We heart outer space.

One of B's favorite books recently is Fancy Nancy Sees the Stars, about Fancy Nancy going to see a star show at the planetarium. So we very excitedly planned a trip to our local planetarium, Chabot Space and Science Center in the east bay. Since we were also going camping this week, we thought it was perfect timing to learn about stars.

Since our garden box project (more on that later) bled over from our Saturday to our Sunday, we didn't get as early a start as we would have liked. But we still had a couple hours to spend at the planetarium. We saw a show about the Mayans and how they learned about the stars and created calendars. We also saw an astronaut exhibit and Bill the Science Guy's conservation/green exhibit. And we got to see three large telescopes, which we hope to go back and look through at night some time.

space girl B

space daddy

J doing some space craft repairs

walking in some moon prints

ready to blast off

showing off her new book about space and her rock candy

planetarium: check!

J's newest assignment

J finished his work on Madagascar 3 a few weeks ago and is now on his second week working on the Sherman and Peabody project. Its very early days, so there isn't much to tell yet, but some of you may remember the characters from the old Bullwinkle and Rocky show. J's very happy about this new assignment. He's excited to be starting on a show so early in production; another way for him to stretch his skills and exercise his brain.

Here's a little blurb taken off comingsoon.net about the Mr. Sherman & Peabody movie:

Mr. Peabody & Sherman will be released on March 21, 2014. It is directed by Rob Minkoff (Stuart Little, The Lion King) and produced by Jason Clark (Monster House, Stuart Little) and Denise Nolan Cascino (Megamind). It is being written by Craig Wright (United States of Tara, Six Feet Under). Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, Bullwinkle Studio's Tiffany Ward and Classic Media's Eric Ellenbogen are serving as executive producers on the film, which stars two-time Academy Award® nominee Robert Downey Jr. Based on Jay Ward's classic cartoon, Mr. Peabody is the world's smartest person who happens to be a dog. He and his "pet" boy Sherman discover that someone has stolen their time traveling WABAC machine and is changing moments in history to disastrous and comical results. It's up to this most unexpected of father-son teams to somehow put a stop to this villain before his actions destroy the space-time continuum in Mr. Peabody & Sherman.

And here's the link to wikipedia's page on the characters.

Happy Anniversary to us!

Yesterday was our 7th wedding anniversary, but due to a number of factors we had decided to postpone any romantic outings in favor of some quality family time. On a whim we decided to go to Santa Cruz for the day. It was nice not to have any set plans and to just spend some time in one of our favorite places. There was a lot of traffic so we arrived very hungry and decided to hit up our favorite pizza place outside of Oregon, Woodstock Pizza. They even had a gluten free pizza crust, which was delicious!

After that we stopped by a few surf shops because J really (really, really) wants to surf and he's been using a borrowed board that doesn't seem to be a very good fit for him. We were lucky with the first shop we visited, Santa Cruz Surf and Skate; the manager there was very helpful. So armed with the knowledge of what J needed, we stopped by a couple other shops to see if we could find one...but no such luck. Now that we have something specific to look for we hope to find a good used board soon.

The manager at SC Surf and Skate had grown up in the area so he directed us to some beaches south of "Santa Cruz proper" where he said it would be less busy and more friendly. It still seemed pretty busy to us, but it was very cool to see some of Capitola, which was completely new to us. The downtown is adorable (although we only drove through) and we will definitely make a trip back that way again and stay a weekend (although we say that every time we day trip down there).

We got hot cocoas on the way home and made, what we thought was a genius decision to drive up HWY 1 to avoid all the traffic going back to the burbs. Unfortunately there was some road work being done along the way and we were stopped for awhile, but we played a rousing game of "I Spy" with the kids which was actually really fun because its the first time we could all play for reals.