La Brea Tar Pits

On the day that LegoLand was closed during our vacation, we went to La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. This visit was a huge success for Carbon, who has always loved dinosaurs and fossils (but there are no dinosaurs at La Brea, of course). Hypatia wasn't as interested, and instead seemed to just feel really sad about all the dead animals.

Not on vacation anymore

A week ago today I was here, with my feet buried on Malibu beach, watching my kids play in the surf. Today, I am home, mowing my yard in a wind and hail storm (because I just couldn't stand to watch the grass grow any taller and I have this small window of time that I can do this).

Yep, not on vacation anymore.

LegoLand

OK - Legoland was fantastic! The park is bigger than most of us expected, and much, much cooler.

We spent four days there, which felt about right to do everything. There are amusement park rides, but they are all pretty tame. My four year old could ride and enjoy everything, and did! There are also many lego sculptures, and a whole lego "Miniland" that have inspired Carbon with new ambitions for his lego building. When you are tired of walking around, there are building zones with the signature toy to play with as well as amazing playgrounds kids can just run free in.

The food in the park was a bit expensive, but the quality and variety were good, and we even found gluten-free accommodations (like gluten free hot dog buns at the hot dog stand!).

It's a great park for four to ten year olds, and we had the best time!

Happy Birthday - definitely not a baby anymore

Now we are Seven - not my little baby at all. Happy Birthday, my darling.

Letting Go for a Bit

I need to breathe.

I need to let go.

Each and everytime I have a vacation, I run up against my perfectionism and my illusion of control.

I feel like if I stop pushing, the world will stop turning. I am pushing myself against life and I usually don't take much of a break from that.

Because, after all, it would all fall apart if I wasn't here, right?

How egotistical. How grasping. What was they said in Star Wars? "The harder you squeeze your fist, the more will slip from your grasp?" Something like that.

I am going to be gone for a week - and two Sundays at work. We are in the midst of transition and change in our physical church space, but I still leave it in good shape and in good hands. I also feel great stress about leaving my home - that other people might come in here and see a dust bunny and judge me.

Oh goodness, I have such a long road ahead of me to truly grow in wisdom. But for now, I will simply try to grow, I mean Go, on a family vacation.

doing lots of stuff

This is a very busy time of year, so in the last two weekends I've had the kids involved in lots of "stuff". They've had art hanging for our local Arts Walk, been in a parade, been in a thrift store fashion show, and walked in a charity walk.

That's with also spending each Friday night out at the family cabin and having Y baseball games each Saturday morning. Oh, and church on Sundays, of course.

Carbon is less than thrilled about doing it all, and he keeps saying he doesn't want to do this stuff next year. I always did lots of stuff as a kid, but I worry that I might be pushing too much. My husband says, no, though. He doesn't want Carbon to be like he was as a boy, not doing anything.

We've been overscheduled for a bit here, but I really do like to do all this "stuff". I just wish it didn't get piled up on these "target weekends" when it seems like everything happens at once! This always happens to us around Earth Day to May Day.

New space coming along!

Today I set up the new Nursery and Spiritplay (montessori style pre-K) classroom. How did we ever live with the old space? Goodness, this is so much better!