Passover 2012

In April, the Lubang and Lubrettsky clans descended upon New York for another Passover. Unfortunately it was on a Saturday this year, and Aunt Elaine couldn't be with us because of the Sabbath, but Ken Gross did a fantastic job. And of course, more and more each year, it is turning into a pure kid-fest.

Here are the young ones taking advantage of poor Uncle Ken:



Another small video of Aaron and Cecilia horsing around:



The full pictures can be found here, but I've pasted a few select ones.

Ready for the Seder:



Reading the Haggadah:

The kids:

No wonder Cecilia was so loopy that night...

All dressed up

First dentist visit

We took Cecilia to the dentist for the first time last month, and she was a champ! Opened her mouth for the dentist nicely, wasn't scared, no crying. She sat through the counting and inspection, the cleaning, flossing, and even the polishing. What an amazing little girl we have.

It doesn't hurt that the pediatric dentist is awesome, and that she's read a particular Dora book about going to the dentist about a million times...

Los Angeles! Just hanging around

The various things we did in LA were very fun (and a little exhausting). Some of the best moments just happened in our hotel rooms. Cecilia found that she could jump from one bed to the next, so she spent at least an hour doing that:



Here she is giving a massage. So sweet.



And here we are waking Cecilia up after a particularly tiring day and late night at Disneyland. I just think it's super cute:

Los Angeles! Santa Monica

Another day during our LA vacation, we went to Santa Monica Beach and Pier. It's a famous (or infamous) touristy beach and boardwalk, with all the required touristy shops and seafood restaurants. There is an arcade with some really dinky little kid rides, as well as a boardwalk carnival area with bigger rides that Cecilia enjoyed of course:



The view from the ferris wheel was gorgeous:

The beach is also fantastic, with great sand and a lot of space. It wasn't totally warm, but we still had a lot of fun running around trying to get each other and chase the birds:

We ended the day with what was probably our 4th trip to Sam Woo in Monterey Park - a 45 minute drive away, but some of the best chinese food ever.

Los Angeles! Disneyland

If you go to Los Angeles, and you have kids (or even if not), you must go to Disneyland... We went for a total of two days, nicely spaced apart by a couple days to allow us some recovery time. Everyone had a great time, especially Cecilia. And probably Karen. Again, here is the link to the full set of pictures for our LA trip, including Disneyland.

Some of the most memorable parts of Disneyland included the main street parade, where a lot of the well-known characters go by on floats. Now Cecilia is at the age where she knows and recognizes a lot of these characters, including all the Mickey characters (Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, Pluto, etc), Simba from the Lion King, Cinderella, Snow White, the Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. We watched this parade twice, once on each day. The song is actually very very catchy and I find myself humming it every once in a while (embarrassingly).



Another thing she really liked was the light and water show at the end of the night. This was usually around 9 or 9:30pm, and she would be exhausted, but would perk right up for the show and be really excited. We watched this twice as well.Watch out, this video happens to be pretty long as it includes parts of the show:



We also went to Toontown, where she got to hug Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.
  

She really liked this funny piano that made weird noises in Minnie's house, and spent a long time in this playground in Toontown, climbing on this slide over and over and over:



And of course, she very much enjoyed the rides. We went on countless rides, but she still remembers Snow White (she was really really into that particular book at the time). Here are a few videos/pictures of the rides we went on.

Dumbo ride, always a favorite:



It's a Small World, which was probably Daddy's favorite. We sing this song all the time now:



Autopia, where she got to drive a car all by herself! I think Daddy had to press on the gas peddle. Daddy actually sounds a little scared during the ride... perhaps a preview of the teenager years...



The carousel:



And finally, there was this really cool canoe ride, where we all got oars and life jackets, including Cecilia! And we had to paddle all the way around this circular river. We were so proud of Cecilia - she helped paddle and didn't lose her oar!



At the end of the trip, Daddy was 100% converted from not really liking anything Disney, to think it's the most magical place on earth. At least for his little girl. :)

Los Angeles! Museums

We spent the last week in March with the Jang family in LA on a family vacation. We did soooo many things, including visiting several different museums. One of them was the La Brea Tar Pits Museum.



There was an animated display of a sabertooth tiger attacking a woolly mammoth. Cecilia was a little scared of it at first, but couldn't stop watching it. She must have watched it for 20 minutes or so:



We also went to Huntington Gardens, where we had a lot of fun walking around first:





And then, because we had spent a grueling time the day before at Disneyland (more on that in another post), relaxing on the lush lawn:






This relaxation session actually ended with Cecilia sprinting around, crawling over or under all of our bodies lying in the grass, as if it were an obstacle course. I got a few great pics at Huntington, including a very nice family picture.





Finally, after yet another grueling day at Disneyland, we also went to the Natural History Museum:



The museum was very near USC, and the grounds surrounding the museum were very nice.





Cecilia especially enjoyed the fountain in the middle of the rose garden.

 It was nice to relax in the sun for a bit, although Bruce may have gotten a bit of a rude awakening at one point:



The full set of pictures from our entire vacation can be found here, and I will post separately about other events soon!