CA Days 3-5

Monday

We travelled from San Diego to Los Angeles. We couldn't get into our hotel, so we walked the 3 blocks to Hollywood Blvd. We took a tour of the Kodak Theater, home to the Academy Awards aka Oscars. It was a really good tour and I would recommend it to LA tourists. You actually get to sit in a seat that a star sat in, view the stage from a box, and learn the "behind the scenes" stories. For example, all over those "backstage interviews" are actually taped at the Renaissance hotel next door.

However, the best part of the day for me was that Ken got to feel his child move for the first time. Awww. :)

Tuesday

We woke up early to go get our places at the Price Is Right. We had a special plan for the show. Ken wants to know whether our baby is a girl or boy and I wanted to wait until birth. 2.5 weeks ago when we had our last ultrasound, we compromised. We had the technician put the gender of the baby in a sealed envelope. We decided to have Drew Carey open it if one of us got on the show. We even got T-shirts made, "Hey Drew... Pink or Blue?". (Not sure what Ken's pose is here.)Unfortunately, we did not get selected to be on the show. You still should be able to see us on TV on January 11, because we were in the 4th row, right behind contestants row. We bought Baby Lawrance a gift at the show- even if he/she will not have a big life story about the show.

The show let out around 2:15 and we grabbed some "lupper", changed, and headed to a taping of the "Big Bang Theory". It was really fun to be the "live studio audience" of a sitcom, especially the one that is our weekly favorite. We couldn't see much of the sound stage from the angle that we were at, but they show the scene taping on monitors above our seats. It is really interesting to see how the writers change things between takes. They change lines and camera angles.

Wednesday

We slept in today. It was much needed after the long day yesterday. We spent the morning on family business. I dragged Ken to Babies R Us to look at strollers and car seats. It is not the most ideal thing to do on vacation, but it was really productive. We had the time now and it took one big thing off of our to do list.

We spontaneously decided to see if there were tickets available for the Jimmy Kimmel Live show. It is taped on Hollywood Blvd, so we could just walk there. There were tickets. In fact, they were begging people on the street to fill the audience. That didn't seem very promising. We got there at 5:30 when they told us to be there. We were 5th in line. This got us seats in the front row. It ended up being a really funny show. Kimmel chatted with the audience before the show and asked if there were any people from out of town. The guy sitting next to me was from Floyd Knobs, IN. Kimmel went nuts about that city name. In fact, he even started his monologue welcoming the dignitaries from Floyd Knobs, IN. We didn't know either of the guests, but they still were entertaining. It was a great way to spend our evening.