Today we are recovering from a nine day weekend. (And when I say today, I mean last Monday, but like I said, I seem to be on vacation.) The movie that Paul is working on had a brief hiatus, so we just took the whole week off. We visited with cousins. And played on the beach. We took a trip to the California Science Center and then ran around the Rose Garden. We swam. And played with friends. And had a picnic dinner at the Huntington Gardens (one of my all time favorite summer things to do). We rode the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier and went to the Kidspace Museum in Pasadena.
And then crossed two things off my summer to do list when we went to Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark and came home to make pickles.
A couple weeks ago Desmond insisted, insisted, that pickles grew on trees. I, of course, immediately scheduled this field trip.
And this farm makes an excellent field trip. Way more than just farm labor tourism (Oh! But it's that too! Do you see Paul and Felix up there working on their farm-labor-is-fun attitude adjustment?), small children dig and scoop in a giant sand pit while goats climb nimbly overhead on wooden planks. Animatronic chickens sing totally inappropriate songs to your vegan children (Desmond comes home singing, "What do you do with a drunken chicken? What do you do with a drunken chicken?" Nothing vegan, it turns out.) Kids clamber up into the driver's seat of a real live (and completely stationary) combine or slide down the shoot in back. We visit with real live chickens and cows and horses and a couple emus. We have a picnic on the grass. And then willingly pay eight dollars for Desmond to mine for gems, we're just so caught up in our surreal bucolic morning.
It was a good week. Here's the rest of our summer to do list. What's on yours?
- Take the train to Little Tokyo. Have lunch at Shojin and run around this secret garden.
- Join (and actually participate in) a summer reading club (I have mixed feelings about this, but Desmond is all into it this year.) (Too late. We've gone once. It's already almost over. Maybe next year.)
- California Science Center. Picnic in Rose Garden. (There's a Chipotle across the street if you haven't packed a picnic. Maybe someone in your group will be as nice as Paul and run over to pick up lunch while you and the kids play in the Family Discovery Room at the Ecosystems Exhibit.)
- Natural History Museum (We can't wait to visit the new Dinosaur Hall!)
- LACMA and lunch at Real Food Daily
- La Brea Tar Pits and lunch at Veggie Grill
- visit the turtles and have a picnic at Caltech (the campus is pretty and fun to explore and not too far from our house - I wouldn't drive across town for this one)
- Swimming Lessons for Desmond (He's doing so, so great!)
- Leo Carillo Beach (lunch?)
- Manhattan Beach (We usually walk up and get lunch from Wahoo's, but I'm open to more interesting lunch suggestions.)
- Laguna Beach (Zinc Cafe is pleasant and I've never been to Taco Loco, but I was just looking at their menu and it looks like the perfect place to have lunch with sandy feet.)
- Cabrillo Aquarium
- Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica
- Noah's Ark at the Skirball
- bike day at the big park near our house
- plant an avocado tree?
- Audobon Center at Debs Park
