Off To L.A. Again

     Last Friday, October 18, my mate and I were once again at the "One of Us" Columbus airport (see post from 4/9/2018, "What's So Funny At The Columbus Airport"),

...where a nice lady noticed me wielding my camera and kindly offered to snap a shot of Tom and I,

...soon after which we boarded our flight to Los Angeles to visit our daughter, son-in-law, and our two grand children.

      The occasion for this visit was our daughter's 40th birthday, for which her hubby and kids had planned a party.

     We had taken a 6:45 am Eastern Time Zone flight from Columbus, Ohio which delivered us to Los Angeles at 9:00 am Pacific Time.

     From the airport we took a taxi to Manhattan Beach,

...to our daughter's house where we were greeted by our grand dogs Tyson and Pinky Poo,

...who were quite excited to see  us.

      Though Tom and I had had breakfast before we left Columbus, eight hours later it was only mid-morning in Los Angeles, so we decided to have breakfast again. (We have discovered that changing time zones always somehow ends up with an extra meal being thrown in. Which, by the way, I'm not complaining about).
      We headed to our favorite LA breakfast eatery,

...Mandy's,

...the interior of which, we learned, is occasionally used as a movie setting.

    Hopefully the movie folks eat there while shooting their scenes, as the food is fantastic, always made fresh and served up fast.

     After our second breakfast Tom and I headed over to Ralph's,

...a supermarket located along the margin of what must be most beautiful, palm-laden parking lot on the planet.

       After stocking up on baking supplies at Ralph's - my grand daughters had requested that we do some baking during our visit - we headed back to the house until it was time to pick up our grand daughters from their school,

...where every Friday is after-school ice cream day.

     Then we walked home.

    As it turned out, this day was to be our lucky day as, since our daughter and son-in-law had commitments that would keep them out until later in the evening, Tom and I would be on over-time grandparental duty, something, I suppose, that can only be appreciated by those of use whose moments shared with our grandchildren are too few and too far between.
      And so we had a whole evening of the grand kids to ourselves.
       First on the agenda was, of course, homework to be done, 

...with just a smidge of clowning around thrown in.

     Then we headed to downtown Manhattan Beach,

...for our grand daughter's piano lesson,

...where her teacher rewarded her practicing with an early Halloween treat.

     After the piano lesson the girls requested dinner at Denny's, after which they shared a dessert.

       After dinner it was back home for what, when our children were young, Tom used to call the Long March: the post-dinner, pre-bedtime rituals, all of which must be followed until that blessed moment when the kids are in tucked into their beds for the night and the lights out.