Huntington Library

We had a wonderful breakfast at the Doubletree Hotel on Sunday morning after the Renaissance Faire. Then we packed up all our "stuff" and headed out to the The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens. Our objective was to visit the Chinese Garden which is one of many areas of this very beautiful setting. Henry Huntington was part of the Huntington family that owned the Central Pacific Railroad. He moved to Los Angeles and bought the property that the Library now sits on. In addition to being an excellent businessman (railroad companies, utilities and real estate in Southern California) he and his wife amassed a large research library, established a wonderful art collection and created botanical gardens representing many geographic areas. We have visited The Huntington several times since moving to Southern California and I'm sure we will visit many more. It's a beautiful place. We spent our time on Sunday walking through the Chinese Garden, Japanese Garden and Desert Garden. It was a beautiful day!

Renaissance Faire

We met our good friends Diane and Larry in Monrovia, California on Saturday, April 26 to attend the Renaissance Faire. Bob and I had never been to such an event and had no idea what to expect. We checked into the Doubletree Hotel, snatched our cookies (yum), and hopped on the shuttle for the Faire. Our room rate included the tickets to the faire, the shuttle ride to and from, and of course, the warm chocolate chip cookies! The Faire was much larger than I had anticipated and there were many, many people in costume. I had no idea that the visitors to the faire would come in costume. Some were really beautiful and others made no sense whatsoever - like the guys dressed in their togas. I didn't take their picture! There was a jousting tournament with horns, drums, a Queen, knights on horseback and real live wenches!

Real live Wenches

And here are some other photos taken throughout the day. And when I think about it I'm still amazed at all the beautiful costumes and those push-up bras!!!!!

Balboa Park

It has been a most unusual winter here in Southern California. The temps have been in the mid to high 80s on many days and the sun shines almost all the time. We often think of our friends and family on the East Coast and their daily struggles with the unrelenting cold and snow. My sister lives in Michigan and doesn't think the snow will leave much before the end of April! My son works outside and often resembles the little kid who's mom puts so many winter clothes on him he's unable to move in the snow. And we think back to the last winter we lived in New Jersey and the hurricane that brushed us in the fall and the winter it was still snowing in March. We love California weather - well in the winter anyway. It the summer it can get a little warm (big understatement) here in the San Jacinto Valley.

Last Sunday we drove to San Diego and the beautiful Balboa Park. The park houses the San Diego Zoo as well as many diverse museums, gardens, paths and activities. There is even a building on the grounds titled "The Bridge Club" (I think that's the name). There is a huge lawn bowling area that has a big sign advertising free lessons. There is a beautiful rose garden. Let us not forget the dog park! There are musicians, dancers, painters, magicians and many other entertainers on the walk ways. I'm sure there is much more here to see and do. It's a great place to visit.

After the park we went to our favorite Italian restaurant in Little Italy and had a great dinner. All and all it was a fun day. Here are some photos of our great adventure.

Humphrey's By the Bay

On Tuesday, January 28th we loaded the bikes on the back of the car and headed for San Diego. Humphrey's on the Bay, a lovely hotel on Shelter Island, to be exact. The weather here in Southern California has been absolutely beautiful. That nasty jet stream that has been keeping those in the east so cold has been warming our days into the 80s. However, there is always a price to pay and our price is an ongoing drought. We thought we should take advantage of the weather before it turned on us and actually became winter - such as it is here.

Humphrey's has a lovely area in the center of the hotel grounds where two parrots hang out during the day. They are always gone by 4:00 pm and I suspect someone takes them inside for the night. They really are handsome fellows!

The Ronald Reagan Library

 On Thursday, September 12, we hit the freeways and headed to the Ronald Reagan Library in famous Simi Valley, California. They chose an absolutely beautiful spot for this library. It sits on top of one of the rolling hills and has wonderful view of the valley below. Our mission was the Lincoln Exhibit that is closing at the end of September. In order to get to see Lincoln we had to go through the entire library. It's a pretty interesting library, so it wasn't much of a hardship. And it brought back lots of memories of when my boys were still boys and not men. I remember dropping Dan at Little League practice on the day that Reagan was shot. 

When we finally made our way to the Lincoln exhibit we decided it was well worth it. Unfortunately, I left my glasses in the car (parked a long way from the building) and only had my sun glasses. And although they are prescription I found it very difficult to read anything in this exhibit. The lighting was dark to begin with, add some sun glasses and it's almost impossible. Taking any sort of photo was also difficult in such a dark environment. I am now very careful to remember to check for the right glasses!

I liked the title of this exhibit

The young Lincoln

Scrapbook Pages

I'm not a genuine scrapbook person. I just like to put together pages of special places we've been or special people I adore or earth shattering events such as my grandchildren performing their drama camp presentation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a wonderful production and will always be one of my special memories of them. All of my scrap book pages are produced digitally using Photoshop Elements on my iMac and all the free papers, fonts, and embellishments that I have collected from the many blogs that are floating out there. It's amazing how many talented people offer their stuff for free. The generosity is really something to think about.

The other part of making scrapbook pages digitally is that there is no mess. No glue, no scissors that I can never find, no having to print the photo three times because I can't measure correctly, and if I want to switch things around it's just "click and drag." Great fun!

And every time I turn the pages of one book or another wonderful (mostly) memories come flooding back to remind me of just how great life can be and what fun I've had along the way. Making the pages and then revisiting them from time to time is one of my favorite things.

My Visit to Shoreline

 I just returned (well, about a week ago) from a wonderful visit with my son, daughter-in-law and 2 grandchildren in Shoreline, WA. Shoreline is a suburb north of Seattle. The kids completed their two week drama camp on Friday with two productions of William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, a 1950's Rock and Roll version by Arne Zaslove. The kids in this production ranged in age from 11 to 15 and they did a marvelous job of learning their Shakespeare lines and all the '50s songs in nine days of camp (Friday was rehearsal day in the morning and matinee at 3) and one weekend. Madison played the part of the Fairy Queen and Jack played the part of Lysander. I was so impressed by each one of these kids. We watched the dress rehearsal at 1:00, the matinee at 3:00 and the evening performance at 7:00. To tell the truth I would have gone back the next day to watch it all again. I may be a little biased but they really were great.

On Tuesday we loaded the car with food, kids, dog and ourselves and headed for the Cascade Mountains for 5 days. We stayed in a beautiful log home with views of Cle Elum Lake and surrounded huge evergreens as they are grown in the Northwest. It was a great time with lots of laughs, hugs and good food!

Titania - Fairy Queen

Lysander

Cle Elum Lake

On the first evening walk we noticed this fire burning far across the valley

The flowers that had gone to seed were as beautiful as when they were in bloom

This beautiful display of petunias was on display in Roslyn, Washington.
I don't know what they do to Petunias in this area but they were amazing.

And at the end of each day was a beautiful sunset to admire.

This is Alice. Alice loves her family and everyone else she meets. She did
not, however, enjoy her vacation at the top of the mountain. When we
started to load the car to go home, Alice sat down near the trunk of my
son's car and would not move. All she wanted was to go home!