Long weekend.

We had a wonderful 4th of July weekend because 1) my sister drove down from N. Cali to spend the long weekend with us and 2) A. got Monday off so we had a four day weekend together. Everyone had a blast. Saturday was spent hanging out at home with dinner at a new buffet place by the house. The food sucked. We're never going back there. Sunday, we went swimming from 11 AM - 1 PM at the pool where Aria gets her lessons. My sister arrived right as we got home, talk about perfect timing. We then drove to Super Marukai 98 cents Store in Torrance. My sister loves that place, okay, I'm a sucker for their stuff too. She loves their plastic containers and I'm a fan of all their cute stuff. Shopping with my sister is great because she can keep me in check and stop me from buying too many cheesy stuff. We spent 4 hours perusing the aisles on our last visit. This time we only spent 3 hours there. We closed the store out. It worked out perfectly because A. went and watched the Superman movie when we shopped there. Can't say he loves that store as much as my sister and I love do. Aria also loves that store. She's really good about being careful around the glass and ceramic area. She usually listens except when she found this new area of the store. Marukai is selling fountains now and had the back area set up with all the running water fountains. She went beserk and started picking up little pebbles from one displace and tossed them into another display. She refuse to leave that area. I had to physical pry her little hands from the displays. After shopping we headed over to Koji BBQ Buffet for dinner. We would eat there more if it was closer to our house but having my sister around gave us a great reason to eat there. Boy, the food was delish. The only drawback was the smoky food smell that lingered on our clothes from the table grills but it was well worth it for the delicious food. On Monday, my sis and I went shopping in the morning and then headed out to Zuma beach in the late afternoon. Boy the drive took a long time. I guess everyone decided the beach was the place to go to avoid the heat. We got there around 4 PM (a little late) and hung out until 6:30PM. Aria loved the beach. I don't know why we don't do it more often. A. found her some sand crabs and Aria was in heaven. Those things freaked me out but Aria treated them like they were her new pets. They look like gigantic fleas to me. We had to bring a bunch home for her and unfortunately they did not make if through the night. We capped the night off with vietnamese food for dinner.

At Zuma beach.

Sand crabs that A. found and that Aria insisted that we take home.

On Tues, my sister and I shopped some more in the morning. We got back around noon to drag A. and Aria out for dim sum. We gave Aria the option of going shopping after dim sum and she said that she would rather ' stay with daddy at home'. Okay, she's no shopaholic like my sister and I but I'm going to try and change that gradually as she gets older. We had a hard time deciding whether or not we should go watch the fireworks because Aria decided to take a nap right before we where to head out. In the end, we decided to drag her to the closest public showing which was 10 mins away. We got a late start so finding close enough parking to the site was near impossible. We ending up parking at least 1/2 mile away. We still had to walk to the main street. We didn't get close to the site but we were still able to view the show. Aria was scared of the noise so it worked out great. She didn't show any interest at all in the showing and we left before it ended to avoid the traffic. We finally got back into our car around 9:50 PM and decided to have a late dinner. Everything pretty much closes at 10 PM and since it was a holiday it was near impossible to find a place to eat that was still open. The only place that was open was Denny's. We all had a mediocre dinner and called it a night. My sister left Weds. morning around 7:30 AM. We really enjoyed her company and wish she lives closer so we can see her more often. She made this Forth of July weekend great.

Aria outside the dim sum restaurant.