Sesame Street Presents . . The Body!

Hi again! It seems I forgot I had a blog for a while, there. Sorry about that.

Over the weekend of Presidents' Day, we saw an ad online for something called Sesame Street Presents: The Body. It's a temporary kids' exhibit at the mall down by Hollywood and Vine. Now, some of you may know that Connor has been obsessed for months and months with anything "body" related. He loves anatomy stuff for some reason (he even enjoyed the Bodyworlds exhibit we took him to in Salt Lake.) So, of course we had to take the kids to this thing in Hollywood. It didn't look like much, at first, but we were able to spend several hours there. Here's Connor goofing off near the fountain outside.Inside, Elise was confused that Oscar's delicious looking trash wouldn't come off.When we put Elise in the playground area, she climbed onto this slide and just sat, looking depressed, for about ten minutes. We offered to get her down, but she wanted to stay there and just watch the other kids. My favorite part of this exhibit was definitely the "Organ Organ". It had pictures of various internal organs on the keys, and when you pushed one, a very operatic muppet voice would sing, "Paaancreeeeeeaas . . . ", then you'd be treated to an upbeat little song (also wonderfully muppety) about what the pancreas do for you. They had a little store where kids could pretend to shop and buy healthy foods, and after that we were treated to a photo op with Elmo. Connor was jazzed. Elise was . . . a good sport, I guess. On the way out, we got Connor this t-shirt with muppet organs all over the front of it. Each organ has it's own little pair of googly eyes. Then we went to find something for lunch, and in the process wandered around Hollywood and Vine a little bit. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, this is ground zero for Hollywood tourism. During holidays or weekends, you always see a bunch of weirdos dressed up as movie characters standing around on the sidewalks, charging tourists for a photo op. We usually try not to encourage these people, but this time Connor and Ryan saw something they couldn't resist. This balloon sculpture cost us a buck, and the only reason we bought it was because the vendor "accidentally" dropped a bunch of them next to Connor in passing. Connor grabbed one off the ground, of course, and we were informed of the "suggested donation". Pretty smooth, I have to admit.So, that was our trip to Hollywood. Here are a few random pictures that didn't fit anywhere else - Connor and Elise in the rain, Connor being bad (climbing up to the top of his closet to get out the forbidden ball toys), and Connor and Dad bonding over a Zelda DS game.

Pismo Beach

Last month, we finally took an overnight trip to Pismo Beach, known as Clam City, U.S.A. Ryan had been obsessing over the idea of going clamming for months, so he did a little research on the internet, and discovered that this was the best place in California to do it. We left after church on Sunday, and drove about three hours north to a place called The Cliffs Resort. We wanted to take Portia and Wiley with us, and this place is well-known for being really pet friendly. We had just enough time to take the kids swimming (it was dark, but the pool was pretty warm), then went to bed. We didn't spend a lot of time there, but I'd recommend the place to anyone traveling with dogs. The next morning, we had breakfast at a little cinnamon roll shop. Elise was kind of overwhelmed, but she got over it. Fast.
At the resort and at the cinnamon roll place we were asking everyone we could about clamming, but nobody seemed to know anything. They acted like we were the first people they'd ever met who wanted to dig for clams. We got our hopes up when we drove past this giant clam on main street, but the sign next to it proudly declares, "Clamming Is Illegal!" We stopped at a ranger station near the beach and learned that, indeed, clamming hadn't been a practical pastime there in 20 years. It isn't totally illegal, but you can only keep ones that are 4 inches across or more. Basically those don't exist anymore. They're not sure if the place got overfished, if a disease hit the clams, or if pollution killed them, but Clam City is pretty much deserted of Pismo Clams these days. We were kind of disappointed, after all, that was the reason we had planned this whole trip, but as soon as we drove up to the beach we forgot our woes. Pismo State Beach is incredibly flat and shallow (I guess that's what made clams so abundant there in the past). And, for some reason, they let you drive on it! Our van actually drove in the Pacific Ocean. I can't imagine why the clams would all be dead, huh? Anyway, we found a spot, parked, and let the kids and dogs out to play.
On our way back from the beach (still in Pismo Beach, though), we noticed a sign for a butterfly grove. Since we still had some time before heading home, we parked and walked in to a cluster of tall eucalyptus trees. I could remember hearing about monarch butterflies, how they migrate south for the winter and stay in these specific areas each year, but I'd never seen it. It almost made me cry. It was so pretty, it was almost unbelievable. At first, all you notice are a strangely high number of butterflies flitting about under the trees, but then you realize that the clusters of seed-pod-looking-things on the branches in front of you are actually hundreds of thousands of napping monarchs. So, everybody takes pictures for a while. Then, for no apparent reason, one tree just explodes, filling the sky with butterflies. It was so, so, cool. Connor wasn't as impressed as the rest of us, but on our way out we steered him past a display table with a chart of the monarch life cycle, and a potted plant covered in caterpillars. He was amazed. Ryan eventually went back to the car to give the dogs some air, but Connor watched those caterpillars for at least half an hour. He refused to leave, it was cute.I'm not normally a fan of 24-hour vacations, but this one was pretty awesome. We had sand stuck to our car for more than a week. Oh, and we did stop at a local restaurant on the way out to get clam chowder and steamed clams, though I have no idea where the clams really came from.

New Year's Visit, Part 2

So, my parents left on New Year's Day, after the Rose Parade got over (we watched it on TV - there was no way we were going to camp out to see that thing in person!) We spent the remainder of the day looking for celebrities' addresses that Kelli found on the internet. She did a great little photo spread on her blog - I highly recommend you check it out to see Harrison Ford's garbage cans.

The next day, Ryan went back to work, and Kelli, Kyle, the kids, and I all went to the zoo! It was cold and foggy, but we had a ton of fun anyway.

The above picture is what happens when your kid wants a photo booth picture, but you're too dang cheap to pay the $1.50 or whatever it costs.

Saturday we made a quick run to the beach, where Ryan and Kyle pretended to throw a football around. Then we got some lunch and said goodbye. Kyle and Kelli are a ton of fun to be with, and we hope they come down again soon!

After his Aunt and Uncle left, Connor decided he was Santa Claus, and went around giving people boxes of toys to "open". I had to get really excited for each present, or Santa just wasn't satisfied.I have to include this picture of a gift Ryan received from a client at work. Everybody laughed at him when he couldn't even pronounce the type of wine it was. He ended up giving it to a coworker for Armenian Christmas, which happened to be that same day.Ryan continues to enjoy his job, but last Thursday the company was forced to lay off about 10% of its employees. We're really thankful that Ryan was spared! Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who are out of work in such lousy economic conditions. Hopefully things take a turn for the better soon.