On any other day, you can’t get the kids up and moving to save your life, but this morning at 3:30 am, Patrick sprang out of bed and even the normally slow-to-rise Emily was up with a minimal amount of cajoling. They were excited beyond belief.

It was the beginning of a 10-day vacation with Lisa’s family to a beach-front rental house in San Diego. We would leave early to swing by Universal Studios in LA and then meet up with the others in San Diego on Sunday.

Our plan was to hit the road at 4:00 am to beat the traffic on the way to Las Angeles. We would spend the day cruising through LA and maybe hit a beach or two. Technology had other plans for us.

My iPhone had locked up the night before, requiring a restore. After staying up until about 12:30 this morning (okay, I was a bit excited too) I ran the required restore, but bright and early this morning I realized I had to put all of my applications, contacts and music back on the phone. The short story is that we left nearly 2 hours late, at close to 6 am.

Regardless, we made it to So Cal with no incidents and our completely jinxed trip in 1993 was only a faint memory. There would be no cracked engine blocks or stolen duffle bags this trip. We checked in to our hotel just down the street from Universal City, and picked up flyers from the hotel lobby to toss around some ideas of what to do for the rest of the day. We broke the news to Patrick that we wouldn’t be hitting Legoland or Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum. We were looking for more low-key things to do like cruising Hollywood Boulevard or visiting the infamous “Hollywood” sign.

We ended up at City Walk at Universal Studios, paying 15 bucks to park to basically go to a shopping mall. It was a gem for people-watching though. Patrick did get to choose the dinner locale and we ate an open-air meal at Forest Gumps at City Walk in the late afternoon.

I got to choose the next event for the afternoon which was perusing the stars on the Hollywood walk of fame. We spent all of about a half hour on Hollywood Boulevard trying to convince the kids that they actually did know some of these dead people. “Angela Lansbury? Are you kidding me?” the conversation would go. And then after thinking and thinking about how my 10 and 13 year-old might know this particular famous person: “She was the voice of the tea pot in Beauty and the Beast!”

I felt old.

The Hollywood Boulevard walk was only a side trip on the way to the Hollywood sign, but that trip was short lived too. I tried to convince the kids, pointing out the window, that the hand-written sign pointing the way to the Hollywood sign was the actual sign. No dice. We ended up taking a short hike to a vantage point for a few quick snap-shots through the shroud of LA smog. I couldn’t convince Lisa and Emily in their flip-flops and sandals to make the hike to the actual sign. We’d been up since 3 or so and it was beginning to show.

The kids voted and decided we should go back to the hotel and swim in the indoor pool. We’re in Hollywood on a beautiful sunny afternoon and we’re going to go climb into a chemical-smelling 15-foot wide hotel pool. Where was I with the veto?

We snuggled into our modest hotel room and were fast asleep by 9:00 pm, I in my jeans and having not brushed my teeth. Tomorrow was another big day.