Yay, post #2!

Before I get into the details of my second week, let me take you around Tito Bobby's house. I only took photos of some parts of the house:




1) Living room
2) Den/Living room #2/Music room
3) Swimming pool and backyard


While exploring the backyard and all the marvels of nature, I spotted these:




Hurrah for flowers! :D


And here's a pic of their neighbours' houses, viewed from the backyard:




And here's my favourite part: TEDDY! He's a Norfolk Terrier. I've met him twice before, the first time in 2003. He looks like Benji the dog. 'Cept Teddy's honey-brown. He's so cute. We call him Teodard (pronounced tee-dard) sometimes. Our pet name for him. Haha. And Carlo used to talk to him in this high-pitched voice back when he was still a kid and it quickly caught on with us kids. After that incident, me and my sibs started talking like that to Carlo and Ria and vice-versa (and Teddy of course). :P Anyway, here's Teddy: (Sorry, he's camera shy).







He's so CUTE! He met Bubba before. At first they were good friends. But the next time they met, they fought. From then on, they became nemeses. Muhahaha. Lol. There's a simple explanation for that: Generation Gap. Bubba's 1 year old = 7 people-years old. Teddy's 6 years old = 42 people-years old. Bubba's so hyper and loves to play. Teddy's sedentary and loves to sleep. Bubba always wants to play, but Teddy doesn't. So they start fighting. :P Teddy used to be real hyper though, in his younger days. He had two near-death experiences when we were walking him last time. They were so scary. Perhaps he was too traumatised by them. ):

Day 8. Wednesday, April 9.
In the morning, Tita Pilar brought me, Carlo, Paolo and Javier to a mall in Topanga. Timmy was sick. ): I didn't buy anything, but the boys did. I just looked around and window-shopped. But that didn't stop me from taking some photos:



1) Viva Pinata!
2) Outside the Apple Store


Then in the evening, me and my dad went to Tito Gerry's house. My dad gave his presentation for their prayer meeting. I watched Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune while waiting for the food. :P




1) Sunset on the way
2) Lemon tree!
3) Me, my dad, Tito Gerry, Tita Boots


Day 9. Thursday, April 10.
The next day, the same people, plus Timmy, all went to a shop that sells Mario stuff and manga and Domokun, etc. So cute!


Mario's reaching for the star! Just so happened I wore my Mario & Luigi shirt that day. I must've looked like a real fan. :P


After that, we headed to Northridge mall. This time I actually bought some stuff. Went to Target and got Natalie blue star sneakers! Got me some clothes in JCPenney and Forever 21. (See pic of Forever 21 at Glendale Galleria in previous post). When I went shopping I was alone. Sometimes Tita Pil comes and looks at stuff with me too. The boys go elsewhere. :P


CINNABON! (:


After our malling, we went to Ria's school to help out with the 8th Grade fund-raising. We sold CHURROS! (And drinks). Cinnamon-coated goodness. Sigh. There were so many! And they were all made by the parents. But in the end, me and the boys did the selling. We saw 2 $2 bills! Carlo and I wanted to get one each, but it wasn't our money.




1) Clockwise from left: Timmy, Carlo, Paolo, Javier
2) CHURROS = love!
3) Ria and the churros


On the way home as I was getting into the car behind Timmy, I noticed something on his back. A ladybug! I took it and let it walk on my palm. The others in the car were shouting "Eee! Kill it!" Haha. But I released it when we got home, after I showed it to my dad. Check it out, isnt it cool?




My dad and I left shortly after to go to the cemetery and visit my lolo, my dad's dad. We talked about him and our memories of him, then prayed.



1) Flowers growing there
2) Shadows on marble (sounds like a work of art :P)


We continued on to Glendale (again) to meet the Maddela clan for dinner. But before that we went to Glendale Galleria again to kill time.



1) The navigator we use to go everywhere. It relies on GPS. It's so cool! Just plug in the address and voila! :D
2) My dad enters a candy store in Glendale Galleria


So finally we had our dinner. At Max's fried chicken! Last time I ate there was ages ago in the Philippines. It was so good! There was only one state I could leave the place in: in a bloated state. :P And it was good making friends with Via.



1) Everyone!
2) Halo-halo! (:


Day 10. Friday, April 11.
Next day we left really early to go to San Fransisco! It was a FIVE-HOUR plus drive. I slept most of the way. Good thing I packed some tunes to go. I chose nice CDs and loaded them in, after days-long search for the CD player. It was in the glove compartment. O_o"' Not only that, it was covered by the top of the dashboard, since the dashboard was sloping in. I accidentally found it when I bent down low while looking in the glove compartment. Anyway, it was a boring trip, except for the flowery mountain view, Coalinga and turbines. Coalinga's a cow farm with hundreds of cows. When one passes through there, the smell is strong enough to penetrate closed windows!




1) The pastel-coloured mountains where the wildflowers grow free
2) Coalinga!
3) Wind energy babeh!


Finally we arrived at San Fransisco! You probably know its iconic Golden Gate Bridge. But more on that later. San Fransisco is a city by the bay. You probably know the famous song I Left My Heart In San Fransisco too. :P Basically it has water near it. And there're many bridges. Oh wait, you probably know the Mythbusters! They're based in San Fransisco. Haha, random.


On the San Mateo Bridge


We visited my dad's friend from college. And ate a really late lunch. Sadly we forgot to take photos. I remember eating a lot because it was a buffet. Then we left and checked into our hotel. Our room:



After checking in and dumping our bags and resting and taking a bath, we left to visit Tita Mitos and family. She's good friends with Tita Agnes and is the latter's source of Pinoy soap opera DVDs. Haa. After dinner I played Nintendo Wii with Charisse, bowling and tennis. Then we let our dads play!





1) Dilemma cheesecake! It's called such 'coz you won't know which one to choose. :D
2) Tito Tic and my dad playing golf on the Wii (:
3) The music room
4) Me, Charisse, Tita Mitos, Tito Tic, my dad.. and Gucci at the bottom :D


They have a dog named Gucci! He's a white Pekinese and he's so cute! He's dog #4 in my trip. So many cute dogs! (:





1) Gucci up close
2) Gucci and Charisse
3) Gucci with tongue sticking out
4) Gucci jumping on my dad


Day 11. Saturday, April 12.
Our free day. So we went to see the sights. We decided to go to Muir Woods, a Redwood forest. It's full of HUGE trees. I love trees! On our way there, we were able to see the city. All the small roads with houses stuck together. All the cable cars/trolleys. :D



1) San Fransisco
2) A museum. See the cables overhead?


And we passed through the Golden Gate Bridge!!



1) Side view, before crossing
2) Actually on the bridge!


We passed through a rainbow tunnel too.




So when we finally got to our destination, we couldn't find a place to park. Being a Saturday, and a Saturday with perfect weather, naturally the place was teeming with people. So we had to park further away. Very much further away. Ot was a long trek, but we made it to the park anyway. We chose to take the Ocean View Trail and back via the Lost Trail. In total plus/minus miles. The trees were so cool! So BIG. And tall. And majestic. I saw many flowers there too. And I saw a deer! And a snake. It was funnnn! (:



Flowers!


Here's a pic of a big tree. But it's actually many trees that lumped together to form a big one. :D




Here are our pics while on the trail:



Redwood tree-hugger!




Random shots :P


Are you ready for my award-winning photo? :D:D:D


Ain't it amazing?


After that happy visit, we drove on to Pier 39. It's a famous tourist destination. It was crowded. But the view was really nice. And there were many nice shops too.



1) Alcatraz! Muhahaha. For those who don't know, Alcatraz is an old island prison. Can you spot it in the background?
2) I took the bird's photo before it flew off


We bought a music box that plays I Left My Heart In San Fransisco! :D And we took pride in the fact that we didn't park in the "normal" place. We found a secluded parking area that looked like private parking. But it was free. The normal one was full of people. And it wasn't free. Muhaha.

After our long day, we headed back to the hotel. But not before grabbing something to eat! We hardly ate anything the whole day. Only one hotdog we shared before our hike in the woods. The food at Pier 39 was too expensive. And we were tired from all the walking. SO after searching for ages, we found TACO BELL. Only THE best fast food place in America. :D Hurrah for Taco Bell! PS: It's healthy!



1) All we ordered. Yes, for TWO.
2) Caramel Apple Empanada! We finally got to try one. It's SO GOOD.


Day 12. Sunday, April 13.
Went to Church #3, Faith Bible Church of San Fransisco. Once again my dad preached. And I forgot to take a picture of him. :P So, here's a picture of him and the pastor of the church:




As usual, after the service was food. :D

We went back to the hotel to rest. And I saw this duckie sitting on the grass outside the hotel. It's a Mallard duck. (:




After sleeping and having rested enough our tummies were telling us to start hunting for food. Since tthe area around our hotel seemed.. devoid of food chains, we called the front desk and asked for the nearest mall. It was 5 minutes away. So we drove there but to our dismay, it was closed. And it was only 6:30 pm. But I took pictures with the flowers!





Well, there was one store open-- the department store. So we went in a while and checked out the shoes and clothes. For fun I wore these extremely high heels:




Then we left and drove around. We finally found civilisation! Haha. We got KFC drive-thru. Check out the cake I ordered for dessert/next day's breakfast!




Day 13. Monday, April 14.
We packed up our bags and left San Fransisco. And so it was another 5-hour drive. For lunch we exited the freeway and stopped at Denny's. The food looked so good! We ordered breakfast for lunch. :P I got Moons Over My Hammy. I'm not sure why it's called that.



1) Ketchup, my dad, mustard :P
2) Our food!


Then we continued on and got to Tito Bobby's house. I was able to catch up on my telenovellas for once. :D But then we had to pack since we were leaving again the next day.

Day 14. Tuesday, April 15.
Woke up early and left the house at 5:30 for LAX. My dad and I were going to Kansas, to visit Tito Koko and Tita Sophie. We had a stop at Denver airport first. We ate breakfast before getting on the next flight.





1) The Rocky Mountains!
2) Candy apples!!
3) Cinnamon roll and pizza!
4) My apple chips bag expanded because of the lower air pressure on the plane ):


So we took the second flight and landed in Kansas. Tito Koko picked us up at the airport. Kansas looked kinda dreary. Most of the trees looked like this:


Bare trees. )':


This is what the houses in their area look like:




We had KFC when we got to their house. Their backyard has lots of wildlife:



1) See the cardinal? It's in the centre of the pic. And it's RED. I couldn't zoom further. ):
2) Squirrel!


So our first day in Kansas ended our second week! :D