Awhile back we started watching America’s Got Talent. One of the boys asked how people got to be in the audience. So I went online and signed up to be notified about when tickets were available and…
With less than a week’s notice, and it also being on the eve of back to school, I had to get creative with flights. I wasn’t looking to spend $600 per person (I’m looking at YOU rhymes-with Boonited) but the prices on Frontier worked out perfectly – both with timing and price (less than $400 TOTAL! And I would have saved even more had I booked at the airport, which would have been super simple as I was returning from a business trip, but in all of the chaos I forgot about that tip.)
We hit an early flight Tuesday a.m., grabbed a rental car, rushed to our hotel, got spruced up, and walked next door to the convention center to claim our free tickets.
After claiming our tickets, we returned to the hotel to relax (aka play on ipads and be lazy) (did I mention we had an EARLY flight?!) for about an hour before returning back to the show. Our hotel was in a perfect location, so it was easy to pop back and forth.
Our seats were shuffled around a bit but we eventually ended up in the middle of the balcony. We didn’t have an amazing view of the judges, but we did see Terry Fator’s backside (and this was also our sole 1-second of on-camera fame).
The show was great, and Connor was super happy that the Parmesan guy was performing that night. After the show, we got to move down lower as the judges filmed a promo for the show Password. It was kind of fun to watch, but I was getting hangry. However, it was a good thing we stayed because as we left the auditorium, we walked thisclose to Simon Cowell. I was too star-struck/slow to whip out my phone, but Connor piped up with “Hi, Simon!” and Simon said “Well, hello there,” back. Simon had two bodyguards escorting him and I was too intimidated to ask for a picture but it was super cool to see him close up.
But perhaps even more exciting for the little guy than Simon, was bumping into Parmesan guy just a few seconds later! And what a cool guy he is. We told him Connor is his biggest fan (we’re not lying) and got pics. He was so gracious.
After all that excitement, we returned to the hotel for room service and sleep.
The next day, we drove out to Malibu for a brief stint at the beach.
This was Connor’s first time in the Pacific ocean, and Brady’s first visit since he was 18 months old.
After a little beach time, we popped in to Neptune’s Net, a long-time favorite of mine, for lunch with Mimi!
Back to the hotel we hustled then. The boys decided the Hollywood sign was not worth seeing (I think it’s iconic but had to agree that it wasn’t worth the added traffic). Instead we spent an hour poolside at the hotel before taking advantage of our late checkout.
Before heading back to the airport, I had one more surprise planned… a trip to one of my favorite restaurants in the world.
The boys had never been to a DTF, but I’d been to locations in Taipei, Seattle, and Las Vegas, and was super excited to share the amazingness with them. They thought the food was great, but their faces when dessert came said it all.
We had relatively good traffic karma back to the Ontario airport, turned in our rental car, and boarded our flight with no issues. We didn’t land back in Denver until almost midnight, and Brady wasn’t thrilled about getting up for his first day of school the next morning, but overall our trip was an amazing endcap to a great summer.