California Vacay: Los Angeles

On this day, the weather was terrible. The beach was out of the question as was anything else outdoors. I had wanted to visit the The Getty Center museum. Rob and I were going to switch off enjoying the art while the other played with the kids in the beautiful gardens but with the weather so bad, the kids couldn’t play outside, which meant Rob and I couldn’t go inside. I was disappointed.

We ended up going to the free California Science Center in the morning. It was kind of cool. The exhibits looked like they had seen better days. Everything was just getting a little old. Also, there were hundreds of students there on field trips. After we did our thing, Rob and Nate set off to get the parked car in the downpour without an umbrella. They arrived back drenched and freezing.

We then drove through the city making our way up to the Griffith Observatory. We drove through sketchy streets upon sketchy streets before getting to the beautiful drive up the canyon. The observatory is known for two things: the telescopes and the view of the city. Well, we got their and the building was encased in fog. No operating telescopes and no view. I was definitely annoyed at this point. However, after having a very engaging conversation with Mr. Einstein, I cheered up.

By this time, the fog had let up some and we were able to wander outside on the deck in the drizzle to see the view. Aren't these two the cutest?!

After this we drove to the coast in Santa Monica and loved the ocean view back down to Manhattan Beach. We made a quick stop in Marina Del Rey and watched the pelicans dive into the water for their dinner. It was so fun to see them fly, aim at the ocean, fold in their wings and stretch their necks, then splash into the water. It was still very cold outside so we mostly watched from the car.

We had dinner in Manhattan Beach at a French restaurant that was disappointing, both in cost and taste.

By this time we headed back to the Kiefer’s home, put the kids to bed, and watched a movie with Danny and Carol.

Despite our failed plans and the weather, we still had a nice day in Los Angeles.

Abalone Cove

We visited Abalone Cove right after our visit to the Wayfarer’s Chapel along the California Coastline near Portuguese Bend. Some sequences of Inception (one of my favorite films) were filmed in this area. As we drove into the park the guy in the booth was playing his guitar (which made me smile). I wonder if he is an aspiring musician of maybe just playing and singing for the love. As you can see from the shot above the geology is stunning. You can see where the sand and gravel ends and where the bedrock is exposed along the beach. Perhaps my favorite geologic feature in Abalone Cove is the angled bedding of the rock as you can see below. It reminds me of the pages of an open book.

In each of the cracks you can find aquatic life. These things are very squish and close when disturbed.

 

Some shots of the family playing!

Some of Nate’s pure energy is oozing out of him in this picture. The water is so much fun!

The beautiful rocks around the cove continually drew my eye.

Nate came with me to explore the cliffs. So amazing! The veins of minerals in the rocks were actually somewhat sharp!

And here are a couple of videos of the kids playing at the beach to round off this blog post. Access to the beach is not too difficult. There is even a small area of managed beach (we didn’t spend any time there). If you want to walk down to the tide pools and the area where we took these photos be prepared for about 1/3 of a mile walk to get down there. I’ve included a map of the area below the videos.

Nate in the Water – Video

Madi and Cara on the Beach – Video

View Larger Map

Book Club of One

Much to the chagrin of both my intellect and sanity, I’ve been neglecting my reading by doing way too much iPadding. I have decided to read 12 books over the next year, one per month. Easy, I just have to ignore the internet more than I have been each day. I’ve signed up for Goodreads to track my reading.

I’ve decided to make 4 categories, 3 books each. Of course, some of these books may fit into more than one category. Here they are:

Classics:
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Complete Poems and Selected Love Letters of John Keats by John Keats
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Bestsellers (aka Pop Culture):
Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection by A.J. Jacobs
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer
Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon

Non-fiction:
Evidences and Reconciliations by John A. Widtsoe
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World’s Most Glorious – and Perplexing – City by David Lebovitz

Books I Wouldn’t Normally Read but Will Because I Should Branch Out and Try New Things:
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
May B. by Caroline Starr Rose
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

 

It’s hard to commit to a whole year worth of books beforehand. What if I change my mind on a particular one? What if I happen to find another book that I’m more interested in? I suppose this is more of a soft list. Any thoughts on my choices?

Poo-Poo

For those of you who love a good poop story, you’re in luck! I write this not because I love writing details of my child’s bowel movements, but because it may be interesting and/or helpful to someone out there. So here goes.

Around March, Caroline started having issues with diarrhea. It got particularly bad a couple of months ago. She had loose stools or diarrhea 2-4 times every day for about 4 weeks. After ruling out a bug, the doc told us to start giving her probiotics. We were absolutely willing to do that, but those get pricey at about $20 a bottle. Then I remembered something…

A year ago my sister’s son was having major diarrhea that wouldn’t go away. No one could figure out what was going on. She was thinking maybe it was milk causing the problem. But then she realized that when she was at my mom’s house and gave her son Winder Dairy milk, he didn’t have any issues. So she bought a couple of gallons and tried it out. It worked almost immediately. From then on, that’s all he drank and he didn’t have any more issues.

So…I decided to do my own experiment. The day after taking Caroline to the doc and before I gave her any probiotics, I bought a couple of gallons of Winder Dairy milk and, voila, instantly she went from diarrhea all the time to going once every other day. Then a couple of days later, the consistency was exactly as it should be. Fascinating!

I gave it a week before I started her some probiotic just to make sure everything is kosher in her little body, but they are now just a temporary measure. 

Walmart’s Great Value milk says on its label that it is rBST (synthetic hormone) free but Winder Dairy milk ALSO is rBGH (another synthetic hormone) free. It seems between that and the milk being organic and local makes a big difference. “Our farmers serve their cows a traditional diet and keep them in the most sanitary conditions to ensure consistent farm fresh goodness.”

I’m a believer!

Holly’s a’ Movin’

My dear friend Holly is moving with her family to Phoenix. Dean was accepted to law school there so they are off on a new (hard) adventure.

Last Saturday we had an Avenues reunion with our families at Murray Park. All seven of us lived on 1st and 2nd Avenue together. We’re all so in love with living downtown that 3 of the girls still do and the other 4 still wish they did! From left to right: Julie, Savannah, Holly, Becky, Leah, Nanette, and Claire.

Holly has been a great friend. She is someone who wants to help you with anything, whenever. She threw me a ward baby shower, even though she barely knew me at the time. She cooked me dinner when I had my second baby, even though I was living in Layton and she was living in South Jordan. She constantly compliments. 

We are all sad to see her and her wonderful family go but wish her the best, BeSt, BEST of luck! Love you, Holly!

Random Phone Pictures

Nate’s claws.

 

His bald eagle diorama. I’m so proud of him for doing his OWN work!

 

Nate with his friend Nathan and his cousin Allen.

 

The book shelf has filled in a bit more since this was taken. But these little ones look better than books.

 

Can you believe this was only 9 months ago? She has grown so much!

 

There’s her belly.

 

Making a mess and enjoying every second of it!

 

Playing together.

 

Diaper Heads.

 

Madeleine asked me to take this picture of them.

 

I found this picture. She was taking it of herself in her new Rapunzel outfit.

 

These are cookies out of playdough.

 

Yes. Yoghurt in the front, spoon in the back. picking her nose. Lovely.

 

Daddy’s Girl.

 

Ole!

 

Ergonomically-correct position for working.

 

 

My springtime piano-scape with flowering branches from my backyard.

 

I have tons more random pictures on my iPad that I will have to blog about soon. Fun stuff!

House: Kid’s Bathroom

Before

I love home decorating. Don’t most women in my demographic? There are millions of blogs demonstrating how to decorate your home, specifically, on the cheap.  It’s a huge trend right now. Anything thrifty, eclectic, dyi, upcycled, recycled, reimagined, repainted, reupholstered, redone, rearranged, re-ANYTHING. I think it’s a great trend. It’s wonderful that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to have your house look amazing. But, I have two problems with this trend. 1) It isn’t really my decorating taste. I love it, but it’s not really the look I’m going for in my own home; and 2) Forget decorating on the cheap. I need to decorate on the free. And my tastes don’t come free.

So, although I love imagining and designing and coming up with all sorts of ideas, my home is not how I want it to be. There are too many bare walls, windows, and corners. This process is going to take a long, long time.

I’m so close to finishing my living room but for now here is the “finished” kid’s bathroom…you know, ‘cause a room is hardly ever finished. Most of the décor came from the kid’s bathroom in our old home, it just took time to get it all put together again.

Now if only it was always this clean! Holy dirty bathroom, Batman! I swear, little boys are so gross. Add a toilet which refuses to be flushed (I’m sure it’s the toilet’s fault) and a can of poopy diapers and you’ve got yourself an explosion of fumes. But for now, it’s clean.

 

I bought two things. First is the bath mat. I actually hate these kinds of bath mats. They are too typical and the texture gets to me, especially when wet. But they can’t be beat for a non-slip, machine-washable, destruction-proof bath rug.

The second is the cute, tiny galvanized tub I got for 75 cents at DI. I am using it as a soap holder. I refuse to give my kids liquid soap.

 

There are 3 sets of 3 starfish representing my own 3 little starfish who share the bathroom. One set is on the counter, one is above the towels, and the last one is on the wall by the light switch (not pictured).

That’s it. Nothing fancy. It’s simple. I like simple. Not my dream kid’s bathroom, but cute enough.

Not an Entirely Golden Nugget of a Trip

Rob had a hazards training class last Friday in Las Vegas. Of course, we made it a family adventure. I decided to have us stay in a part of Las Vegas that I’d never been before, Fremont Street. I figured we’d all have the most fun possible if we just kept this a low-key trip and use all of our time swimming. Therefore, I wanted to stay somewhere with a super fun swimming pool.

The Golden Nugget was actually quite a nice place to stay. The casino was in an entirely separate wing of the hotel so we never had to walk through it. Perfect. We did walk by a few slot machines and the kids thought they were pretty cool, especially since they’ve been into Chipwrecked lately. The chipmunks do a bit of gaming and so Nate and Madeleine knew exactly what they were.

Back to the swimming pool. There was a good bit of shallow-enough-for-wading area, a couple of waterfalls, a tunnel area, a waterslide, and in the middle of it all, a shark tank!! It was so fun to swim right up to the glass and watch the beasts come toward you! The waterslide went right through the tank also. We all thought it was awesome. Of course, the kids mostly wanted to be in the hot tub. I remember doing the same thing when I was young. I was a little worried about the pool crowd, but every one was respectable. Here are some crappy phone pictures.

Nate sure looks tough. Those floaties really do it for him.

We ventured out the hotel to Fremont Street, on which the hotel borders. There is an overhead light and music show put on every hour at night.

 

The whole area is catered to a more, shall we say, mature crowd? There were very few kids and very few adults our age. Which actually, we appreciated. It toned things down a little. But don’t worry, there was still plenty of 90's saxophone playing and drunken dancing going on.

But that’s about it as far as the positives of the trip go.

All three kids slept the entire way to Vegas, which was smokin’ cool. But…it was because they were sick. Madeleine was okay, just felt a little off. Nate had strep throat. Bad. He wasn’t able to swallow anything. There was only one place in Vegas where we could’ve taken him but when we looked it up online, lots of reviewers warned people to STAY AWAY; that it was a filthy and horrible place. We ended up going to the InstaCare in St. George on the way home. By that time, his throat had open ulcers. He was hating life. Caroline would prove to get sick and have a high fever all the way home. When we took her in to the doc at home, she didn’t have Strep, but another virus.  Nate is just now able to eat normally again after 6 days and a lot of pain meds. Poor, poor kid. Caroline is fine now as well. Madeleine never did get sick. She has a supernormal immune system.

Anyway, not the best trip. At least we had fun swimming.

California Vacay: Wayfarer’s Chapel

Continuing our drive around the Palos Verdes peninsula we drove over Portuguese Bend, an active landslide, much to Rob’s delight. He found this completely fascinating. After viewing the huge scarp of the landslide from the road (way too large to photograph) we drove over the part of the landside where the road was constructed, and reconstructed, and reconstructed, etc, etc – you get the idea! The road crews were onsite doing continual repairs to the most twisted and damaged sections of road Rob has ever seen.

We made a stop at the beautiful Wayfarer’s Chapel, designed by none other than Frank Lloyd Wright. The spot was so beautiful and serene perched on top of the hill overlooking the grand Pacific. How far we felt from the crowded city.

 

Rob and I have determined that if we ever were to live in the Los Angeles area, Palos Verdes would be the area we’d want our home. All we need is about $5 million +. No biggie.

 

See that cliff down there? That’s our next stop, Abalone Cove.