Lastest member of the banking society.

We signed Aria up for her own savings account last Saturday. The process took forever but now all her money is in a safer place than before when it was sitting in a box in our living room. I don't think she understands the whole saving idea yet but she had a fun time going to the bank and getting her little savings book.

Counting out her twenties.

Aria and her new book.

Lunch date.

We had a lunch date with Alice, Cassidy, and Michael on Tues after Aria's class. We met up at an Indian restaurant and ate till we were stuffed, well at least the adults did, the kids just caused havoc. Kidding, kidding, Aria and Cassidy were a handful though. They were also not big fans of Indian food. We capped off the meal with a Jamba Juice run. Aria loves Jamba Juice. It's one of the few ways to get her to consume fruit. Afterwards we went over to the Korean market next door to pick up on some essentials.

Waiting for their Strawberry Wild.

Supervising the making and the distributioin of their Strawberry Wild .

Enjoying their Strawberry Wild.

Here's Aria stocking up on her favorite Korean cookies. We got all four since that's how many she wanted.

On another note: new Star War stamps are being released by the USPS on May 25th. Go pick some up!

This week's creations.

This one is not done yet. It's a covered container. I'm going to put a knob on the top.

Sunday outing.

We visited the Huntington Library on Sunday. The weather was just right, any hotter and I would have wanted to stay home. The Huntington Library is pretty expansive. I visited different gardens that I've never seen on my previous trips there. The first garden that we hit was the kids' water garden. Hands down the best garden for kids anywhere. They have different gardens within the kids' garden to keep all the kids occupied. Aria loved the one area that generated fog-like mist. I think my favorite was the Japanese garden. It contained a bamboo forest (I love bamboo!!), pagodas galore, a zen garden, and a huge koi pond with arched bridges. Oh, and they had an amazing collection of bonsais. Unfortunately, the place was closing down for the night or I would have stayed there longer to take in more of the beauty.

One of the kid's fountains.

Very cool, magnetic interactive sculpture.

The water fogger.

Check out the size of that leaf.

I love the details in this bench.

At the Japanese garden, in front the koi pond.

Bamboo forest.

Bonsais.

They've hatched!

The silkworms have finally hatched out of their eggs. I checked on them Sunday morning and they were little black lines, no bigger than half the length of my fingernail, crawling around the box. I worried about them all day because I didn't know where to go to get mulberry leaves. Luckily, I found a mulberry tree on someone's front yard, across the street from the local elementary school. I rang the doorbell to ask for permission to pick some leaves but no one was home. So, in desperation, I stole some. I had to, my silkworm babies were going to starve to death!
This morning, the silkworms have change slightly. They've developed some greyish markings from their heads down. The little guys are growing on me.

Voom voom.

I had the one of the best Mommy & Me classes today. It was so fun. The teacher had called me a few days ago to remind me to bring a box to school that's big enough to fit Aria in. Thankfully I had one lying around in the garage. Today, I lugged it to class and found out that we were to paint the box, decorate it and turn it into a car. The class was very chaotic because there were 30+ kids and 30+ adults trying to paint gigantic boxes. Aria picked purple (of course) to paint her box. I had to force her to use pink on the front panel. 45 mins before the end of class, everyone brought his or her 'car' into the classroom for the indoor drive-in and to eat popcorn. How cool is that?? It was so cute to see all 30+ kids in their own individual cars watching Elmo on t.v. It was very quite while the movie was going on. Very fun.

Aria with her purple paint.

Waiting for the movie to start.

After class I took Aria to the library to return some books and to check out new ones. Alice surprised me by showing up there with Cassidy and Michael. She went to pick up some fastfood while I watched Cassidy and Aria at the play area. We ate at a park table and the girls had a blast as usual.

Playing babysitter.

I watched over Cassidy and Michael yesterday because Alice got tickets to a taping of American Idols. Since I'm not a fan, I don't understand the whole hoopla. Alice, on the other hand, was very excited and couldn't contain her excitement when I saw her this morning for our morning run (after a three week hiatus, that's another story). She dropped her kids off at 12:30 PM and her hubby picked them up around 7:15 PM.

It was fairly easy watching three kids at one time. They Michael made it especially easy for me since he's such a mellow kid. He followed me around the house and kept me company. I couldn't help myself from hugging him, he's so adorable. It was sooo easy to put him down for a nap too. I just laid him down Aria's Ariel sleeping bag and he dripped off to sleep in a snap of a finger. The girls played extremely well together. No fights except for little issues of sharing. They played dress up, snacked, pulled out and played with every possible toys and books in Aria's room, watched part of a Mermaidtopia movie, went outside to bothered the dog and finally had dinner. Best part was there were no crying, no wounds or boo-boos, no accidents. I can be trusted to watch other people's kids again.

Michael playing with the school bus. There's a neat little car & train table in the front and he played with that for a long time.

Cassidy and Aria in Aria's bed.

Being goofy.

Again.

Cassidy was trying to get Moo-Moo to come to her. I'm pretty impressed with Cassidy's behavior toward Moo-Moo considering the fact that she's not a big fan of dogs. Her dad is allergic so she doesn't come in contact with furry animals much. She was scared of Moo-Moo last time. Yesterday, she opened up to her and wanted to pet her.

This week's creations.

Both of these are in greenware stages (before firing). I'm going to take them to class tonight. I hope the teacher fired some of my previous works so I can get to the next stage of glazing. Then I can take them home! I did bring home my first glazed piece last week but I'm too embarassed to show it. It's not pretty. A. is being sweet and has been using it as his cereal bowl.

Those are butterflies.

I did this last night. It took me 3 hours since I did it from hand and I don't know how to use a pottery wheel.

Scorcher of a weekend.

The weekend's temperature was extremely hot. We hit 98 degrees on Sat. Thankfully, Sunday was slightly cooler. I am sooo not ready for the summer heat. What happened to Spring?? On Sat. we did the usual YMCA classes and them Lakeshore. Afterwards I walked with Aria to the elementary school down the street to check out their Spring Carnival. The carnival was wrapping up but I was able to get Aria some cotton candy. I think she has tried a little bit of some a while back but she's never had one of her own to hold. I don't want to get her hooked on it but ever since she has seen the movie Aquamarine, she's always been curious about it. (There's a scene in the movie where the mermaid Aqua gets a hold of cotton candy for the first time and uses it as a powder puff). She has been asking for it for a while now. Aria held her cotton candy in her right hand all the way home. She took one small bite of it, made a funny face and gave the whole thing to A. That was the end of that.

Aria and A. also went to Layla's 2nd birthday party early Saturday evening. I decided not to go and stayed home to work on ceramics. She came home happy but with a bruise below her right eye. She apparently ran into a table.

The infamous cotton candy. Looks like it's attacking her before it gets attacked.

The birthday girl Layla, Bella & Aria.

On Sunday we went to a garden show. It was a small event, totally not what I expected. We were pretty disappointed with the lack of booths and entertainment. I was thinking of leaving after 30 mins. but Aria told us she wanted to stay for the hoola dancers. We waited in the sweltering heat and were not disappointed. The dancers were made up of girls and women from a local dance studio. They were pretty good. A. asked me if I was interested in trying it but I think I rather stick with ceramics. I don't have to show my belly in ceramics.

We met these kids at the fair and they were very sweet to Aria especially the 9 years old girl Lacy. She literally picked up Aria and carried her around.

Aria found some rollie pollies at the fair.

The hoola dancers.