Pilgrims at Oak Ridge

A few pics from another recent LA adventure: Descanso Garden. It's a huge garden with lots of walking trails and (obviously) flowers. Apparently on some days there is also some sort of train feature, though it wasn't running the day we were there and we did not tell Judah about it. He still noticed the train tracks, though. Even this late in the summer there were some nice flowers, but I think I'd love to go back in the early spring to really get the highlights.          

So I'm still trying to get caught up in the photo blogging. Here are some photos from Judah's first day of school. He's going to a preschool just down the road from us; it's close enough to walk to! He seems to be enjoying it. He certainly was very excited about the Thomas backpack and lunch box I got for him.    

Edited to add: Sorry about the photos not posting earlier. I'm not sure what happened but we were on vacation and I didn't feel like fixing it. I knew that moving to LA would provide lots of cool cultural opportunities. This is the best one so far: a free Elizabeth Mitchell concert at the Getty Art museum. Which incidentally has the best views of downtown I've seen so far, plus: you ride a tram to the top, which Judah loved. We didn't really get to enjoy any art (except a very quick drive-by glance of Monet's Water Lilies) since the kids were with us and not very into looking at stuff hanging on the wall, so I'm looking forward to a kid-free date night here sometime in the future.

Yes, I realize that my baby is actually 9 months old now, but here are some from her 8-month photo shoot.            

The best part about the Science Center (other than the fact that it's free!) is that you can see the space shuttle Endeavor. It was very cool to think about the fact that this thing has actually been in outer space. I knew it would be big, but when you see it in person you can really see how huge it is. I was wishing for my fish eye lens during this part since my standard 50mm lens couldn't really show the scale of it.        

Our favorite museum experience in LA so far is definitely the Science Center. 1. It's FREE, though you do have to pay for parking. 2. There is a space shuttle there. (More on that tomorrow.) 3. Lots of other hands on stuff and cool looking airplanes everywhere. Judah did love the space shuttle, but might have been more into sitting on the pretend snowmobile and using a joystick to move around a model airplane. We are hoping to have lots of family visit us so we can take them to this.               

The next few days are going to be a bit of a photo bomb as I just downloaded pics from my camera from approximately the last month. We did a lot and I took a fair number of photos. So now I'll try to catch up! A few weeks ago we went to a local children's museum called Kidspace. We really had a great time. Probably the best part was this whole outdoor physics labs with lots of stuff to launch, shoot, and knock over. It took me right back to my AP physics class my senior year, which was a much more fun memory than it sounds like. (My name is Aubrey and I'm a nerd.)            Judah's favorite part was probably sitting in the pretend Jeep, although he did have a good time pretending to hunt for fossils.

We finally put a few finishing touches on Jeff's office last week and so I thought I'd do a little post about it. His office is in the church building where our church meets, but we don't own the building. They were, thankfully, game to let us do a little painting in there to make it a little more office-y and a little less commercial. There are other changes I'd love to make if we owned the space (I'm looking at you, popcorn ceiling!) but the paint and fabric really went a long way into making this space look nicer. We picked out some pale gray paint and Jeff found some blue fabric he liked for the curtains. We still may add a carpet in here which would be another nice addition to soften it up a bit. The framed map on the wall is a big vintage map I found on Ebay for a few dollars and framed with a fairly inexpensive poster frame from Joanne. If there were more money around here for things like framing, I would have loved to have this one done professionally, but...

1. Go out and make these cookies . Right now. You probably already have all the ingredients - butter, sugar, cocoa, flour, vanilla, salt, and chocolate. These are my new favorite cookie and I cannot stop making them. And eating them. 2. Then go and make this salad . It's kale. And since you will also be eating delicious raw cookie dough, you can feel better since kale is healthy. What I love about this salad is that it holds up really well in the fridge so you can make it one day and eat it for lunch for several days. It's my go-to lunch now and is super delicious considering the amount of work it requires - toasting bread crumbs and nuts and simmering raisins in vinegar. 3. I've finally got in all my paperwork for my CA license and so I'm hopeful I'll be licensed in the next few weeks. I've also started the job hunt, which is totally nerve-wracking. Since my last job I didn't really have to look for, this will be a different experience, especially sinc...

Naomi finally has enough hair to wear hair bows. Her little wispy bangs are even long enough that she almost needs to wear a hairbow to keep them out of her eyes. This realization launched a little hair bow making spree over the weekend and now I feel like I just. can't. stop. I bought a pack of multi-colored ribbon at Joann that was on sale and first made a bunch of ribbon hairbows. Mostly I looped and twisted the ribbon around until it looked nice and then glued it in place. Then I checked out this tutorial . And now, for real, I just can't stop. I love these cute flowers. They look so sweet on a hair bow, and I already put one on a onesie I'm sending to some friends who had a baby and it looks adorable! These aren't as easy or quick as the ribbon clips, but the extra time is worth it. I for real want to put one on a headband for me. Am I too old to wear something like this? Anyone have any other favorite hairbow tutorials? You can feed the obsession.

Last week I bought this skirt at Old Navy and immediately fell in love. It's super comfortable, and also very cute. It's a little more polished and dressy than the other knit skirts I have which was also a bonus. After wearing it a couple of times I started thinking about how I'd like another one and wondering when it might go on sale at ON. My sewing bug has come back with a vengeance and after making some curtains and a big stack of baby bibs I wanted to do something a bit more challenging. As I was going through my craft stuff looking for a snap setter (to put snaps on the aforementioned bibs) I found a big length of jersey I bought a while ago and realized I could totally use it to make a skirt. I drafted a pattern from my skirt (after I realized that the front and back are not quite identical), cut it out, and sewed it up in about an hour and a half last night. (This amount of time includes the under-my-breath swearing as I tried to get my double needle to work, ge...

One thing I really love about our new church is that we have weekly communion. The church I grew up in did communion quarterly, and several other churches I have been a part of have also done it like that. I never thought too much about communion until hearing a more reformed view of it at RUF and at seminary where we spent several classes talking about it. I came to understand better how God has given us communion as a means of grace; that our participation in communion is a blessing he gives us to understand our redemption better. I guess when I did it so rarely, I was never able to fully appreciate it. I remember my theology professor talking about how God is spiritually present at communion in a unique way. He also told us an anecdote about how he had a friend who came to faith one Sunday as he watched the elements pass him by. So I'm happy to be at a church with weekly communion, but I realize I especially love it with kids.  I often feel like a failure when I try to talk ...