Day 1 - what we’re made of

I’ve always told Tiny : You were made to do hard things. Your great-granddad stormed the beaches at Normandy, your grandpa survived getting shot in Vietnam, your grandma fought cancer twice, so did your dad - your DNA ain’t made to chicken out.

It’s a good slogan, but didn’t stop three of us from taking Ativan for a bumpy flight to LA. Tiny was not one of them. Apparently she’s made of tougher stuff than the rest of us.

One of us was terribly excited to head out on this adventure - even though we won’t hit Hawaii for another three days.

But by the time we arrived in LA, most of the excitement had worn off. We were too tired to care about much, and had a 7 am wake up call to get Kooka to her first college visit of the day: Loyola Marymount.

Between the academics and the arts and the location and the fact that it’s perfectly gorgeous, I’m pretty sure it’s her first choice. But at a cost of eleven jillion dollars per year, we’d better keep looking.

We made a quick stop at In and Out Burger for lunch, followed by another tour - Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks. The only school so far that’s passed out swag bags - but since they were filled with sunglasses, airheads and a fidget spinner, it looks like Tiny will be inheriting most of it.

There was another stop at El Conejo park to visit my mom, my grandparents, and a dozen of our other relatives. Tiny left rocks.

Next stop was Grandma June’s old house. It was my sanctuary when I was eight years old and Tiny has heard countless stories about catching crawdads, snail races, popping fuschias, and  walking into the brick balance beam in the front yard, so it was a tremendous gift to meet Greg (the guy who lives there now) who let us check out the back yard and practice walking the beam.

We also left a rock for the crawdads.

Then we met Uncle Brad and the cousins for dinner.

We creeped into our room at the Ojai Valley Inn about 9:45 pm. It’s already dark, but I’m pretty sure we love it.