Some Good, Some Not Quite So “Wonder”-ful

    
First up, a couple of shots from the church retreat I went on at Forest Home in the San Bernadino Forest (right near Big Bear).  The retreat was spectacular despite 1. not knowing anybody before I went and 2. showing up with a black eye—sorry, no pictures of that.  The black eye, if you haven’t heard the story, was courtesy of Naomi and a tickle-fight.

                          
We seem to have established a pattern of stairs as photo op.  The kids plop themselves down and request that I take their picture; I, of course, oblige.  Expect to see more like this in future blog posts.

                                      
Moving on to the real meat of this particular entry, it appears that there are a number of children’s museums in the (extended) area.  We decided to check out this one first because they were running a special during the month of October which allowed the kids to get in free.  It had its perks, like that wind-tunnel thing that Naomi is playing with, but compared to the Wonder Museum in Okinawa this place was seriously lacking.  I know it’s not entirely fair to make comparisons, and we did enjoy our time while we were there, but . . . let’s just say we hope to find better at one of the other museums.

                           
On the plus side, they had a nice selection of puppets which we really enjoyed.

         
And a little construction worker does have a lot to learn, especially if they are in training to be an astronaut.

But, if I may be a bit critical again, I expect to see more things at a Children’s Museum that we DON’T already have in our own home.  Ah well, the kids had fun and it made for a decent outing for that day!

                        
TTFN, ta-ta for now!

to Capistrano

Picking up where we left off . . .

The only reason I show you this is because it’s the last picture I took before Logan fell in that fountain right there. That’s right, we had to fish Logan out of the fountain in the Sacred Garden in San Juan Capistrano. He and Naomi are both typically pretty good about walking along ledges, having gotten a considerable amount of practice.  So Jake was watching Naomi and I was considering the bells when we heard the splash!  As soon as we’d gotten Logan out, we had a good laugh; what else could we do?  It’s always an adventure with kids in tow!

                            

The picturesque scene of the crime.

The perpetrator and his accomplice.

 
Moving around the corner, we come to the ruins of the great cathedral.  It’s hard to give you a sense of this place: the scale of it and the scale of the destruction embodied by it.  Pretty impressive all around.

             
                               
Stepping away from that, we find ourselves back in the gardens with probably the nicest koi pond I’ve seen outside of Japan.
                      

And that concludes our tour today.  Thanks for stopping by!

When the Swallows Come Back

Welcome!  Any guesses where we’re going today?

                             
A couple of lovely, but mostly unhelpful, hints.

 

 

 

            Are you listening?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our adventure today will be: Mission San Juan Capistrano!  I vaguely remember going here as a kid.  I couldn’t even tell you if it was with my parents or if it was a school field trip.  Mom, care to chime in?  It’s a beautiful place though, just a few minutes up the road from us now and the gardens are amazing.

                           
Here comes the history lesson.  The mission was (re-)founded in 1776 by Father Junipero Serra, a rather prominent figure in California during that period.  From the mission’s website, “The idea was to make colonial outposts called missions . . . (which) would be a center of learning and training of Native peoples. The Spanish government and Catholic Church wanted to convert the people to Christianity, train them in Spanish or European lifestyle, so that the Native peoples would eventually live in towns and pay taxes, like good Spanish citizens.”  That more or less worked out for a while and in 1806 they built a great stone cathedral at Mission San Juan Capistrano.  The cathedral stood for all of six years before it was destroyed by an earthquake and never rebuilt.  After that things went downhill for a while until, eventually (skipping over lots of stuff you don’t care about), it became a “historical site”.

And here we are!

                       
This is the Father Serra (guy who founded the mission) Chapel, the oldest building in continuing public use in CA and the only existing chapel where Father Serra is known to have celebrated Mass.  (I tell you these things just in case you’re ever on Jeopardy.  If “Father Serra” is the answer to the Final Jeopardy question, I expect a cut.)

We enjoyed everything about our tour; the building and the grounds are both exquisite.  So much so that I took too many pictures that I want to share with you.  So, this will be part one.  Part two will get to the really fun stuff; trust me on this.

               

So goodnight for now, but check back soon!  (P.S. That’s a very cooperative hummingbird!)

Classics

  We were out and about when we saw this long line of classic cars sitting at the bottom of the ramp coming off the 5.  We couldn’t get to the camera quite fast enough but, luckily, we had to make a stop at the dry cleaners just down the road.  I ran back out to the street just in time to catch a few of them as they passed.

Then we went here.  If only this playground had a roller slide, it would be perfect!  Large parts of it are even handicap accessible and there are some pretty fun music and sensory elements on it.


There’s a good-size sand pit with cool digger-things.  Behind that, in both pictures, you can see a spectacular ship-themed playground geared for the younger (2-5) crowd.  My kids, of course, spent approximately no time on that one.

Obviously my little daredevils prefer stuff like this.

 
Stepping back for a minute, here are some of those fun details and musical elements I was telling you about.

Oops, gotta go catch the munchkin again!
 Eh, he’s good.  He’s old enough to know his limits; Naomi’s still young enough to get in over her head sometimes.

            

For example, Naomi chose to tackle this climbing wall (with Jake spotting her but not assisting).  She actually made it to the top—she really is a little daredevil!
 I love this picture because this is such an Uncle Jonathan expression.
  One more slide before we leave the playground for today.

                    

Bye guys!  Back at home, Logan shows off his latest Sunday School craft.

And that’s all I have for you today.  Thanks for reading!