Saber Tooth Cats and Endless Sand in the Sun

We arrive in LA happy but exhausted and climb into bed at the Westin LAX at around 9 pm. The next day, the kids and I spring out of bed at 4:30 am. Breakfast comes by room service and Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cost me twenty dollars! Yikes. In the morning, we headed off to the La Brea Tar Pits, my favorite LA hotspot, since I am a big paleontology enthusiast. We see saber tooth cats ( not tigers, according to the guides) and 400 dire wolf skulls and mastodons, giant sloths, and wooly mammoths from 10 to 40 thousand years old. The kids were a bit scared of the anamotronic saber tooth cat which is remote controlled and walked over to our seat and growled at us with its ferocious teeth. Gotta love the asphalt seep ( tar pit) for preserving all those creatures in black sticky goo for thousands of years. After a cheap lunch at McDonalds and a not so cheap towncar ride, we get back to the hotel. Irina and Alex Fried, our LA cousins, come to visit us at the hotel.

We ride to Venice Beach in a limo procured by Noe our concierge. " This is the best car ever!" Ben declares to his buddy Alex. Venice Beach greets us with a man holding a giant sign that reads, " Funds Needed for Penis Reduction. Please help!" Funny. Oh, but wait, that guy is serious. Keep walking, keep walking.... Wow- the sand is white and there are bikini babes and cross dressers on rollerskates.

 

Here the VENDORS are for the MARIJUANA DOCTOR- for 40 dollars you get a prescription, two joints or a bong, they said.

 A man in a white thong breezes past on his skates with a set of white feathered wings perched on his back. The kids play in the ocean waves and have fun looking for shells. We get hot dogs at a street vendor next to a MEDICINAL MARIJUANA DR.
A great day to enjoy in LA!

Trouble with police?

So, I am up in the middle of the night trying to load the last suitcases into the car to bring to the hotel.  Then, I stop at Walmart at 3 am for snacks and airplane toys. I am a block from my hotel coming back from the Walmart trip when sirens  start blazing behind me and a cop pulls me over in the parking lot across from my hotel.
                         
He's screaming at me to stay in the car and calls in a second cop. 

I am very confused what I could have done wrong, since I was driving normally at the speed limit.

"Why didn't you pull over immediately?" the officer demands.

"I was looking for a safe place to pull over, " I insist.

" I could arrest you right now for failure to yield to police!" he barks at me.

After searching my car with a flashlight for contraband and finding none and then checking my vision, he asks me for license and registration.  I am in my 2003 Focus, but I sold it to my friend, so I am borrowing the car for a few days and the plates don't match the registration. Sketchy.....

" What are you doing out at 3:30 in the morning?" the officer quizzes me.

I burst into tears. " Moving to New Zealand.  Want to see my passport?" I offer up through sobs." Sketchy story....
"You have no inspection sticker posted- a $50 fine.  Nine times out of 10 when someone doesn't pull over right away there are drugs and alcohol involved, mam.  Do you see my position?" he yells at me.

" Where are you going? He asks me.


" The Comfort Inn across the street," I say through tears. Sketchy....

"Why not home to your house at Kingston?" he asks me in disbelief.

" The movers packed everything, even the beds." I try to explain while sobbing hysterically.

He checks his computer and finds that the car was sold this week to a resident in Carver- my story checks out and I have no criminal record. Begrudgingly,  he returns to the drivers side window.

" Against my better judgement, I am letting you off with a warning. Get the car inspected, and drive safely across the street.  Take a deep breath, mam."

In this case, the truth is stranger than fiction. The policemen drive away, and I am left crying from fear in my car. Bad night to be moving, I guess.

Packing up and shipping out!

When left with a lack of toys, the boys resort to making caves out of boxes and try to pack themselves.
This is a source of amusement for hours.  The movers are coming tomorrow to box up all our stuff and then pack it into a 20 ft metal crate as ocean-bound cargo. The excitement continues!

Learning New Zealand Lingo from a pro

One week until the move....

Countdown is in effect for the move. First stop will be Los Angeles for two days to visit cousin Evelyne Steward and Irina and Alex Fried, then onto a 16 hr flight to Palmerston North.  We splurged to get the "sky couch" , which means we will have 6 coach seats for the four of us. This is good because the boys are like squirrel monkeys and are very active on a plane. Having a sky couch also means you have the possibility of lying down in your seats or stretching your legs.

Mission this week is packing up and selling the last of our cars- a 2008 Ford Focus with 90,250 miles. We were told by the dealer in Hanover that it would fetch us 500 more dollars to keep it under 90 K, but a last trek to Vermont to visit relatives this past weekend was a 600 mile bust for the odometer.

In other packing news, I must remove all batteries from all electronics that we own. They can melt and leak battery acid in the hot ocean sun, so they are forbidden cargo in the 20 ft container shipment.

I also had to give pressed flower picture to my mother- in -law, since dried flowers are forbidden and will be destroyed ( incinerated) if brought through customs. Yikes!


Battery woes

Moving to New Zealand in 2 weeks!

Our visas came in this week.  It's official: we are moving to Palmerston North, New Zealand for two years!