Pilgrims at Oak Ridge

One great thing about living here is that most of the cool museums have a free day each month. We recently took advantage of the free day at the Natural History Museum. I am learning that in order for Judah to have fun, it helps to: 1. pack lots of snacks. 2. try to mix a more exciting for a three year old activity (something hands on) with the other cool stuff (like looking at gemstones) so he doesn't get bored and whine. He wasn't as into the dinosaurs as I expected him to be, but maybe when he gets a little older he'll dig the fossils. (Pun completely intended.) One of my favorite parts (which I didn't photograph) was actually this kind of neat rodent house with a bunch of rats in it running around.          

Beaches in California, for the most part, have a very different feel to beaches back east. A classic beach for me is one with sand dunes, sea oats, a fairly wide sandy area and a gentle slope into the water. Most of the beaches we have visited so far are somewhat rocky with no dunes, occasional cliffs, and a fairly steep descent into the water. Pacific beaches are still definitely beautiful, but they just have a different feel. I was happy when we visited Oxnard and found a beach that made me feel a little more like I was at home. The killer waves and cold temperature remind me that I'm not, but I loved the wide, flat beach and dunes that made it feel more remote.      

Sweet Naomi, wearing an old dress of mine:      

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.