More fun stuff

We've just been doing stuff like crazy over here lately.  This past thursday we nabbed our little nephew and went down to the Zimmer Childrens Museum, in Beverly HIlls.  It's a fun little museum in the Jewish Federation Center.  They had lots of dress up stuff, and they had a grocery store, a restaurant, an ambulance, a plane, and a bunch of other stuff.  At the grocery, they had matzo bread, which Ella had not seen before, so when we were at the store next we bought some for her, as well as some good old Foulds Macaroni, from Libertyville IL.  Then on Saturday there was an excellent party at Tom and Cici's house.  We made brigadeiro, the brazilian cany that we like, and Matt was there too.  There was some excellent pool playing, and ping pong as well.  Ella had her first sleep over, at her cousin Cody's house, which she was quite excited about.  A good time was had by all.  On Tuesday Ella and I met Matt at Nick and Paul's to go to lunch.  We went to a little italian place, which had amazing bread sticks, absolutely covered with minced garlic, olive oil and parmesan cheese.  Ella fell asleep right before we got there and was quite until Matt got there, but when he showed up she absolutely went nuts and was basically bouncing off the walls until we drove home.  Matt came home with us  and we went to the park, and played a bunch.  We didn't quite know how the sleeping arrangment was going to go at first, Ella thought that Matt could sleep in her princess bed and she would sleep in her dora bed.  She was quite insistent on sleeping in the same room as him, and wouldn't give up until it she could.    Matt left right before Ella woke up, and she was quite sad that she didn't get to say goodbye to him.  

   Tomorrow we are going shopping for a dress for Shelley and a suit for me.  Katie has been dropping a few hints, such as links to dress pages, and offers to shop for the dress for Shelley, so we figured it was about time to get off our duffs and get it done.  So don't worry Katie, we're on it. 

Yay Japan

1.  Cool thing in Little Tokyo

2.  Our cute Nephew

3.  Ella and her new favorite toy, Kiki, and her crazy smile.

Yesterday we set off for a Japan themed day with Nick and Paul.  We met at their house and went down to Little Tokyo and had a delicious lunch.  Shelley and I got some really good sushi, and Ella had the Orange Chicken, and then ate a lot of Nick's noodles.  We had gotten a lot of treats from Trader Joe's before we went down and we had the following things covered in chocolate;  peanut butter pretzels, macadamia nuts and edamame.  The edamame was kind of weird, but everything else was great.  After that we went to see an exhibit of Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist, at the Geffen Contemporary.  There was a lot of cool things that Ella really like a lot.   The artist did a lot of commercial stuff too, and we bought a stuffed animal for Ella, it's pink with three eyes and fangs.  She likes it a lot.  Afterward we went to a parenting seminar at Shooting Stars, which was very interesting.  Pictures are up on Picasa.

pictures

1&2.  At Venice Beach

3&4.  New braids.


Sorry about the lack of pictures.  While I was trying to do the blog last night, I couldn't actually open our page.  I could post, for some reason, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get onto our actual blog.  And the picture thing was acting really weird too.  But the pictures are up, some from before christmas that were on our old camera, and some new ones too.

New hair

So on thursday, our new day off together because Shelley switched her day off from tuesday to thursday, we wanted to get Ella's hair braided again like we had in Brazil.  We thought that the place to do this would be Venice Beach, because they always have wacky stuff like Henna and whatnot.  So we headed out after cleaning up during the morning, and got down there around 3 and walked around.  After walking up and down the beach we saw nobody that could do the braids, so we went to Santa Monica in search of dinner.  We stopped by one place that did hair, but they didn't do braids, so we parked and walked looking for dinner.  Keep in mind that Ella had been asking for dinner since before we left Venice, so she was asking why couldn't we eat there whenever we passed a restaurant.  Most of them were expensive, and we eventually went to Buca Di Beppo, which was really great.  We ate a ton of food, gnocchi and garlic bread and canoli's... good stuff.  So we got home without Ella's hair braided, and were kinda dissapointed.  We called up a place called Gumball Alley, or as Ella calls it Alley Gumdrop, the next morning and Shelley set up an appointment for 10:00.  They told us on the phone it would take an hour and cost $35, but by the time they were done, it was 12:00, Shelley was late for work, and they wanted to charge $100.  After some negotiations, the price was settled at $65, and we decided that we wouldn't go back there again.  But at least they did a really good job.