La Brea Tar Pits and General Conference

Our field trip this week was to the Page Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits. The kids enjoyed seeing the "fake" animals in the water and tar.
Megster is helping the kids feed the "kitty" that helps to support this interesting museum.
To help the kids understand why the animals couldn't get out of the tar pits, the museum has rods stuck in tar that we all tried to pull out.
Here the kids are looking at the skeletal remains of an animal that was stuck in the tar pits.
We tried to convince Mom that the kind of teeth that humans have are more adapted to herbivores.
The kids were engrossed in a very lifelike depiction of an attack by a saber toothed cat on a giant sloth.
We had a great lunch on the grounds of the Page Museum on a beautiful April day.
This past weekend, Alana came home and we all watched General Conference in the family room. Gavin and Coco played with Colorforms and drew pictures of what they were watching.
We had a big family dinner just before Alana headed back up to BYU and her final three weeks of her 2nd year of law school.

This Week's "4 G (generation)" Field Trip

This past week when Helen came to visit, we decided to take a trip to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Most of us had never been to the library so it was a great trip. Here we are on the steps of Air Force One.
Before we went our our field trip, we all had breakfast at Dish in La Canada.
It was an extraordinarily nice day for our trip. We are pictured here in front of the library. What a great location they selected for this tribute to one of our greatest Presidents.
Here are all four of the kids playing in front of the library on one of the trees.
One of the biggest attractions at the library is the retired Air Force One plane. The kids really enjoyed going inside of it. I hope they don't think all commercial airplanes have interiors like this one did.
We had a picnic outside in this beautiful setting.
Ellie and Gavin enjoyed rolling down the lawn on the hillside.
The night before our excursion to the Reagan Library, we had a family dinner. Brother Jim and his wife, Sue, and Alana's friend, Steve, joined us for dinner.

Evan, Alpacas and Tierra del Fuego

The above picture is Megan, Coco and Gavin walking in an area, near our house, where the alpaca, Copper, lives. Evan will be seeing quite a few alpacas, guanacos and llamas in his new area of . . .Tierra del Fuego. After 7 months of living in the warmer climate of San Pedro, about 100 km. from Buenos Aires, he was transferred about 3500 km. south to the town of Rio Grande in Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago with a main island, which is where Rio Grande is. Tierra del Fuego is about the same size as West Virginia and is at the very bottom of Argentina, separated from the mainland by the Strait of Magellan. Evan was just transferred 5 days ago so we don't have any pictures yet. Stay tuned for those.
Evan really liked his last companion in San Pedro, Elder Tidei, from Mendoza, Argentina. Elder Tidei was a very good soccer player and on p-days, they would all have some pretty competitive soccer games.
On one of Evan's last p-days in San Pedro, he and his companion went to the San Pedro zoo.
Elder Tidei, Evan and good friend, Matias Maru, shared a lunch together. The Maru family "adopted" Evan in San Pedro and he is very sad to leave them. But we will visit them when we go to pick up Evan. We so appreciate all that the Maru family does for the missionaries.
One of their p-day trips was to Vuelta de Obligado Monument, commemorating a historic battle. At the site, there is a jungle area where Evan and Elder Tidei climbed trees.
These were some of the roads that Evan would ride on outside of San Pedro.
One of the best parts about Argentina is the barbeques (or asado) that they have. Evan really appreciates the great beef that they have in Argentina. But now it is onto the land of penguins and glaciers. He will be there in Tierra del Fuego for a little while, and most likely during the height of winter. Evan will have to buy some warmer clothing, as shorts, t-shirts and Chaco sandals won't cut it there.

The Birthday Month

A lot of birthdays this month in our family. . .Brad, Megan, Brad's Mom and James. We started with celebrating Meg's birthday at my Mom's house, then in the above picture showing Brad with Gavin and Ellie at Disneyland on his birthday.
We went to the Rainforest Cafe and got birthday Volcano desserts for Brad and Meg. . .all of the kids helped to blow out the candles.
Then it was Happy Hour out on the deck for James' birthday.
Ellie and James were helpful in taking the candles out of James' toll house pie that Meg made for his birthday.
Brad's birthday dinner was another fun time to get together with everybody. . .Alana even was able to fly home this weekend to help celebrate.
The kids watched a video and had M's (as the kids call them) while the adults finished dinner without spilled milk and food flying on the floor.
Thank goodness for Ellie and Gavin helping to blow the candles out on Brad's birthday torte. It's a great month for birthdays!

James and Brad's Solvang Century

We got up at 3:45 a.m. on Saturday morning to drive all the way to Solvang. James and Ster drove down from Morro Bay. James and Brad started the 100 mile ride at about 7:20 a.m. There were 5000 participants in the ride and it was a perfect day for a ride - cool temperatures and beautiful blue skies.
See if you can spot Brad and James. . .Brad is on a 34-year old Motobecane bicycle and James is riding his new two-wheeled "car".
Ster and Margaret took Ellie and Gavin to many fun places. First stop was the red school house in Ballard, which is well over 100 years old and is still used as an elementary school. Ellie found the old rope swing to play on while Ethan played with the old tire.
Megster went running for a bit and encountered a miniature donkey ranch. We drove to it and found that there was much more than just miniature donkeys. The kids enjoyed petting "Suey" the pot bellied pig. Linda, the owner, said that she started out as a breeder of miniature donkeys but has since become a rescue location for goats, pigs, alpacas, etc.
The kids liked seeing Tom, the turkey. If you whistled at him he would answer with a very loud "gobble, gobble, gobble". The goat was named "Buddy" and he loved to be petted and snuggled with.
Ellie loved riding on the miniature donkey named Alex.
Ethan wasn't quite sure that he wanted to ride at all. He preferred petting the donkeys.
This little miniature donkey was born about a week ago. He was very fuzzy to touch.
The owner, Linda, had a zonkey (cross between a zebra and a donkey) for the kids to see. He was much bigger than the miniature donkeys and was quite interested in seeing Ellie.
For lunch, we went to Nojoqui Park, near Solvang. Finally, Ethan found something that he liked to ride on.
Here we are on our hike up to see the waterfalls.
Megster and Ellie check out the Nojoqui Falls while Ethan was more interested in the trash can at the falls. He has a big future in waste management.
After our picnic lunch at the park, the kids fell asleep in the car and we drove to mile 88 on the Solvang Century ride and took a picture of Brad and James as they rode by. We didn't tell them at this point they had two more major hills to climb before they rode into Solvang and finished the ride.
Congratulations James and Brad for checking off another item on your "bucket list". They finished the ride in about 8 1/2 hours. Maybe next year some of us can do the metric century, while James and Brad do the 100 mile century again.

Singing, Disneyland and Nicholas' performance

Two Sundays ago, Brad and the Southern California Mormon Choir sang with about 500 other adults and children from other denominations in Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. Mack Wilberg, the arranger and conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (or as they are known "America's Choir"), came down from Salt Lake City and conducted the different choirs in the cathedral. It was a wonderful concert and once again proved that music brings people together. The cathedral is amazing inside - huge tapestries from Belgium grace the walls and the windows are all alabaster.
Several days later, Meg and the two kids and I went to Disneyland for a few hours. Gavin hadn't been on Thunder Mountain so that was the first ride that we went on. After he got off of the ride, he said he liked it - but didn't want to go again. . .so we really wonder how much he liked it.
Megan and Gavin drove the Autopia cars - while Coco and I tried to keep them from bumping into us.
We always go to Small World because it is Coco's favorite ride.
Gavin decided to try his hand at pulling the sword out of the stone. . .and it didn't come out.
We ran into Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and she posed with us for a picture.
Another favorite is going through Sleeping Beauty's castle. . .Gavin got a foam rubber sword and he said that he was going to slay the dragon.
Friday night, in our series of field trips, we headed out to Redlands to see nephew, Nicholas, performing in the musical "The Princess and the Pigs." Nicholas played neither the princess nor one of the pigs. We started out the evening with dinner at Chipotle, eating outside in the warm weather.
Nicholas played the part of the herald in the musical. All of the lyrics and music are the original work of a very talented local musical producer. The costumes and sets were very professional. Nicholas did a great job, and was very animated - and he projected extremely well in the playhouse (which looks like it seats about 200, and is a converted church). It really was a very good play and we look forward to going to other plays out there.
Nicholas is pictured here with one of the five pigs - very cute, original story that had a great message in it.