Lentil Soup and a Short Vacation

I sit here at my desk, looking outside the beautiful, rainy day outside my window. My plan for this morning was to take Elena for a little walk in her new stroller (I am so excited that we got it on clearance!) over to the grocery store. Since it's raining, I want to make a soup for dinner. I think this time I'll try a lentil and ham soup. I've got my grocery list all made, the stroller is ready to go but, alas, we are not going. Yes, of course, it's pouring. Oh well, we shall wait a little until the rain subsides. I do appreciate the rain so much but I was really looking forward to going on a little walk with Elena.

Life has been normal around here. You know, the daily tasks for keeping a home running smoothly as well as spending time with Elena and other people in our lives. I do enjoy the routine so much as it makes the "non-routine" days all the much more special.

Speaking of non-routine days. Towards the end of January we went to Los Angeles for an overnight trip. We got to stay in a nice hotel at an affordable rate thanks to Priceline. That's where we took these cute pictures of Elena. The next day we went to the Getty Villa in Malibu. We had always wanted to go to the Getty Museum and eventually we will go back but we opted for seeing the Getty Villa since it was closer. This museum is dedicated mainly to Greek and Roman history - it is full of artwork and artifacts left by these two civilizations.

Before getting to the museum we stopped to have breakfast in a nearby park:

Elena had her breakfast in the form of milk (her bib says "Got Milk?" - how appropriate!)...

...posed for a picture with mom...

...and got belly kisses from daddy!

Then we headed over to the Getty Villa. A few shots from our time there...


After walking around for a few hours and teaching Elena about the Greek and Roman Civilizations we headed over to get some food. If you've never had Tito's Tacos, you are missing out!


And then we had a wonderful finish to our little weekend get-away. We went to visit little Luca and his parents, Sergio and Kendra. We met them at our favorite Spanish restaurant, Costa Brava years ago. Luca was just about a week old when we went to see him. It wasn't until he was side by side with Elena that I realized how much our little girl has grown!



Elena loves little people like her - she likes babies that are younger and kids that are older. What a fascination with people more her own size.

And would you believe it? Elena went to the Dr. last week and had a check-up and her shots. Our little darling weighted 20lbs 11oz (from her birth weight at 7lbs 11oz) and was 28 inches long (compared to her birth length of 21 inches). She got a thumbs up from our very nice Dr. and will be back in a few months for more shots.

Well, that was a little aside. She's growing up so fast!

The lentil soup is in the crock pot cooking. We ended up not walking to the store. It was raining too much. Maybe tomorrow we will get to go on a nice walk...