Hollywood Week at the Bears' Den

Last week was Hollywood Week on "American Idol," and it turned out to be the same here at the Bears' Den! My mom had some cousins visiting from Minnesota, and they really wanted to visit Hollywood and do the touristy thing there, so the girls and I went along. (Sadly, we were poor tour guides who needed GPS to find our way around and didn't know the answers to half the questions they asked! I haven't been to Hollywood since I was a kid, so I had no expertise in this area.)

Our first stop was, of course, to take pictures in front of the Hollywood Sign from Barnsdall Park. You can see it way in the distance, off to the left:




Then we walked down Hollywood Blvd., which was shut down in preparation for the Academy Awards, and had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. Outside, random dudes dressed as Woody, Elmo, and Chucky from the Child's Play movies were exhanging photo ops for tips, so Keira got her photo taken with Woody. Ellie wouldn't go near him, probably because she heard him say, "I work for tips--is that okay, ma'am?" in a very non-Tom Hanksy sounding voice and sensed that he was, in fact, an imposter. Or, maybe she was offended that he called her mother "ma'am" when she isn't even 31 yet. Who knows? In any case, Keira came home talking about Chucky, a.k.a. "that man holding a baby and protecting it with a knife," so I'm sure her preschool teacher will be hearing about that and wondering what on Earth we exposed our child to. Eeek.


Over lunch, my mom's cousin and I had the following conversation:

Me: "Too bad we didn't come a few days later. I was hoping for a George Clooney sighting."

Her: "I want to see Robert Pattinson...even though he's young enough to be my child!"

Me: "That's okay. Clooney is older than my dad."

How creepy are we??

After lunch, we strolled down the Walk of Fame and tried to avoid overly-aggressive tour salesmen. I was stoked to happen upon Cate Blanchett's star and had to take a photo of Ellie standing on it. I adore Cate Blanchett. (And Ellie.)


We thought that was the end of our Hollywood experience, but over the next couple of days, we invited a person here and a person there to come over and watch the Oscars on Sunday. On Saturday, I realized we now had 8 adults and 7 kids coming, so we'd better make it a party! The girls and I ran to Party City in search of cheesy decorations, but the girls discovered the sunglasses and hats display and decided to practice their movie star looks first:

When I got home and started googling Oscar predictions ballots and Oscar BINGO cards, I found a bunch of websites that had Oscar night menus, with one dish to represent each of the 10 Best Picture nominees. It seemed a little too ambitious an idea to pull off at the last minute, but I ended up using the internet, Bear, and my own cheesy ideas to find movie-related names for each of the items we'd already planned on having, and then added in a few fillers to cover all ten. Here's what the menu ended up looking like:

Can we all give Bear a round of applause for The King's Stutter (Nutter) Butters? That one was his!

The actual gathering wasn't particularly fancy, but the kids liked running up and down the red carpet and were pretty good about letting the adults sit around and watch the awards. Of course, Keira chose Colin Firth's long-anticipated acceptance speech as a good time to give her OWN lengthy speech, right in front of the TV, on how someone had thrown a plastic ball in the playroom and accidentally hit her in the head. She's already a scene-stealer!

By the end of the night, all the kids had piled onto our bed to watch Peter Pan, and I believe they set a world record for Quietest Room with the Most Children:

(Yes, our bedroom needs a makeover. Badly.)

It was a whirlwind of a week, which also included double ear infections and conjunctivitis (eye infections) for both girls, two allergic reactions to two different antibiotics for Keira, and a followup case of conjunctivitis and a sinus infection for yours truly. Fortunately, all of the Hollywood Week festivities fit neatly in between the girls' getting better and my getting sick, so it all worked out nicely, and a good time was had by all! Maybe we'll make the Oscar party an annual tradition, and plan a little further ahead next time to make it bigger and better!

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