My husband’s parent’s visited for almost two weeks, it was their second visit since we moved to LA and we had such a wonderful time! Last year we took them to Disneyland, some of our favorite parks, Hollywood and a few of our favorite local places. After another year of homeschooling (and another year of living here) we took them to a totally different set of places. We went to Santa Monica because it’s the kid’s favorite place and we showed off the Heal the Bay Aquarium, Venice Beach, Aquarium of the Pacific, Crafted at the Port of LA, The California Science Center, The La Brea Tar Pits and The LA Zoo. We touched moon jellyfish, starfish, anemones, urchins, hammerhead sharks, and sting rays! The kids used a pulley system to lift a truck and we all saw the space shuttle Endevour! We also of course watched Wee One #1 do his jiujitsu classes and Wee One #2 do her dance lessons and Wee One #3 was more than happy to show them around one of her favorite places, the Aquarium of the Pacific. I’m still recovering from it all, but it was so great. There was a lot of barbecuing together, late nights full of laughter and lazy mornings full of sleeping in. My husband and I even managed to get out one night with our friends to a fair. We fit school in around all the adventuring and the kids got to bring their grandparents to homeschool check in day!

Megan, over at Brassy Apple mentioned on Facebook last week that there are 15 Saturdays until Christmas. I? Exploded. I’m just starting to get hyped about Halloween! It does remind me that there is a lot of knitting and cross stitching to be done so maybe I should stop drooling over patterns on Ravelry and get knitting!

Learning about seahorses at Heal the Bay Aquarium, Venice Beach, Touching moon jellyfish, starfish, a sea cucumber and a sting ray at Aquarium of the Pacific, 2 Market Street cookie cutter shop at Crafted at the Port of LA, the LA Zoo, Lomita fair, (not so) Wee One #1 training at jiujitsu, and Wee One #2 mastering her middle splits!

First my husband’s wonderful parents came to visit us for the first time in LA and we had such a fun time showing them around. So much fun that I fell behind in both homeschool prep and with the Coursea classes I’m taking. The good news is I’m up to date so I’m back to the blog to share with you some of our adventures!

These pictures are from Twinkle Twinkle, a really cute and laid back indoor play space that serves perfect Americanos and really pretty pots of Earl Grey tea (and ice cream piled high or fries for the kids), Disneyland we met Sleeping Beauty, Tiana and Jasime and man I was way more hyped than I thought I’d be, Pacific Park at the Santa Monica Pier (and then later the Santa Monica beach of course), Silly Goose Indoor Playground, Chuck E Cheese, Redondo Beach and duh the Hollywood sign. There are a heap of delicious rando shots I got with my phone too but I will have to add those another day.

Actual blog posts coming at you this weekend, I promise. 🙂 I always struggle with eating awful (as in it tastes good but I know it’s not good for me) food when we have visitors and this time was no exception. I’m back on the wagon and am armed with a ton of recipes I can’t wait to share! Plus homeschooling has been going really well and we’ve all been learning a lot (& also having a lot of fun with arts & crafts) so there are fun things to share on those fronts as well. Happy Friday!!!

We are still trying to figure out how to balance our longish school days with our park day meet ups with other homeschooling families, mornings at the library, field trips and mommy group meet ups with kids closer to Wee One #3’s age. So far, we have decided to do formal school 4 full days a week with a half day on Friday. Every afternoon we break for 45 minutes of fun and sun and exercise in the pool. Wednesdays are both library day and homeschoolers in the park day so that is not a formal school day, however since we don’t have to leave the house super early for Wee One #3’s story time at the library, we’ll do a French lesson and then maybe practice our new French words as we stomp around LA. Friday will be a half day so we can meet up with some little ones for fun in our neighborhood, but considering what time we get up (way. too. early.) stopping early is more like 3/4 of a day instead of a half day. Right now Saturday mornings are for the farmer’s market and the rest of the weekend is for chilling out, but as soon as I find a YMCA we all like, I suspect weekends will belong to ballet and karate and the like. We’ll see how this first term shapes up and what adjustments we will have to make to our schedule and our books and our goals.

We started the school year with pink (read: beet) pancakes with grated apples and adverbs! Fun! Haha.
Mid-day I made cookies for them as a treat and managed to knit a couple of puffs while supervising cursive. Science for our littlest was food coloring-tinted vinegar in baking soda. She was mesmerized (I kinda was too).
Yesterday ended with an art session involving homemade puffy paint and today began with stacks of buttermilk pancakes.
Every afternoon is celebrated with a dip in the pool, no matter how short lived!
Today art involved glue and table salt and food coloring and Q-tips. I know, I know, we’re amazing. Very high brow.

As promised, here’s a little peek at some California adventures! Wee One #2’s Godparents were our first visitors since moving down here. They are some of our oldest friends but we’ve lived in different countries for the last nine years. They live on the west coast too and we are all so excited to be able to spend more time with each other! The La Brea Tar Pits was high in our list of places to see and our friends love, love, love museums so away we went. I learned so much!

Here’s a little background for you. The La Brea Tar Pits are a cluster of naturally occurring tar pits in the middle of Los Angeles. If you’ve heard of Hancock Park, that’s the park the city built around the tar pits. The tar here has been seeping up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. That itself is pretty amazing, and of course all the animals that have become trapped in the tar over all this time! The tar keeps the bones well preserved and I was really surprised at the kinds of animals found there like mammoths, wolves, horses, deer, llamas, camels (wait there were camels in LA at some point?!), bison, bears, ground sloths, even a woman (who has been dated at about 10,000 years!!) and of course the California state fossil, the saber toothed cat. Aside from things the general public would find interesting (there are also a lot of really beautiful gems found in the tar), there are all kinds of discoveries relevant to the scientific world like fossilized insects, plants and grains – not to mention 200-300 previously unknown species of bacteria!

All seven of us had a great afternoon wandering around Hancock Park and taking in the sites of all the different tar pits and the gardens surrounding them. We also spent hours inside the George C. Page Museum learning more about how the animals got trapped in the tar – and tested out an exhibit that gives you an idea of what it feels like to be trapped in it yourself!