January Field Trip: LACMA Samurai Exhibit and La Brea Tar Pits

One of my goals for this new year has been to get out and see and do more with the kids. There is so much available to us here in Los Angeles, but besides the factors of time and money, I struggle against an overwhelming desire to just stay home. I love to just be home, but I do want to take advantage of the opportunities around us, so I set a goal to have a "field trip" once a month with at least Conor (the other kids too, if they're here, which they're not right now.)

A friend drew my attention to the Samurai exhibit currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She raved about it, and I knew Conor would love that, so to be sure it would happen, I scheduled it in my planner and told him it would be a date.

It really was incredible. The exhibit is a portion of the private collection owned by Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller. Gabriel's father and grandfather were both art collectors and he has had a fascination with the Samurai since he was a boy. The items he's been able to collect are absolutely stunning, dating back over the last 700 years. I was so impressed by the fine craftsmanship and exquisite attention to detail. Here are some of my favorite pictures, snapped with my iPhone.

Conor brought a sketchpad and was so cute as he sat there sketching helmets. Twice, adults came and sat next to him and did their own sketches. I walked around the room and read placards while he sketched away.

Conor was hungry by that time and wanted a cheeseburger, so we walked down Wilshire and stopped at a food truck.

The Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits are right next door to the LACMA, so we headed over there too. I've been wanting to go to the Tar Pits for years.

This is a ground sloth! No thank you!

This mother mastodon and her six year old child (child? calf?) were found together. So sad!

The Columbian Mammoth. Those tusks have got to get in the way.

The Dire Wolf wall. All skulls from dire wolves found in the excavation sites at La Brea.

Here's a dire wolf skeleton.

The Paleontology lab. What tedious work!

Once through the museum, we walked around to the tar pits, where there are still active excavations.

Crates of fossils waiting to be worked on.

And on our way back to the parking garage, Conor wanted a quick shot of him lifting this massive boulder.

We had a terrific time together. Conor is such a pleasant museum buddy, and these two were right up his alley. A day well spent with my boy!

Christmas Eve

I woke up early on Christmas Eve, the list of tasks for the day running through my mind. I love the holiday traditions we have established in our family, and I love that my children depend on them, but it is a lot of work to make holidays happen! I had to run to the grocery store to get last-minute additions to our day. We had waited for Lyndsay to be home to do our graham cracker houses, and with my work schedule, that tradition got pushed to Christmas Eve. Also, Lyns requested a turkey dinner, since she missed my food so much at Thanksgiving, and since I was scheduled to work Christmas Day, we plugged our holiday meal into this day as well.

While we worked on food in the kitchen, and carols played in the background, the kids and I got to work on our graham cracker village.

I did a cheater thing this year, and I'm blaming it on Pinterest. I saw someone had posted that they assemble their houses with hot glue since they never eat the crackers anyway, and then decorate with royal icing. This was a year I could definitely use a time saver, so I went with it. One less (at least!) batch of royal icing to make, plus the cost savings involved.

Several hours later, our finished houses!

Aiden's really took the cake this year. It was quite a masterpiece!

Lyns went for a log cabin this year.

Despite the confusion and turmoil in our marriage, I don't want anyone to be lonely for Christmas. I invited Adam to come and spend the holiday with us. His children, Caitilin (home from college) and Sean, came by for a little while to exchange gifts, and we got our traditional family photos in front of the tree. Man, we have so much fun together. Christmas has a way of blurring bad memories, and everything just felt so happy. We sure were missing Dylan though, who wasn't able to be with us.

Love a good laugh fest. And I love these two girls.

We reminisced about when they were little girls sharing a bedroom. Now they are college girls!

Three of our handsome boys.

Lyndsay made the rolls for me, and they were amazing!

Caitlin and Sean had dinner with their mom, so they didn't join us. The work involved in preparation was so worth it! The food was delicious! I'm not sure why Conor looks so glum here, except that he probably just wanted to get down to eating!

I really wanted to drive out to the temple to see the lights and hear the Christmas concert, but the traffic was horrendous, and truth be told, I really was exhausted. Instead, we read our nightly Christmas story together, sang several carols, and Lyndsay read the account of the Savior's birth in Luke 2. We had a family prayer together too, focusing on our gratitude and our wishes for members of our family who were not with us, and struggling.

My friend and visiting teacher, Angela, stopped by to drop off a gift.  We chatted for a bit. She's getting ready to move out of the ward, and a good distance away right after the holidays and I am so sad about that. She has been so good to me and I will really miss her.

Then it was time for yet another tradition: Christmas jammies! Each of the kids opened their gift.

Cozy!

Merry Christmas!

The Christmas Season: A Tree and Blessing Bags

We went back to artificial this year.

I love the idea of a real tree. For the last six years, we've gone to get a real tree from Kathy's Tree Lot on the day after Thanksgiving. $80 a pop. And it's beautiful and it smells lovely. But the sad fact was, real trees just don't have strong enough branches to hold all of our ornaments, so each year many got left in the boxes that just wouldn't fit. The ones that were on the tree would weigh the branches down and take turns falling off. As would the needles. The constant vacuuming, the back-of-my-mind worry about the tree drying out and catching fire, the one more chore of watering. . . I just decided to bite the bullet and go back to fake. I figure in three years it will have paid for itself. And I can enjoy all of my beloved ornaments!

Thank goodness that Aiden is here to haul the tree inside and assemble it!

And thank goodness it's pre lit! No more messing with strings of lights!

So, the house is decorated and cozy and we've been enjoying the Christmas spirit for several weeks now.

There is an idea floating around on Pinterest and various blogs about Blessing Bags. I'm always looking for opportunities to get the kids involved in service, especially during the holidays, so I thought we'd try this out. The idea is basically to assemble bags of simple items that people in need can use. Simple toiletries, some food items, warm socks, etc. We have homeless people all over near where we live and it's very common to come off a freeway to see someone sitting at the off-ramp holding a sign asking for help. I rarely have cash with me, but I always want to help. I've given food that I've had in the car, but thought this might be a nice thing to keep stocked in the van for such occasions.

For Family Home Evening I took the boys to the grocery store and the dollar store and we collected various items to make our bags. We made "girl" bags and "boy" bags. There isn't a huge difference between the two, honestly, besides the socks, kind of deodorant, and color of toothbrush.

There are lots of lists of ideas of what to put in the bags.

The boys and I assembled the bags when we got home.

 We included:

soap
toothbrush
toothpaste
mouthwash
tissues
deoderant
shampoo
chapstick
socks
water bottle
dried fruit
nuts (this might not be a good idea for all homeless people as many do not have teeth. Should have thought of that. We were going for a punch of nutrition.)
crackers
cookies
hard candies
granola bars

There are many other possible ideas!

We made a bunch of them and put them in a box which we now keep in our van. We can't wait for the opportunity to share them and offer the blessing to someone in need!