California Trip (Day 3)

On Monday Greg and I went out for breakfast at a place called Panera Bread. We shared a cinnamon roll and some other breakfasty things that were pretty good. (Side note: Cinnamon Roll for breakfast = Holly very happy.)


Greg's Grandma had gotten tickets to the Laguna Beach Art Festival, so we all went together with Grandma, Chrissy, Bob, Dan and his little family.


It was fun to wander around and see all the different paintings and sometimes odd forms of art. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of the art, so I'm not able to show you anything. One that caught our attention was the garbage cans...Yes, garbage cans that were bashed in with a large hole cut in the front, hanging on the wall. There were 3, so maybe that's symbolic or something. There was also a pitchfork stuck in each garbage can. I forgot to look at how much the artist was selling it for, but everything there was in the range of thousands of dollars. Yikes! There really were some beautiful things that I enjoyed looking at though. I especially loved the paintings of the ocean and beach, and other scenes of nature.


After looking at all the art we came upon a table of art supplies that was open for everybody to use. We all had fun painting and drawing with water color pencils.






There was also a live jazz band performing in the center of the festival. They were fun to listen to. It's not very often that you get to enjoy the music of a live band. There were various singers who joined the band for certain songs like the Chatenuga Train.


There was also a saxophone guy. He had a collection of rare and unusual saxophones. (I'm sitting in front of the case for the 6 1/2 foot sax.)


The first one was designed to sound like a french horn. It was made in 1928. The story goes that too many kids at school wanted to play the saxophone, so they made a saxophone that sounded like a french horn and you could then play the french horn part for the band. It never caught on though, and they stopped production in 1929. It was so bad that the guys in the factory would toss the instruments out the window of the 3rd floor and let the repair guys on the first floor gather them up. They would practice repairing those dented or broken saxophones because there was nothing better to do. There are only about two dozen left in existence. I thought it sounded beautiful when he played though. It was a really smooth nice sound with a shadow of a saxophone tone mixed with the french horn sound.


The next one he played was a slider. It had a slider part on it like a trombone, and he used it to play the notes instead of buttons. He could slide the sound up or down and make the notes slur. That was interesting.


The third saxophone I think was the most impressive. It was HUGE! He came out carrying it up high on his shoulder so he could tip toe through the band up to the front. It is 6 1/2 feet tall! They only made 9 of these total. The sound is so big and deep, it sounds really cool. He had to set it up on a stool and then stand on his toes to reach the mouth piece.





The last saxophone I got to see was this cute little tiny one. It was only about a foot tall. We were leaving at the time he was taking it out of the case, so he let me hold it and took my picture for me. Unfortunately I wasn't able to hear it, so it will always be a mystery about how it sounded. He told me it was very high pitched--higher than a normal soprano sax.



After the Art Festival we all headed down to the beach. It was nice to go see the water and run around in the sand with Greg and the kids.




Greg thought it would be funny to tease the seagulls with a pretzel, so he held it up high and then would pull it away before the birds could get it. (It gave me a flashback from Seattle and the birds at Ivar's. Greg teased those birds for about a half hour, and some how he didn't get pooped on!) Again, magically, Greg did not get pooped on or pecked at, but we were all running for cover! Hahhaha!






We had dinner at a little restaurant on the water and then headed back home. It was fun hanging out with Greg's family and playing with Dan and Becky's kids. Lizzy especially enjoyed getting an extra long piggy-back ride for most of the way back up to the cars. She's a cute girl and I enjoyed her company that day.



Thanks Grandma for the fun day and getting our tickets to the Art Festival!