The best thing about LA

Because we planned to stay about a week in LA and because I knew I would be pretty tired of hotel room by the time we got there, we decided to rent a house. We used airbnb, and lemmetellya, we loved it.

We found a great place, for a great price in a great area, but the best part about the experience was meeting our wonderful host, Tracey. This woman made our trip. She basically acted as our personal concierge. She found me the perfect place to run (with the Hollywood sign in the background), she gave us restaurant recommendations (which we hardly needed given all the delicious, gourmet food she left for us), she spoiled our kids absolutely rotten, and huge bonus - she works at Disney studios and gave us a private tour.

Tracey was the bomb-diggity:

 Oh, and sprinkles cupcakes are pretty great too:

Tracey took us to the Disney archives. This place was unreal:

Look - the puppets they used for the opening credits on the original Parent Trap:

Stan Lee's office, where my husband walked in to pretending he was lost looking for the bathroom. Like they don't see that all the time:

 The famous seven dwarfs executive building:

 The Character voices studio:

 Mia looking through the original drawing for Beauty and the Beast:

But like all good things, the trip had to come to an end and the laundry had to begin. (That entire back was full of dirty laundry).

On our last night in LA we were sitting in a restaurant and it dawned on me that my kids had not asked to play on my phone the entire trip. I actually teared up when I brought it to their attention. We just had that much fun being together without the distractions of our regular responsibilities.

Every family should be forced to spend huge amounts of time together in very cramped quarters. Strangely, it doesn't bring out the worst in you.