One of the things that's always going through my head out here is how strange and alien every thing is to my Northeast eyes. When we drive to preschool, or walk to the park, or play at the playground, I'm always overwhelmed by the different plants and architecture and people, and I wish I could share them with our friends and family back East.
Here's a walk to the park.
Well, a scoot to the park.
Our friends came over on one of those interminable January days before school started up again. Their folks both had to work, and as you know, I'm always happy to have five or six kids rather than just my three. We require new blood.
The kids all got scooters for Christmas and we've gotten into the habit of going out for a scoot in the morning.
Everyone's lawns are surrounded by tall cement walls. They turn their lots into compounds.
We passed lots of Christmas trees on our scoot. That, at least, is the same as the East Coast.
Orange tree on a neighbor's lawn. Just in a couple blocks, we see oranges, lemons, limes, figs, kumquats and fruit-bearing cacti. When we buy another house, I look forward to having some fruit trees -- it just charms me that you can have this tree in your yard and it gives you fruit in the middle of the winter! I grew up with peach and pear and apple trees, and only the peach tree produced edible fruit. One of my childhood chores was picking up the fallen fruit from the sidewalk. (I wasn't very diligent at that chore.)
They recently opened a community fruit park here in LA. It's your average green space, with benches and playgrounds, but the city applied for grants and created a community orchard as a public art space. The city planted and maintains fruiting trees, spaced over the growing seasons, and residents are encouraged to come and visit the park, maybe take part in some community pruning classes, and leave with a basket of fruit. Isn't that awesome?
I'd love to baby an orange tree in my yard and have a month of delivering fruit to everyone I know -- and food banks as well.
This is a palm tree in another neighbor's yard. The base of the tree is about 8 feet wide.
Same tree.
Roses. Everywhere. Almost every lawn has rosebushes, and they flourish in the dry landscape here. They bloom year-round.
You know those Birds of Paradise? In the '90s, you'd buy a few for ten bucks a stem and arrange them artfully in the tortured vase you made in Foundation Sculpture?
No? Okay, that was just me.
Anyhoo, Birds of Paradise are present in parking lots and around public works and growing wild all over the library lawn out here.
I'm not sure what kind of tree this is, but we love it. It's bark manages to be papery and spongy at the same time. (This is also such a SoCal picture -- that bit of roof in the background? With the awesome red Mediterranean tile roof? That's a bit of one of our Public Works buildings. Someday I am going to haul my Good Camera around town and take pictures of all the amazing architecture of our municipal buildings. I think of my friend Dileri and her love of Mid-Century Modern every time we pass a local Union building.)
This is the same tree as that previous picture. It grows along the ground. Kinda creepy. Kinda lovely.
Three blocks later (and one awful crossing of Victory Avenue) we finally made our way to the park.
Arlo and his pal, happily digging to China.
Gigantic eucalyptus trees. They are awe-inspiring and I wish my iPhone camera could take a picture that would capture how awesome these trees are. They smell like California.
Oscar and his pal are playing Skylanders in the park. They've downloaded a poster of the different characters, printed it out, and internalized the characters.
Mountains. I can't believe how beautiful it is here. We live in "the valley" and are surrounded by these gorgeous craggy mountains. Growing up in the Hudson Valley, I'm used to mountains being green. That's not the case here.
We went to our downtown library to see our local Rose Parade Float.
The girl looks like The Goose, doesn't she? Oscar and I had hoped to volunteer one this year's float but it didn't happen. We'll try again next year. I'll add it to my CA bucket list.
After my in-laws left, Evan got to out-dress everyone in the office in his snappy new outfits. Standard office wear out here is expensive jeans and designer tee-shirts. When it gets chilly (less than 60 degrees) you add a promotional hoodie from a debunked production company where you used to freelance. The higher up you get, the more expensive the jeans and tee-shirts get, until you reach a level where you can wear whatever you like, and then you show up in ratty sweatpants, a free tee-shirt from a movie you worked on a decade ago, and the same baseball cap you've worn for three years.
Evan, having been raised by a couple of proper WASPs, will continue to dress like a gentleman. And a hot one, at that.
The Goose got the flu on the last day of winter break. Poor Goose.
She had passed out by the time Evan stopped by at lunch to check up on her. I took this picture to prove that her Daddy visited her. When she woke up, she was glad to see it.
Costco! Passport pictures! We haven't been on our regular Cabo trip in a couple years, due to the move. We miss it desperately and are so excited to reunite with Gretta, Papa Jim, Uncle Bart, Aunt Tiff, and Kendall and Hayden this March. But whoops! Three out of five passports are about to expire. (Next year, Oscar will get his third passport. I don't even think I had been on a plane at his age.)
Arlo's writing homework. Please note #5.
The Goose is taking two ballet classes -- a strict one at our rec center and a fun one at the North Hollywood YMCA. This is the latter.
Shadowboxing at the YMCA after class.
Oscar is taking an art class at the rec center. (Our public schools have no art or music classes, so we must fill the void. Luckily the 8-week sessions are under $40.) While Oscar is sculpting monsters, we are playing on the playground.
AND FREEZING. It was 50 degrees and windy.
Here's Oscar's dragon, two classes in.
Our sprinklers go off every other morning at 5:30am. They immediately freeze on the sidewalks on the shady side of the house. (Yes, we live in Southern California. But we also live in the desert. At 6am, the tempurature is 35 degrees. At 1pm, it is 79 degrees. Thank goodness I was a Girl Scout and I know how to layer. But it's a strange thing, swaddling your kids in down coats on the way to school but also applying sunscreen for recess.)
Oscar got a rock tumbler for Christmas. He loves to collect rocks and always spends his souvenier money at museums on the sacks of tumbled rocks. But here's the thing: when we suggested to Gretta and Papa Jim that they get him a rock tumbler (something I only vaguely remember from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption -- the novella, not the film)I didn't realize that it needed to operate for WEEKS -- not a week, but continuously for THREE AND A HALF WEEKS to achieve those lovely smooth stones we used to buy for seven bucks at the Science Centers.
This is after one week of continous tumbling with the largest grit.
I made a big baked ziti and posted a picture on Facebook.
Dang, this was the best baked ziti ever.
I need to get a food truck.
Poor Arlo got the (non-pukey) flu after The Goose.
Admit it, parents: that first day of the (non-pukey) flu is lovely. They are quiet and lethargic and cuddly and DELICIOUS.
I made Evan's favorite French Onion Soup (based on a Julia Child recipe I got from my sister-in-law Kim) for dinner one night. Slicing 10 cups of onions is a bear, whether you have a bad reaction to onions (I do) or not. Luckily, I've discovered that Oscar's Harry Potter Quidittch googles make excellent onion googles.
The Goose needed to decorate a snowman for her Jingle Bell Breakfast. All our kids love cutting paper snowflakes. So one afternoon when we had a bunch of friends over, we made a million bajillion snowflakes and covered the Goose's snowman in them.
The Goose's attentive teachers took note. One of the class activities a couple weeks later was led by the Goose -- she showed her class how to make snowflakes. Last year the teachers would have asked me to come in and "help" the Goose show the class how to make snowflakes. This year, she did it on her own. And they made a bullitan board about it!
My beloved mother-in-law gifted me with a new set of dishware for Christmas, After 12 years of marriage, our three kids have destroyed our knee-jerk Crate and Barrel white dishware that we'd registered for. (As of this writing, we have 6 mugs, one bowl, and 5 salad plates and three plates left out of 16 place settings.) Loretta spent hours online and in store with me and we got a whole new flight of gorgeous (and sturdy) plates and bowls. The kids were happy to upgrade from their normal plastic Ikea ware.
I have fancy new mugs!
We got a package from our beloved Sophie. Tee shirts, hot-wheel Zambonis and lovely letters for each kid.
My view when I pick up the Goose from school.
I took all the photo holiday cards we recieved and made a big collage on our fridge door. The kids and I see your smiling faces every day when we reach in for a snack.
Thank you, friends.
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