Plates!

Enjoying our "new" plates and the lovely wark weather last weekend. (The plates are from Mary P., who got them from Mary G., aka Nona, who bought them, one at a time, when I was in high school, from the store next to the pet store that I worked at).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Sofia Zander" <szander@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 19, 2012 6:40 PM
Subject: Plates!
To: "Mary Papadopoulos" <maryalzire@gmail.com>, "Mary Gabardi" <mgabardi@gmail.com>

The beautiful plates, hard at work. Thank you!
Love s

Garden-in-a-Hand

Made at the beach...

Easter Egg Hunt

After days of the kids asking "when do we get to paint eggs?" and "can we have an easter egg hunt now?" we finally did it today! I guess the nice thing about not officially celebrating easter is that we can celebrate it when we have time! So, I found the all-natural egg-dyes that I had bought on sale last spring after easter, and we went to the corner store to get some eggs. And we made some pretty nice looking eggs, if you ask me! I even blew out the fresh eggs so that I wouldn't have to boil them. We also had a couple of our own fresh eggs already boiled that we colored and added to the mix. And a couple of neighbor kids came over and joined the fun! 

Habitot face

This face is the result of a MUCH anticipated trip to Habitot this morninf. Clara's been asking to go to Habitot for ages, and something always comes up to derail our plans. The last time we planned on going she spent the whole week talking about what she would do first (face painting), what the current "exhibit" would be, and what else she would do (climb in the climbing wall). Then she got sick so we couldn't go.

And this morning our Habitot plans were almost derailed again when my parents' shower faucet handle broke. But Nona came to the rescue and took Clara to Habitot after all, while I put on my plumber hat and fixed the durn shower.

Up, up, and away!

Look at Molly go!

At the Beach

One last afternoon at the beach before we head back north in the morning...

Great Grand Girls

We surprised GGPa with an extra special visit after our trip to the bookstore: he got to enjoy all three of his great-grand-girls, including baby Adena!

Children's Book World

I have a new kid's bookstore, but unfortunately it's in LA. Judd & Tybe lured us out to Children's Book World with promises of books for the kids (as a reward for finding the Afikomen last night). I'm hooked. Not only does it have an incredible selection, but what cinched it for me is the organization. Berkeleyites might remember the old Reel Video, which organized it's videos in seemingly endless categories. Well, this bookstore is sort of like that, except there aren't quite as many categories. But with Molly's rapidly expanding reading abilities, it was really nice to see that they've broken it down beyond "picture books" and "chapter books". They had a big section of "first chapter books". Another one just for "short chapter books". And a third huge category that we could browse dedicated to "8-10 year olds". Then there were the reference sections - world reference, interesting facts, games, etc. 

Of course, Molly found the Rainbow Fairies series and stopped there, just soaking in the fact that they had every single book. I only wish the library could organize their books like this book store - it would make it so much easier to find appropriate books for the kids as they rapidly change in reading ability and interests. 

LACMA

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at LACMA with GGPa & GGMa. I had never been to LACMA before and was completely impressed. It reminded me, in a way, of visiting the Smithsonian as a child. Partly because it was free, but also because of the easy flow of indoor and outdoor spaces, the accessibility of the exhibits, and the fact that it felt like many museums (which, I suppose it is, technically?). Plus, visiting the tar pit park next door, with it's big grassy spaces, was like a smaller (and hillier) version of romping on the Mall.