Brewbakers - Surf City, USA

For Ryan's birthday we took him to Brewbakers in Huntington Beach. He's been wanting to learn how to make his own beer for a number of years now and finally took the opportunity on a special occasion to make his own brew. He chose to make the Munich Ale and under the instruction of the shop owner and staff spent about 3 hours making his beer. We will be back in about 3 weeks to bottle and pick up the brew. Ryan will then finally get to drink his own beer!

                                                                  Munich Ale Recipe

                                                          Ryan, Ava and staff member

                                                        Adding the final amount of yeast.

With the left over beer grains the shop owner made two small loaves of bread for us while we waited. The shop is also an eatery that makes homemade root beer, soda, and German pretzels. Yum! Now we just have to wait 3 more weeks for Ryan to enjoy his brew!

Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, CA

As an end of summer family activity we decided to take the kids to the Aquarium of the Pacific for the first time. We went Labor Day weekend. It was very hot out but we managed to take it easy and see almost all of what the aquarium had to offer for us to see.

                                                                 The Pacific Sea Horse.

                 Watching the seals and sea lions through an aquarium tunnel was Ava's favorite.

                               At the touchpool you can gently feel bat rays or shovelnose guitarfish.

Charlotte and I would rather watch the bat rays than touch them. We've touched them once before and that was good enough.

    After checking out the bat rays with Ryan for 15 min or so Ava wanted to try to touch one.

                                                                   Moon Jelly Fish

There is a large walk-in aviary where aquarium guests can enjoy the lorikeet birds. For $3.00 you can purchase a small cup of nectar for the birds to drink. We watched a few different people feed the birds and they seemed pretty tame. Ava loves birds and asked to feed them after watching two other sisters feed them. It was a lot of fun watching the birds carefully approach Ava and climb onto her arm and drink from the cup. She got to feed 3 or 4 different birds while we were in the aviary.

                                                                 Sea star touchpool.

                                                                 Tropical reef habitat.

                                                             Olive Ridley Sea Turtle

Look very carefully and you may see some Leafy sea dragons or Weedy sea dragons. They kind of look like sea horses that camouflage with seaweed beds and seagrasses.

We left the aquarium by 5:00PM. The girls got a snack and drink but fell asleep before we even got on the freeway. They slept for over two hours straight afterward. It was a full and great day at the aquarium.

Ava's August Art Projects

I decided to take a few pictures of some of Ava's more interesting drawings since I know that I likely will not be able to keep them all to look at in the future. Please feel free to check them out if you would like.

                                       Thomas the Train with smoke coming out of his funnel.

                                                       Charlotte sitting with only a diaper on.

A hummingbird sipping nectar from a floor. Ava told me I have her picture upside down though. oops.

                                                            Rainbow, sky and grass.

                                                             An airplane and the sun.

                                                                 A boiling pot of water.

                                            This is a walking house with butterflies in the sky.

                                                "I wrote "Happy Birthday Daddy"". - By Ava

                                                                        Jellyfish.

"Baby Sea Otter. She got her tail stuck in some rocks. She needs to wiggle like a whale shark."-Ava

                                          A butterfly. Paper was folded in half, painted paper,
                                       pressed paper shut and spread the paint to create a butterfly.

                                           Kitty cat. Practicing pasting shapes to create a picture.

 A palm tree and blue sky. She pasted and painted pieces of green construction paper for the palm tree and painted around it.