California Dreaming

This weekend we flew to Los Angeles to visit Charlie’s brother, Chris, and his girlfriend Tanya.  Every year Tanya’s family has a huge Superbowl party, so this year we were really excited to go… and defrost. The true winter wonderland is a place that doesn’t involve butt-clenching ice patches and has an extended forecast that looks like this:

As the trip approached Coco definitely knew something was up.  She started to follow us everywhere in the house.  And the morning of the trip, she plopped herself down by the front door and pulled out all the stops.

You would think that we were leaving all weekend to play at the grandest dog park in all the land and swim in pools of milk-bones and chicken stock.

So, we headed off to the airport and left Coco under the watchful eye of my cousin Mary who did great as Coco’s substitute mommy.  We flew Virgin America, which felt like more spaceship than airplane with its fancy TVs and European discoteque feel.  I was expecting something like the JetBlue experience with the TVs, but it was better.  Much better.  Virgin is like JetBlue’s hot older brother who is in high school already and tall, and dreamy, but you’re hoping he’ll notice you anyway even though you’re an awkward pubescent 8th grader with braces who uses a Clinique bag to hide your super sized maxi pads because you haven’t discovered tampons yet.

But I digress… we were going to Los Angeles, the land of respectable temperatures and good times. We landed late, but the view from Tanya’s parent’s house, where we were staying, in the morning was phenomenal. As was the view from Chris and Tanya’s apartment.  Prepare to relinquish your breath:

It was exactly what we needed after a few weeks of weather-report guided living and shivering our timbers.