all went nuts looking at the display of macroons, and then three out of four said that the cookies were gross - the girls didn't like the filling inside (vanilla frosting!) and Judd didn't like that the cookie was crumbly. Adam shoved his right into his pie hole. They did great on the drive back, and traffic wasn't too awful. I got to show them the building I worked in right after grad school, and the building that I was in right before I "retired." It was like a tour of my young, professional years! (minus all of the really wretched temp jobs, thankfully.) Fun Mom day, showing them back when I was actually fun, and not yet a mom.

Tim picked up Mexican food for us to eat upon arrival home, and then the kids cried when we told them it was time to go - sometimes twelve hours straight with your bestie isn't enough, I get it.