A Visit from Mom: Part 2

Trying to catch up with events of this year... Just a few more notes and pictures from Mom's visit in October. Full album can be seen at Shutterfly (link will work when they're uploaded, will update).

Cousins Julie (& MacKenna & Riley) and Jessica (& Savannah) came over for dinner. Mom and I each made our version of Spanakopita (Mom's with less oil, which is healthier, mine with oil between every layer of filo, which is much yummier!), pizza for the kids, and salad. Since our table is so small, we brought in an extra table so we could fit everyone. Ella and Felix really liked having their 2nd cousins and 2nd cousins once removed (or something like that...!) visit us.


L-R: MacKenna, Felix, Nicki, Dianne, Julie, Savannah, Jessica

So what did we do while Mom was here? Well Ella had to go to school every day as usual so I brought her to school while Felix stayed with his Oma. She made him breakfast and got him dressed and when I got home, we took Felix to his preschool to play with his friends, paste & color, learn his letters, take naps and have a dance class.

On the weekend, we took a drive up the coast to the seaside town of Ventura and stayed overnight at a hotel. We had adjoining rooms and Ella stayed in her Oma's room. The best part of it for the kids was the room-to-room telephone, a game they played for ages. The weather was too cool to go to the beach but there was a nice park across the street from our hotel which we went to several times in the short time we were there.




In the evening, we had dinner at Cholada Thai restaurant.
The following day, we stopped in at the Mission San Buenaventura, walked past the former site of Ventura's Chinatown, had lunch at a 50's style diner and then did actually go to the beach for a little while.

On the last day before Oma left, we celebrated Felix's birthday at his preschool, complete with his requested Spider-Man bouncy-castle/jumper/bounce house and Spider-Man cake which I cleverly decorated myself. He didn't even notice the clown frosting, only the Spider-Mans and web decoration.


On the morning before Oma left, Felix got to open his presents (Spider-Man shirt and his own copy of "Frog", his favorite library book). While I took Ella to Dutch school, Jim and Felix took Oma to the airport where they said a tearful farewell.



Until next time!