Anna's Birthday Weekend

On November 2nd, Madison and I treated Anna to some Thai take-out, a fire in the fireplace and a private viewing of Madagascar 3...as if that wasn't enough we followed it up with her favorite kind of cake...a strawberry layer cake from Ralph's Bakery. 

 Anna treated herself to the G-Shock Watch she had had her eye thanks in large part to the birthday money from Gma and Gpa Klein.

Anna's Official Birthday Weekend was postponed a week due to her helping to host a baby shower for our good friend Grace of Chris and Grace...so this past weekend we set out for a fun-filled adventure in Palm Springs.

About an hour and a half into your journey to Palm Springs there is a large outlet mall so we made our first planned stop there, but Anna didn't have much luck so after browsing Diesel and Saks Off 5th Ave, we hopped back in the car for the half-hour journey to downtown Palm Springs where we planned to eat lunch.

Never having been to Palm Springs we relied on Yelp to find us a good place to eat...and did it ever. It was this little sandwich shop that we almost wimped out on when we didn't see anyone eating there, but we mustered up the courage and Madison and I enjoyed one of the best meatball subs I have ever had...and Anna liked her thing as well...then we walked the strip a little more, but knew we needed to be back to the car in two hours as the little golf cart cop had chalked our car as soon as we pulled in so we knew the clock was ticking :-)

We made it far enough down the strip to see this as we chomped on some ice cream...then we headed back to the car...still not sure why the giant statue of Marilyn Monroe was there...but pretty cool.

Then it was onto our hotel, about 12 miles away in Palm Desert. It was cool to remember you were driving through a desert as when you took away the buildings you could imagine just sand and shrubbery...and tall mountains. From downtown to the hotel we decided to take the back road(highway111) so we could go through a few towns on the way and see interesting stores like a huge estate sale store that consisted of 3 huge buildings. Each item had the name of the owner and the date it started selling in the store and price... kind of pricey, Anna was looking for vintage looking picture frames but none were cheap enough to spray paint and experiment with.

Our hotel room was spectacular. I had used some of our Hilton Honors Points to get us a room at the Homewood Suites...it had a fully stocked kitchen with pots and pans, living room and 1 bedroom with two queen beds. The bathroom was also huge...the only bummer was no bathtub...the room was built for handicapped individuals and due to the bike race adjacent from the hotel every other room was sold out...but we still liked it...

Just a few miles from our hotel was another famous shopping district called El Paseo...advertised as the Rodeo Drive of Palm Springs...Anna used some birthday money for a pair of pants at Juicy Couture and some make-up supplies at Sephora...it was a perfect night to be browsing the strip with temps in the low 60s letting you know it was fall in the Desert. 

Sunday Morning, we found a nice congregation in Palm Desert to worship with and then headed to the Children's Museum of the Desert for some playtime for Madison...

 She wasted no time jumping into the little ropes course and making up her own game...

 
It looks like she is in some kind of mission impossible type movie..:-)

She did some art...

 Went shopping...

 

Anna loved this cute store so much that she wants to recreate a much smaller version of it in our house... She is adding a shopping cart to her wishlist book for g-pa&g-ma Klein as I type this... What was really cool was that a lot of items were real products you can buy from a grocery store minus the inside contents so it's not that expensive to create, you just have to save the packaging of your normal grocery items...

  

Played the Harp...

Did a matching game where I called out what to do with each shape and then Madison followed the instruction, you can see there is a wall between Madison and me so Madison did not see what I was doing the whole time except to follow my lead...

This one is my finished product...

 And this was Madison's...so close...she just didn't understand what I meant by "next to..." as in "put the yellow rectangle next to the red square...

If we haven't said so, Madison loves this Blue Motorcycle our neighbor a few doors down parks outside...she even goes and pets it occasionally...she of course she was excited to hop on this guy...

 Not ready for this...

 They also had a nice space outside to play games...

Inside there was a Volkswagon Beetle that allowed children's creativity to run wild...

 And perhaps we have another engineer in the family...Madison loved building these ramps for the golf ball to go down...

 

And helping Mommy build this roller coaster for the golf ball (Daddy was not much help)...

Madison also got to practice her pizza making skills (this one I could do:-)...

 

Madison also enjoyed learning how a pulley works...

 And Gravity...

Then there was this secret box thing where you stuck your hand in and tried to guess the tool...there was some dangerous ones like a hammer and screwdriver...

 

Madison is shaking her head at me as I was the last one to be ready to go... I got into playing this Simon says game...:-) It was fun.

And no trip to a Children's Museum would be complete without a few tears...these were caused by trying to squeeze through a spot that was a little too tight...but they didn't last very long...

 

 Especially when we hit Cheesecake Factory on the way home :-)

All in all Palm Springs is a lovely place to take a day trip to if you have the time...it's a pretty drive and when you reach the mountain pass the mountains are littered with wind turbines which is pretty cool, but there is really only expensive shopping, a children's museum or gated communities with country club after country club...it really did feel more like a playground for the wealthy and retired...and we are certainly neither at this stage in our lives :-) But for a weekend getaway it definitely fit the bill and we probably will go back when we can take the tram to the top of the San Jacinto Mountains and play in the snow :-)

Halloween Day and Night!

On the actual Halloween day Anna was able to take a day off and was able to chaperone at Madison's school as the children walked two blocks over to the Katella Manor Nursing Home to spread some Halloween cheers as they sang songs they've been practicing at school and home...

The teachers were really surprised to see how many parents showed up to chaperone...  I heard that last year only about ten parents showed up so the teachers were happy to see so many parents wanted to be part of this Halloween event...

First teachers checked to see who is at school... I think Madison is helping out Ms. Michelle by pointing at the girl that she called before she called Madison so she is a bit distracted in the video...

 

Then all the children got paired up and we are ready to walk to the manor! Madison was paired up with Shi-ann... I think I mentioned before but Montessori classes don't believe in separating children by ages so that's why Shi-ann looks a lot older... Madison wanted to bring Mickey with her since she is a Minnie Mouse:-) just that day...

When they got to the Manor all the kids lined up for singing...it seems Madison was called to the front of the group...we think this is because she is the best singer and not because she is one of the shorter ones...she really does a great job as you can see she is one of the only ones to be doing the hand motions that accompany the songs and really gets into them...so yeah, it is because she is the star :-)

 

 

As the songs continued Buzz apparently gets jealous of Minnie Mouse's abilities and tries to squeeze her out...grrr...Buzz stay on your side...and those are not the authorized hand movements!!!

 

 

 

 

After the singing they got to enjoy cupcakes with the residents...

Since Halloween night fell on a Wednesday, we invited some of Madison's buddies from Bible to go trick or treating in our neighborhood from 5:30 to 6:45 before heading to Bible Class for 7:00...it worked out really well. Chris, Grace and John (our old neighbor from 1900 Ocean who Dave has a Bible Study with each Wednesday before Bible Class) were kind enough to come over and pass out candy for us.

We started with a group photo...so hard to get six 3-5 year olds to all stand still and look the same way at the same time, but these are close...


 

The first stop was our diagonal neighbor's house...she was outside placing her paper lantern decorations and was surprised to see us so early...there were a couple other groups out when we started, but we pretty much did open up the neighborhood...but the kids were really cute, at one house when the owner said, "aren't you guys a little early", the kids said, "we have to go to Bible Class..." way to evangelize!

 

Our second house was quite into the Holiday Spirit as well...she dressed as a pirate and her yard was well decorated. She sat on her porch strumming on a eukalale type instrument...unfortunately she was unaware it was Halloween...just kidding :-)
 


 Madison was a little timid at first...she was constantly the last one to get the candy at the doors and then out of the blue got all upset because she was always being beat to the door by the Karate Kid and wasn't getting to knock and say trick-or-treat...in hindsight I guess it is understandable as last year she and the Fireman she went with always went to the door together...but in the moment I was not pleased with the mini-tantrum...it almost caused an early end to our Halloween Night...

But Jasmine came to the rescue, and the other parents attempted to slow down the Karate Kid and for a few houses the kids took turns being the one who could knock on the door...

 And when that failed, we just tried to outrun the Karate Kid...but he was speedy :-)

 Getting candy is such tough work!

 In the end, it couldn't have worked out much better for a Wednesday Night Halloween...the kids got a pretty good haul for their hour and a half of candy grabbing and we had a really good time going trick-or treating as a group...

As we left for Bible the streets were alive with ghouls and goblins...we left a bucket out with the sign to "Please Take One," but even if the sign was followed (fat chance) the bucket was still empty upon our return and Madison sprang into action passing out candy until about 8:45 when the last high school age students called it a night...

 It was nice to see how into the Halloween Spirit our street got...it makes us anxious to see what kind of decorations the next Holidays bring!!

Halloween Party

It began with an invitation...Each year the families at Studebaker Road with young kids take turns hosting a Halloween party, so this year we gladly volunteered our place....:-)

 As usual we left so many things to do until the day of... Something we need to get better but hasn't happened yet. It would have been this one since I had to do a jury duty for three days this week and kind of had a lot more time then usual but I waited to do a lot of things until last minute still...

Anyways, we somehow fit in family pumpkin carving in the morning... We bought a battery operated carving machine last year on sale and what we found out was that it actually was an etcher and not a saw...that worked out well as that was the look I was going for.

Madison learned parts of a pumpkin at school and she was telling us that what we are taking out is the "meat" of the pumpkin...

Minnie Mouse was excited to be hosting...

 We planned a kids edition amazing race/trick or treat game which has a series of clues that lead to various games around the house...not pictured were the first two stations where kids threw spiders at a target and picked a pine cone out of the sandbox and then after an adult sprayed some adhesive on it, the kids sprinkled it until their heart's content...then it was onto the garage for some pumpkin bowling...

 

  

After pumpkin bowling the next clue led you to the pool for some pumpkin fishing...the clue informed the parents that their team had to create their own fishing pole from the materials supplied and hook a pumpkin...they would lose major points if there was any child fishing necessary :-)

 The pumpkins went magnet down which made the catching all that more difficult.

 Thankfully everyone stayed dry...and it was back to the front yard for some good old fashioned mad science...with the help of some salon strength hydrogen peroxide we made elephant toothpaste...

 As you can see the kiddos were amazed :-)

After the experiment the clue led you inside and of course told you to remove your shoes to receive your next clue :-) Which led you to make some Monster Pops...

 

Yummy :-)

After all of the stations we headed back outside for a group picture...which is not an easy task...

 This was how it looked most of the time :-)

 Then back inside for a yummy potluck dinner and playtime...Madison does such a great job letting all her buddies use her toys...it is very fun!

 Lastly we wanted to make sure and get a picture of the spider web Anna hung inside...unbeknownst to her until she was done, she ended up making a pretty cool bat.

 

Bonus Videos:

First - Madison showing off the songs she was learning in preparation for her class Field Trip to sing to some Senior Citizens at a local center...(covered in the next post)

Madison's interpretive dance skills...