Here are some videos of the girls during our picnic at the Rose Garden in LA. Pretty funny. They love it when I take videos of them. Too bad that Joel says he loves his children too much to put them in the movie business. A squirrel kept creeping up on our lunch so that is what Adelle is looking around for in the video. He was a very sneaky squirrel.

Joel worked in LA last Friday so we decided to spend the day there while he was working. Mostly because he needed to be dropped off at the truck rental place to pick up the equipment truck to go prep for an upcoming film he is working on and then needed picked up at the production office when he was done prepping. I decided at least 4 hours driving back and forth wasn't worth it so we planned a day in LA. We went to Exposition Park to the free museums there to start. We went to the California African American Museum where we saw lots of photos of influential African Americans, art work, and displays from Africa and slavery in the south. We saw a necklock and chain that the slaves were marched down south in (the chain gangs) and two dresses that Ella Fitzgerald performed in. After that museum we went to the CaliforniaScienCenter for Space and Aircraft.They got to pretend to fly a helicopter, see a space suit, fly paper airplanes with different shaped wings,and a few other things. We headed to the Rose Garden for a picnic lunch before going to the World of Life exhibit where they got to see how big a baby at 22 weeks gestation is, baby chicks, lobsters, and learned about the parts of a plant, and our bodies. I like the science center because it is free, very hands on, and educational. Here are some photos from the Rose Garden. From Expo Park we headed to The Grove, an outdoor shopping mall that houses the American Girls Store. Adelle was in heaven. She did really good not being able to buy anything. (The dolls alone are
90$!) The store was over the top. They have a hair salon and a hospital for the dolls. We read the books about Felicity when we were studying Colonial American last spring. Felicity is Adelle's favorite doll. Here is a photo with the Felicity dolls. Adelle really liked trying clothes on so we took a few pictures of her trying on Samantha's pajamas

Here are pictures from one of the parks we attend with our Liahona homeschool group. It is an island playground filled with imaginary colonial Boston homes and a "Boston Tea Party ship".  The island is surrounded by water filled with all kinds of ducks and turtles. Maeve likes to chase the ducks back into the water and step in lots of duck poop. Lots of fun. You can "shoot" this cannon and water spouts out of the lake, frightening the ducks. Of course both girls love to do that. It seems kind fo cruel to me.

Adelle lost her sun hat for awhile and wore this bonnet that my mother made her. I thought it was pretty funny that she was running around in a pioneer bonnet but it didn't even phase her. After Maeve threw her sun hat in the duck poop I tried to put her bonnet on her but she wasn't too fond of wearing it.

While Joel was on Christmas break we took a trip to LA to the Getty Museum with our friends, the Patton's, from film school. My favorite part was the room with Van Gogh's Irises picture (it looked like stained glass), some Monet paintings, and some Pissarro paintings. I didn't know about Pissarro before but I really like his paintings. Adelle gets excited to see any Monet art after studying him last semester. Our current picture study is Leonardo Da Vinci and we will do Rembrandt next. We saw some of his stuff at the Getty but the colors are too dark for me, at least in the paintings we saw. After our trip Grandma Jenneth sent us a card with Van Gogh's Irises on it.  Adelle was excited to say she had seen the original.
One great thing about the Getty is that they have a children's room. In there they have activities that correspond with what exhibits they have on display. Currently on display is this decorated letter exhibit. It is really cool. All these books from around the time of Christ that have elaborate drawings within the letters on the pages. So in the kids room they had a big book that the girls could decorate.

There is so many fun things to do in LA but we don't often get up there because of the cost of gas and the activities and the wear and tear on the car. But when Joel went to SLC to work before Christmas he flew out of Burbank so we had to take him to and from the airport. We decided to take advantage of the trip to go on a fieldtrip. The California Science Center is in downtown LA and is free except for parking, of course, which is $6. So we spent some time there with Joel before dropping him off and then we went back at the end of the week and spent some time there before picking him up from the airport. With Joel we went to the World of Life section and learned about our bodies and animals. We saw some newborn chicks that were really cute and one that was trying to break out of his shell. When we went back we went to the Creative World and Adelle got to play virtual gravity ball, we weren't so good at that, and she got to learn about being a structural engineer. Here are some photos of her building.

She also built a bridge out of foam pieces, learning about keystones and how strong an arch shape is. We later went in a room and were able to feel what an earthquake is like. Maeve didn't really like that. There was this table where you build something then hit a button and an "earthquake" happens and you get to see how strong your structure was. In the photo Adelle's buildings were originally on top of the white squares before the "earthquake" happened. Maybe you should wait a few years before hiring her to design and build your new home!

In both the Creative World and World of Life sections there is a Discovery Zone geared toward younger kids. In the CW section Adelle got to build the three little pigs' houses complete with the wolf who you could pump air through his mouth to blow the houses down. While showing these photos to Joel he asked me what Maeve was doing during this time so I attached a picture of that too!

Yes that is the floor!

We belong to two different home school groups, Central Orange County Homeschooling (COC) and Liahona. On Mondays we meet with the COC group at a local park.  Adelle loves this group because there are lots of young girls for her to play with. I love it because there are lots of interesting mothers to talk to. Maeve loves it because of the swings!

Here is Adelle with some of her friends. Not sure what the one on the left is doing. We usually stay at the park most of the afternoon. We count that time as PE and social skills and sometimes even nature study. This particular park is about as close to the wilderness as we might find in OC.

It is pretty difficult to get a photo of Maeve smiling! Joel was impressed with the photos I took of her in the swings.

Tuesday it was 89 degrees here so the girls and I decided to take a trip to the beach. Little Corona Del Mar beach is our favorite because it has free parking, not a lot of people, and tidepools. This beach is a protected refuge of sorts so there are often "rangers" on the tidepools making sure people are not doing any damage. Adelle took advantage of the two women by asking them all sorts of questions about everything there. We saw lots of hermit crabs swimming in the water of all different sizes. Adelle learned about kelp.  We saw the skin of a lobster head after it molted. It was an interesting field trip. Maeve had fun watching the gulls, playing in the water and sand, and throwing shells and rocks into the tidepools. I tried to make sure that the rangers didn't see that!  Adelle said one thing that she learned is that most of the shells she was finding there are from mussels which reminded her that she recently read about seagulls dropping mussel shells from the sky then going down and eating the mussels when the shells broke in Robert McCloskey's book One Morning in Maine. It is a cute story about a girl that loses a tooth while clam digging with her father. It was after reading that story that Adelle's first tooth fell out. I guess it reminded her to wiggle it.

Of course I forgot my camera on the trip to the beach. These pictures where taken by Joel this summer when we went to Little Corona Del Mar with Donna and Bruce.

 Adelle's first missing tooth!