Disneyland with Grandma - Part I

 Grandma was coming to visit!! But this time she wanted to meet in Southern California to take a certain special little boy (and his Momma!!) to the happiest place on earth first!! What a treat! We woke up super early and got to LAX three hours before Grandma was to arrive. Where to go to kill some time with a three and a half year old? Venice Beach! :)

It was surprisingly clean there (and lots of police were present), so I felt somewhat "safe". Although except for down by the water, I didn't let Brock go more than 2 feet away from me.

 The sand was AH-MAH-ZING though! I would have loved to go back and just lay on the sand and play in the water! Can you tell Brock is loving this!??

Beautiful beach, mountains in the distance, palm trees, blue skies - it was just like a postcard!

Thought this was cool on the lifeguard stand!

I must have picked the best place to park ($20 for the day, $15 for 2 hours - yikes!) because not too far from where we were playing in the sand was a fabulous playground!

 I was skeptical Brock would be able to walk around barefoot, but I saw how truly clean the sand was - and not too hot at all. He loved it because he could slide down the slide right into the soft sand!

After running to the bathroom, we sat and watched a three on three basketball tourney going on before stopping for a kodak moment in front of Muscle Beach.

Finally we picked up Grandma and headed to Uncle Al's house! Uncle Al lives in Torrance and was so nice to welcome us in to his home the first night as flying standby caused us to come a day earlier! (He's familiar with that too since he retired from American Airlines in 1982!) It worked out great so we could visit with him and he could meet Brock!

My mother had done some research on kid-friendly things to do in Torrance and she found Los Arboles Park, affectionately known as "Rocketship Park" to the locals. The rocketship has been a fixture since the 1960's (even being featured in an issue of Life magazine in March 1963), renovated and returned in 1992 to make it safer for the children.

But together with the super steep drop and the amazing view of the valley below, Brock was in no shape to continue his descent down the slide.

Panorama view

It was a little windy on top of that mountain!

We let Brock nap in the car while we did a driving real estate tour of multi-million dollar houses. Then stopped at Torrance High School, the filming site for Beverly Hill, 90210 tv show and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

It was a really nice, but quick, visit with Uncle Al and remembering my dear Great-Aunt Marilyn, who passed away three years ago. Aunt Marilyn was the youngest sibling of my Grandpa Herbert Rosenfeld.

The next day we were off to Anaheim!