Topanga Earth Day

What an AWESOME day!

The only bummer was, that it was TOTALLY HOT. But otherwise, what a great time we had! It started with yoga. I did some until it was just too hot to continue. (It had to have been 90 degrees at 11am and I really didn't want heatstroke.)








So I went and checked out some of the booths for a bit and then joined Craig and the girls at the opening ceremony. It was a BEAUTIFUL peace ceremony where we wished peace on every country in the world! People who wanted to participate lined up to get a flag and then would wave the particular flag and we would all say "Let there be peace in (name of country.) Bella and Lala both got to do it. But Lala LOVED it and did it about 5 times! As time went on, I thought I would like to go through with Ceci. So I got in line and was totally thrilled when by chance I ended up with Mexico's flag! A little later, we did the last flag--the United States. It was pretty cool that Lala was again the flag-barer!! Everybody of course, cheered like crazy for our country (and for little Lala!) It was so neat! Then, to end the ceremony, our friend Woody came out with an Earth flag and then Stephanie came out with a peace flag and they waved them together. It was really a beautiful ceremony. We felt very blessed to be a part of it-- to be able to wish peace on all the countries of the Earth! I know the girls enjoyed it very much.




Of course, throughout the day there was fun happening all over the place. Great music, great organic food, great eco-friendly things for sale, and fun activities for kids in the play area. We ended up shopping from a vendor who started the fair trade labels called Jedzebel and Ecogirl. I bought the girls these gorgeous Jedzebel skirts made from recycled saris. I bought myself an Ecogirl organic cotton blouse which I love!

Another really cool thing that happened-- we bought a $1raffle ticket, and Lala pulled out a $25 certificate to Pat's Topanga Grill! We were pretty happy about that!

We really enjoyed going into Visionary which was a remodeled trailer that is a mobile eco-boutique! It was really cool!

We had lunch from organic green truck on the go--delicious food!



One of the performances was by the Topanga Belly Dancing Troupe!












Bella and Lala had to have these cute baskets-- they bought them with their own $.

The time flew by until we had to go. By the way, here is the tail of the biodiesel bus that drove us up the hill! It was super-cute!







The Circus




I know we are CRAZY, but we had been given tickets to the circus, and we really wanted to use them! We caught the 7pm show. Can you believe how crazy we are to go to the circus after a big (HOT and exhausting) festival? It was really fun, and pretty cute! I especially enjoyed the trained doggies. We loved our fez hats and kept singing "Ain't never gonna do it without the fez on!" These shots were some of the highlights of the show.

We love butterflies!!

We really do! So we had to go to the Museum of Natural History to see the Butterfly Pavilion that had recently opened. We saw so many BEAUTIFUL butterflies!! (And Moths!!) We also got to see caterpillars, a chrysalis, eggs being laid, (click to see more detail!) and even some mating.





Probably the coolest thing we saw was a Monarch drinking out of some flowers!




































We saw Luna Moths,











Zebra Longwings & Monarchs,












Painted Ladies & Spicebush Swallowtails,










Buckeyes & Julias!












So after seeing all the lovely butterflies, we went inside the museum. We had a great time--there was so much to see! I liked the display about chickens-- it showed the inside of a chicken and how the egg is made and then the stages of life inside the egg before it hatches. It was neat to see now that we have chicks!

We liked the museum so much, we decided to get a pass so we can return often!

I don't even know where to begin!!

We barely got our computer (with it's new hard drive) back last Saturday. Because our Easter was so busy, we only re-uploaded our pictures last night. Thank goodness it's our Spring break-- I spent this entire morning organizing all the pictures. It was actually super-fun because we got the newer version of iphoto yesterday and it's awesome! Craig and I had a tutorial yesterday at the Apple store to learn how to use it. I LOVE how it keeps all my photos organized in neat little files with a picture for each cover now! It's great!! I don't seem to have a thing missing which was such a relief! And we now have something called "time machine" which automatically backs-up your pictures. I'm still not sure how it works, but I'm glad to have it! So in a way, we're in a better place than we were before our computer crashed! (Although poorer!)

So much has happened since we lost our pictures and our computer! Bella's birthday, Ceci's birthday, Easter and some gardening. I will be trying to catch up little by little, so if you're interested, keep checking back! I try to blog everything because I plan to print our blog as a scrapbook.

I've been feeling really nostalgic for my childhood lately, so I made a crazy 70's playlist that is the soundtrack to my younger days. Some of the songs are truly wonderful, and some are not so wonderful, but I put them because they have such great memories attached to them. Hope someone out there enjoys it! If not, please remember you can pause it! (Or lower the volume on your computer.) Hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful day!


UPDATE: I've already added many new posts--Lala's parade, Bella's play, the big birthday party, seed planting, Bella's birthday, Ceci's birthday, and Easter stuff! If you want to see all of my new posts, you will definitely need to click on "older posts" because they don't all fit on this front page! :)

Easter Afternoon

After attending beautiful church services, we came home and had a wonderful afternoon. I took a million pictures of my angels in their white dresses while they modeled for me. After lunch and an Easter movie, we had a fun egg hunt. Gosh, the girls are getting fast!! The Easter bunny was pretty creative in his (or her?) hiding this year. We had fun opening eggs together and then playing with the chickies for a while. We then had a very nice dinner and then sang some Easter songs and read the Easter scriptures together with an egg lesson I made last year. It was very nice to really focus on the meaning of Easter by singing and reading the scriptures. Then we had our dessert and sang to Ceci again for her birthday since we had not yet done so with grandma and grandpa. What a beautiful Easter day!