Thursday, August 02, 2007

a week with no kids

The last week of July we dropped the kids off at Camp Ironwood, the place my parents used to ship me away to every summer. There's not much to do around Barstow/Newberry Springs, so after taking A on a superquicktour of the camp (he was perishing in the 108 F/42 C climate!) we got back in the air-conditioned car and headed south to San Bernardino, then west over to Pasadena/Arcadia area to visit the Los Angeles Botanical Gardens and Arboretum.


Took a zillion pictures.
I was going for light and pattern things:
I just loved the colors on this bark! No, I don't remember what the tree is. Some kind of eucalyptus I think.
There were a great number of peacocks, peahens and chicks running around. This guy was showing off. I've never seen one do that "live" before!


Self-explanatory. Pretty manmade waterfall.

Jacaranda tree. Had to write that in before I forgot what it was. :)

We drove back up to Santa Maria on Tuesday, making a pit stop in Solvang on the way. I MISSED Arne's Famous Aebleskivers by 15 minutes. They closed at 4. DARN DARN DARN. I wanted to see the experts make aebleskivers and get some tips and tricks, and now I have to make a whole nother trip. Fiddlesticks.

We did stop at "Ostrichland" and purchase some ostrich sausages for my dad. They were tasty. In addition we got to see the beautifully fluffy, irritable birds as we drove along the highway. No pictures, sorry, but this guy took an extreme ostrich feeding video and posted it on yahoo for your viewing pleasure.

Wednesday we made contact with my h.s. friend Chris and went out to Carrow's with him after mid-week church services. We spent the evening laughing, talking, arguing--just like old times. We left when the restaurant closed at 11 p.m., then continued to talk in the parking lot until midnight.

And so the week with no kids passed by. I kept thinking about them, wanting to be a fly on the wall, watching the kids at camp, seeing what they were doing, learning, experiencing...but this is just an apron string that I need to cut. They'll tell me what they want to tell me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

fun pics! the tree with the different colors on it seems especially interesting.

Zintradi said...

we went to an ostrich farm in Tuscon one of the times we went down there.
some of the craziest creatures I think... you should catch the Dirty jobs episode where mike rowe went to an ostrich farm... i think it was probably the one your went to.

Annecourager said...

Hey Richard don't forget that the church BBQ is this Sunday at 4 pm at Clarks Creek Park #2 :)

3boysmama said...

Solvang.... did you go to pea soup anderssens? I love that place! We used to stop at the one in Carlsbad all the time until they closed =(

Annecourager said...

Crystal, when I was a kid I'd get so excited to see the highway billboards with the two chefs splitting a pea, telling me how many miles it was to Pea Soup Andersens...

And then I had pea soup there, and it was the greatest non experience of my life. I discovered that I hated split pea soup! UGH. What a letdown!

Now that I'm older and my taste buds are dying, I could probably handle it. But we were near there in between lunch and supper, and we had previous arrangements to dine with my parents in Santa Maria, so no, didn't stop at the restaurant. :)