Grandma's Last Weekend: Observatory and Beach

We are busy making sure that Grandma's visit to Los Angeles ends with a bang, so we started off the day with Griffith Observatory. I know that the parking lot is small, but several spots were available when we arrived (10am) and when we left (around noon). We were excited to see the planetarium show, and kids under 5 are only allowed into the first show (10:45 today), which was about searching for water in our solar system. I would recommend the show, and I found out that this show is not generally crowded on weekends. I was looking forward to checking out the recently renovated museum--it was closed for renovations when we were here 5 years ago. Much of the astronomy exhibits upstairs was similar to what I remember from when I was here for graduate school, but the new exhibit downstairs, Depths of Space was spectacular. The kids loved seeing the models of the planets, looking through telescopes at a representative "night sky", and touching space rocks that fell to earth as meteors. Before leaving Griffith Park, we thought that it would be nice to have a picnic lunch, but it ended abruptly because the bees were just as hungry as we were.

Our next stop was the LA Fire Department Museum in Hollywood. It houses lots of old fire equipment on the bottom floor and a play area for kids on the top floor. The exhibits were really interesting, and the kids loved playing with the fire engines and fire station on the second floor (though the room contained fewer toys now than it did 5 years ago). However, Smokey the Bear was still there! In the afternoon, Dave and Grandma took the kids to La Pintoresca Park to play in the water.

(Dave here) - I have to comment on Joshua's 'victory' at Skip-Bo yesterday. Evidently he pulled the wool over Grandma's eyes successfully, because he only 'won' by cleverly selecting the three cards that he needed from the draw pile, which I saw but no one else noticed. I have mixed feelings about it, but it was funny.

On Sunday Dave decided that he wanted a family hike and a beach outing. We started off with a hike in Griffith Park in the park. We parked in the upper merry-go-round parking lot and picked a nice wide trail uphill trail. We went far enough to get a nice view of Los Angeles, but when the trail started to slope downhill, we decided that the kids had probably gone far enough. The Shane's Inspiration playground is closest to the lower merry-go-round parking lot, and it didn't seem horribly crowded when we drove by.

In the afternoon we went to Santa Monica to experience the beach. We parked in Santa Monica Place (an indoor shopping mall with free parking for 3 hours during the day) and walked to the beach (the pier parking was full, so I am glad that we didn't even try it). I insisted that we check out the Santa Monica Pier aquarium. It was very small, but the kids enjoyed the shark tank, the touch tank and the shark puppet craft. Then we headed out to the beach where the kids enjoyed swimming in the water for a while and playing in the sand. Joshua was disappointed that we didn't find another sand crab. Santa Monica doesn't have nearly as many shells as the Boca Chica beach, but Benjamin still managed to collect some. We enjoyed the cool ocean breeze for a while, but then left when the kids got too cold. On the way home, Grandma treated the kids to chocolate dipped ice cream cones at McDonalds. That evening, we said tearful goodbyes to Grandma, and Dave took her to the airport. In spite of tragedy of Grandma's departure, Laura was excited about starting camp on Monday!

Week At Zoo Camp, Part 2

On Wednesday Laura was excited about visiting the zoo after we dropped the boys at camp. After waiting eagerly for an hour, Laura, Grandma and Mommy were ready to charge into an exciting zoo adventure. From seals and sea lions to kangaroos, gorillas and tapirs, Laura was excited to see the animals and socialize with other children. We made it to the bird show at 11:30 where we ran into both Joshua and Benjamin. After the bird show, we went home to relax a bit before I picked up the boys. Benjamin studied fur and skin during camp and enjoyed seeing orangutans, among other animals. Joshua brought home an egg that he decorated and saw the rock hyrax with 4 babies.

In the evening, we saw Joanie Bartels at the Levitt Pavillion in Pasadena. The kids enjoyed dancing to the Mexican Hat Dance among other songs and playing in the playground. Joshua enjoyed climbing the rock pile on one end of the playground, and Benjamin loves pretending to be the conductor on the train. The bathrooms were decent, but a little dirty and lacking toilet paper (but this was at 8:00pm).

Thursday Laura was eager to visit the zoo again, but today's activity was Griffith Observatory. On the way, we took a short hike through the bird sanctuary, which is just a short hiking trail surrounded by trees. We were disappointed to find out that the observatory doesn't open until noon on weekdays (10am on weekends), but we enjoyed the views. Then I took Laura to the Audubon Center at Debs Park where she was happy to join a pile of other kids playing in the trees and playhouse. Though Laura had fun, I remember more things to play with 5 years ago, including a tent site and plastic animals. We did see quite a few real lizards and Laura is always excited about ants. She was thrilled to borrow her own pair of binoculars to hang around her neck and to use to examine some wildlife.

Joshua was excited to have lost a tooth during camp today and couldn't wait to put the tooth under his pillow. Benjamin learned about ears, mouth, teeth and tongue today during camp. Joshua brought home a bird puppet. After camp, we stopped at the Eagle Rock branch library for a space-themed storytime in honor of the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, and they enjoyed making kaleidoscopes.

After dropping Joshua and Benjamin off for their last day of camp, we went to see Brand Park and Library. The Japanese Garden was closed, but Laura enjoyed the playground for a while. It is a decent size playground with a playhouse, a huge sandbox, and a shallow wading pool which is only open limited hours. When we entered the playground, someone pointed out some deer across the road. Then we checked out the Brand library and art gallery. Grandma liked a huge white sculpture that looked like a birds nest. Our next stop was to see the free rehearsal of Guys and Dolls at the Hollywood Bowl. We arrived partway through the first half--the parking lot was packed with cars of people eager to see a free show. It was definitely worth while, and we were able to sit fairly close to the stage, but if we had been more experienced at this sort of activity, we would have come earlier and scoped out shaded seats or brought an umbrella. Finally, we made a stop at Travel Town in Griffith Park where Laura insisted on going on the train ride.

Joshua and Benjamin enjoyed their last day of zoo camp. Benjamin decorated a "real tooth" on a necklace that says "made in China" and said that he saw all the animals in the zoo except the Indian Rhino because it was sick. Joshua said that he saw the tapir, a snake, and an owl. In the evening all the kids played a wild game of Skip-Bo with Grandma and Joshua won with Benjamin coming in a close second. Grandma and Daddy went for a walk and were excited to see a gated estate called Chateau Emanual right on our street.

Week at Zoo Camp

On Monday, July 27, the kids celebrated Grandma's return after her trip on the "hotel boat." This is also the first day of Zoo Camp for the boys, and much to Laura's disappointment, she couldn't join them. Benjamin came home from camp with a lemur tail that he made in his Creature Feature camp, and Joshua talked about beaks and seeing the kangaroos in his Rebel Raptors camp. (How are kangaroos relevant to raptors?) In the evening Joshua and Laura saw the Swazzle puppet production of the show "Water Color" at a Glendale branch library. Joshua was so fascinated by it that he wants to make his own color pearl.

On Tuesday, after dropping the boys at the zoo, I took Laura to play in Shane's Inspiration playground in Griffith Park. Even though it was early in the morning, a few other kids were playing there, and Laura enjoyed picking up some friends (note: the bathrooms seemed fairly clean and had toilet seats). When we were done at the playground, we rushed to the Americana at Brand mall in Glendale to catch the current kids concert. The performers, Rhythm Child, had drums and instruments for the kids to play which Laura thought was exciting (especially the yellow tambourine and the rainbow drumstick). Then we enjoyed lunch at the Crepe Maker stand which has a free kids meal deal, and Laura played in the playground, which, thankfully, was nicely shaded.

After Zoo Camp, Joshua showed off an egg that he had decorated, and he saw a peregrine falcon while Benjamin's program was about feet. Afterwards, the kids cooled off at Cerritos Playground in Glendale.

Benjamin and Joshua at Camp

B: Today we saw some seals and sea lions and alligators. We saw more too. But Mom, I gotta uh, The otters are not there yet. They are in the same thing as the seal lions and seals. We made a paw print--we each made a different one. Some made a black bear paw print like me. But I used three magic things and that's it.

Dino-Mite camp at the NHM: We saw butterflies. We talked about all kinds of animals, not just butterflies. Because of red and yellow means an animal can't eat it--it's dangerous. All sorts of animals that have red and yellow or just red or just yellow on them--that's camouflage.

Build-it, race-it, fly-it: Today we made cotton ball launchers.

J: The whale watching was really cool. We rocked up and down up and down and sometimes we jumped and we weren't even touching the water. It was cool, especially the whales--I never knew they were so big.

Zoo camp was really good. We got to dissect owl pellets in zoo camp and also in Birds of a Feather (NHM, next week). Oh yeah, raptors have talons and the ones with two in the front and two in back "zydodactyles". The back talons are called the "killer talons". The rockpyrex has 4 babies.

I liked the planetarium show. I liked going to the planets with water and volcanos. I liked petting the crab in the aquarium. There was a sea anenomae that doesn't sting and I touched it.

Funtastic Physics: The roller coaster is my favorite park. We got balls to roll it on. And then we made loops to see if that did it. I made boats yesterday. My aluminum boat worked better than my clay boat. My clay boat only held 8 washers, but my aluminum boat held more than 100.

Birds of a Feather: We dissected owl pellets.

Whale Watching

Dave thought that taking the kids on a cruise would be fun, so we decided to try a 3 hour whale watch tour hoping that the length of the boat ride would not exceed the kids' attention span too much. Though the Newport Beach cruises were significantly cheaper, I was concerned about traffic and parking there. Since Long Beach is about half the distance and less likely to have problems with beach traffic, we went there for our cruise. We were promised some wildlife sightings with a strong likelyhood that we would see at least one whale. We boarded the boat and ate lunch. Joshua had his dream double peanut butter and jelly sandwich while Benjamin and Laura ate much of Mommy's and Daddy's sandwiches as well as their own.

After we got started, the kids enjoyed standing at the bow of the boat and watching the waves rush by. First we encountered a bunch of dolphins that enjoyed performing for us and then a sunfish, which was difficult to see because it was mostly underwater. Soon afterwards we found a mommy and baby blue whale pair. We saw them spouting water and swimming around. The captain of the boat managed to follow that blue whale pair around for a while until it was time to return to shore. In the middle of the ride, while everyone was on the deck watching for the whales, Benjamin and Laura decided to get seasick at the same time! Then Dave and I spent most of the rest of the ride inside with Laura and Benjamin napping on our laps. We were still fairly happy with the cruise (except for the kids getting sick)--seeing the dolphins and the whales in the wild was very exciting.

Joshua's thoughts on week #4

My favorite part of the week was the Children's Museum. It was really fun. Oh yeah, the theater, I would like to go back to that again. And the carousel. Oh yeah, the car. I want a car that runs on electricity because you can go 50 miles with one gallon of electricity gas. Have you ever heard of a car that runs on water? You can only go 12.5 miles with one gallon of water in that car. There are still more kinds of gas a car can run on. Regular gas and some kind of gas that starts with a B.

Oh yeah, the library craft. I made a dinosaur, Benjamin made a kitty car and Laura made something crazy. The puppet show--I especially like the part where he tried to throw the bed, he was like "oooohhhh, ouch". I especially like the part where he said "Save the biggest piece for me" because Papa Bear came up and said "Wait a minute, that's not in the script".

Hollywood Bowl and Library Tour

Wednesday, July 22 we started off with a craft at the Pasadena Library with a stop in Alhambra to give Dave a good shirt since he biked to work and forget a fresh shirt to change into. Then we ate lunch at Teri and Yaki, a fast food type Japanese restaurant in Pasadena. They had given out coupons to summer reading club members for a free meal, which the kids were eager to redeem. Though not spectacular, the food was good, the kids were happy, and Joshua actually ate the chicken. By the time we got back home, it was 3:00pm since the kids' multiple bathroom trips during lunch and during errands after lunch slowed us down considerably. I got the kids a snack from the house, and we went to the Los Feliz library for a humorous puppet show by Swazzle called "Goldilocks and the Three Buckaneers". Joshua and Benjamin were mesmerized by it. Afterwards, I dragged them to Cerritos Park to play in the water again before heading home.

Thursday, July 23 we started off with a Summersounds show at the Hollywood Bowl. The performace took us on a visit to East LA to learn about Mexican music and dance with SammyDee (who lives at 24th and Hoover in the show). After the show, the kids made tin paintings and Day of the Dead masks. In the afternoon, we went to our local Eagle Park branch library to see a pirate magic show by David Skale. This magic show was not nearly as impressive as the first one--Illusions by Allen at the Pasadena branch library. Joshua thought that the pirate magic show was funnier, but preferred Allen because he performed more magic tricks.

On Friday we journeyed to La Habra to visit the Children's Museum there. Benjamin was excited from the moment he saw the train cars outside the museum, especially the red caboose. The kids started off in the theater room (see photo) which contained hundreds of costumes, a working microphone and working sound effects room. They could have played there all day. They also enjoyed the riding the carousel, touring the caboose, climbing on the dinosaurs outside the museum (see photo), and making Gak. Benjamin was fascinated by the typewriter in the caboose, and enjoyed dressing up as a fireman in the theater room. Laura's second favorite activity was grocery shopping.

I finally dragged the kids away from the theater, and we drove to Alhambra to give Dave a ride home (since he had biked to work). Before going home, we checked out the water play area in Alhambra park. Much to the kids' disappointment, we didn't end up staying because I was annoyed that they were charging for both adults and kids to go into a tiny water play area. To make up for it, Saturday afternoon we took the kids again to La Pintoresca Park in Pasadena which has a bigger, free water play area and adjoining playground!

Saturday morning we went to the William H. Hart Park in Newhall, near Santa Clarita because they were having a family program. While it was not nearly as crowded as July 4 at the Rose Bowl must be, the kids enjoyed the crafts (toilet paper tube binoculars, and pasta and bead rattlesnakes) and the live animal program. They even had skins from skunks, badgers, bobcats and cougars and owl wings for us to touch. The park also has a barnyard area, a herd of buffallo, and tours of William Hart's mansion, which I was told is very child-friendly. Though the buffallo are not always visible on the walking path to the mansion, we managed to spot three buffallo near the sign about them. Dave and I enjoyed seeing the mansion, but the only child-friendly aspect of the tour was that it was very short. Joshua and Benjamin were impressed by the bear skin rug in the living room. Someone mentioned a bird sanctuary on top of Pine Mountain in Frazier Park, which I will have to remember to look up, though it doesn't seem like it is worth the drive this summer.

Since our local section of Colorado Blvd (the main thoroughfare in Eagle Rock) is lined with Thai restaurants, I thought it would be fun to try one. So, in the evening, we decided to try Classic Thai because it had the highest rating of local restaurants on Yelp. Though the restaurant was empty, we were not disappointed with the food. The kids gobbled down the heavenly chicken which was recommended by someone on Yelp. Next time, I would like to sit on their peaceful patio.