Stratford Family

I thought last June was crazy, but we took it to new heights this year! In one week we had 2 dress rehearsals, 2 dance recitals, 1 Kindergarten graduation, and hosted a 40th anniversary party for Greg’s parents. Whew! It all came out great and was super fun, but I’m glad we’re settling into a slower pace for summer!

This week still had lots of activity – P.Lou finished pre-school (insert tear from Mom), she’ll be doing a transitional Kindergarten next year. We also took some fun trips to the Aquarium and the LA Zoo, and most exciting we welcomed a new BABY into the family! Nephew/cousin Ryan!!!!

Here is a little photo run-down of all the happenings:

And onto the Anniversary party

Cheers to Allan and Nancy!

And Cheers to Summer!!

My body told me it was time to wake up at 2:30 AM, too bad I gone to sleep an hour and half earlier. After a bit of a work session from 2 to 4 in the morning, I was finally able to get back to sleep and get a few hours to make today tolerable. Jay & I had a breakfast in our hotel, and took walk around the block in Odessa which is pretty darn fascinating.

Irene and Alexi pick us up at our hotel at around 12:30pm and we headed to the Sigma Ukraine offices about 15 minutes away. Their offices are very impressive, with 3 to 4 teams working on several complex development projects. They make us of the space in a very efficient way, with lots of small to medium-size meeting areas, and some pretty good size rooms for teams of 5-6 people to work and collaborate. Coming from our offices, where we can’t seem to stop talking all over each other and interrupting each others conference calls, there’s something to be learned here.

We received our agenda, and are pretty much booked for every working hour between now and the end of day Monday. Some pretty impressive organization and a lot of things to cover for the project working on with them.

We headed off to lunch at a restaurant on top of the Luxury shopping center near victory Square in Odessa. The whole team enjoyed from this great rooftop perch. I had my first taste of Ukrainian borscht, which was quite good and lived up to the expectations, since I’ve been hearing about it since Jay’s trip last winter.

Back to the office for an afternoon full of meetings and reviewing details of the project.

Overall have been enjoying learning about the Ukrainian way of life & work. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but things seem much more European than I would’ve guessed. I guess that’s why we are in Eastern Europe. Duh. Lots of western amenities, good food and some great hosts are making this a great trip.

Off to dinner, at Tavernetta, near the city center. Good Italian faire, with great hosts Alexey, Alexander, Irene & Serge. I was introduced to the Ukrainian sport of Vodka. This pretty much sums it up for me: They measure it in grams, a unit of wieght, because it is a thing, not just a liquid.

Business has called myself and Jay to the Ukraine, for a week long trip to the city of Odessa.  We left for LAX around 11 AM, Jen was nice enough to get some lift to the airport. We boarded our Monday, 1:45pm flight over to Amsterdam on KLM. The 10 hour voyage turned out to be quite pleasant, due to Jay’s selecting of the emergency exit row, and the very friendly, very Dutch service.

Our layover in Amsterdam was four hours, which consisted of us checking out lounges in the airport, finding some good coffee, avoiding the smoke from the casino, and generally checking out my first bit of foreign soil in about a decade. We found the direct airport announcements to tardy travelers to be quite humorous - ”you are delaying the flight”

The delightful european/dutch tone  began to to get a bit more serious as we headed over to our Ukrainian International flight into Kiev. Jay & I both slept for couple hours on this flight (The crying babies didn’t even phase us).

We landed safely in Kiev and proceeded through my first customs experience in a while. Of course I promptly whipped out my camera, which drew serious ire from the security force.

We made the most of our 4 hours in the Kiev airport, exchanging some money, finding some pizza, trying to figure out how to get on our flight to Odessa. The Kiev airport, though definitely Ukrainian, was fairly nice and modern was a pretty good place to spend a few hours. Jay did a similar flight last February, and I could see how much more harrowing it was be to traveling alone & in the winter. It’s nice to have someone familiar with the suroundings & to speak English to. Everyone seems to know a bit of English, but I have a feeling our mileage may vary.

The flight to Odessa was running a bit late, but we made it safely and my favorite part was when the entire plane erupted in applause upon landing. Slightly odd, but hey. Irene, from Sigma Ukraine our development partner, was there to pick us up and take us to our hotel.

Sleep, well not so good, but that is life on the other side of the world.

Our little baby (nearly four and half!) learned how to ride a bike yesterday! She got the hang of it so quick, and by yesterday afternoon was taking fast turns and looping around the street like a maniac, much to her mother’s dismay. Now we need to working on the stopping and starting and we’ll be golden. Both of our girls learned to ride a bike with relative ease, as much as I would love to claim athletic genes, it is truly all in the training. They both spent well over a year cruising on the skuut balance bike learning to balance and coast. Of course some tricycle riding here and there helped with the peddling but they both got the hang of it in a matter of minutes and never had training wheels. No this post is not sponsored by skuut, but it did the trick for our girls!

So proud of little P. Lou

P started Gymnastics – do you think she likes it?

That was the after – this is the before:

Until now she has pretty much done all of the same activities as her sis and she LOVES it! Everyday she asks do I get to go to gymnastics today? So sweet.

We had a random impromptu photo extravaganza with some friends last week – the results are perfect. Such personality I may need to incorporate some of this madness into a photo session with clients – paint, flowers, each person do their own thing.

Maybe we should have broken out video to get these kids into the next Wes Anderson flick.

With my big adventure rapidly approaching we made Valentines a bit early, we decided to include little photos for the kiddos friends this year and put my Jonathan Adler Christmas present to use.

Happy Valentine’s Day Friends!!!

When Greg’s Dad said he wanted to go to LACMA for his birthday celebration we were all excited for the adventure. Yes we love museums, and were once good about making the rounds to a few each year when the girls were littler. These days with busy schedules we haven’t been enough. We went to specifically see the Metropolis II exhibit (don’t watch the video, I say see it live and it will be more fun) but the California Design: Living in a Modern Way exhibit was right up my alley too. We saw just a bit of the permanent collection and were off to Canter’s for an early dinner. I bought several of the Chocolate Danishes which were some of my favorite treats from childhood. My Mom grew up in LA and each time we would come down as a kids would would make a stop at one of the iconic Jewish delis for her to load up on some of her favorite baked goods (sadly Canter’s is one of the few left). It was a fun day and left me wanting more museum trips. Although I must say there is a certain terror that runs through me when I see my child dashing towards a Warhol, Rothko or Koons. I’m sure some damage has been done to some uber famous piece of art in one of these spaces – please don’t let that ever be my kid!!

LACMA runs a Nexgen Art program offering free membership for kids and we will sign up on our next trip.

Watching the cars start going is pretty cool – notice the blur below:

It got pretty crowded close to go time, you can watch from above and at ground level. In true LA fashion we had a star sighting – Jack Black was there taking photos with his iphone just like the rest of us.

Learning from Mr. Walt Disney

Really interested in learning about the Barbie dream house.

After several days of thinking I accidentally deleted these photos I found a stray memory card this morning – hooray! Last weekend we went to the Holiday How-down with Santa at the Rancho Los Alamitos. I had told several people earlier in the week how great the events at the Rancho had been and we were excited about the brunch with Santa. Overall it was a fun morning, but the Brunch part was a total bust! Greg literally waited in line for us for 2 hours to get 2 sub-par pancakes and sausage. Thankfully we spent the morning with some friends and they had lots of great crafts, games and activities to keep the kiddos entertained. The Santa experience was ok, but why on earth did Mrs. Claus have to be there with her sunglasses and slightly creepy lace gloves? The speckled light in which they had Santa in did not make for the best photo op, but my girls asked modestly for a dolly and jump rope and we avoided the drive to The Grove for a trip to Santa.

We are getting some use out of these dresses as seen on My Photo Site for our Christmas card pics.

Side note, in my head I read HOLIDAY how-down and for some reason decided to wear read suede wedges, I can’t believe I traipsed around that place for nearly four hours in heels and I didn’t even get one photo with me in it.

The Kindergarteners had a Thanksgiving feast today at school. Some dressed as pilgrams and others as Indians (I asked if the teacher said Native American and C said she called them Indians, so hopefully that is not un-PC). We spent some time yesterday preparing the Thanksgiving (aka veggie) stew, and they made cornbread and got to have a little picnic on the playground. It was all very cute and of course the kids loved it.

The got to choose their Native American name.

Her class:

You could call me a Halloween scrooge, it just isn’t my favorite holiday. I don’t have a moral stand against it or anything, but I don’t get all that excited about it either. I generally avoid the local Pa’s Pumpkin patch (aka the money pit) and just don’t drive that way this time of year. We haven’t been since Charlotte was about to turn 1, but when several of our friends planned a trip this week I conceded my despise for the place and took the girls. And you know what it wasn’t that bad, the missing tooth carney’s were at a minimum and if I go along with my short term memory woes and forget the money I spent for the tickets it was actually quite fun. We generally go down to Tanaka Farms for some more traditional and less commercialized Halloween fun on a true pumpkin patch and we still may make the trek down to Irvine if we can fit it in. Here are some pics from last year. As Ali said the light at Pa’s is pretty great, so if nothing else it may be worth the trip for some photos with the pumpkins.

After P was saddled up I realized this was her first pony ride.

Above our attempt at the ever elusive group photo!

Below one of my favorite photography subjects:

Fall is in full swing and both girls are loving their new classes. They both have amazing teachers and each has good friends in their classes. This week Charlotte was chosen to be the first star of the week for her class. She got to bring in a special thing each day and tell her class about it. She chose a new scarf and hat with minnie mouse ears that Aunt Katie had just brought back from Hong Kong, her trophy from the pine wood derby, a pillow pet, and yesterday she brought in her sister. It was so cute to watch them in front of a the class. She shared that her sister is special to her because we are family and they share a bunk bed. Today she brought her blankie that she has snuggled with every day of her life!

Here are some pics of them in class:

In other fall news the star of the week in the kitchen is Pumpkin whoopie pies from Baked

AMAZING!!

I got the fancy pumpkin shaped pan at Crate & Barrel

Soccer season is in full swing and although I was a little reluctant to embrace it, Charlotte loves it and we are all having fun cheering her on.