Home Run for Kids Walk/Run

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Patricia Zanuck

After our great experience last year at the Kids 4 Kids Walk/Run, we were easily persuaded to participate in another walk/run this past weekend. And this time, the whole family participated, not just Sonny and me! Doobie and Sonny’s school highly encouraged families to register. There was even a competition between grade levels to see which one had the greatest number of registrations.

And we felt we had a personal connection to this event’s cause which made it even easier to commit to participating. Home Run for Kids was organized by Upward Bound House, an organization whose mission is to “eliminate homelessness among families with children by providing housing, supportive services and advocacy”. Sonny’s third grade class went on a field trip to Family Place, one of UBH’s projects which is a transitional housing facility for homeless families. The third graders learned about homelessness and visited an apartment at the facility. Afterwards they encouraged the school community to bring in loose change to raise funds to furnish an apartment there. They even made Valentine cards to send to Family Place.

Over 200 members of our school community participated in Home Run for Kids. I think what made it especially attractive to some families was that there was a Kiddie K. Doobie was thrilled to be running in a race just for his age group. And apparently, many other kindergartners felt the same way since Kindergarten won the school competition for the most registrations!

The boys in blue t-shirts running alongside their daddy in black as he approaches the finish line for the 10K

I have to say, the Kiddie K was the highlight of the event for me. Doobie had cheered his daddy on as he finished his 10K and watched Sonny and me complete our 5Ks. Finally, it was his turn. Continue reading →

Inspirations to Get Out

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Patricia Zanuck

As a family, we try to make good use of our free weekend time together. These days, however, with both boys the ages they are and the interests they have in team sports year round, we always seem to have sports games one day of the weekend if not both! But when we can, we’re eager to get out and do something. It might be visiting a new place or a favorite from long ago, or attending a seasonal or cultural activity or special event.

With that said, it is easy to just end up lounging at home. The brothers generally play well together and we enjoy watching them spend time together. What helps us get motivated and out the door are some “family challenges” we have. We find lists of suggested activities and we set out to complete them. Currently, we have three lists that provide tons of inspiration for our excursions:

100 Things to Do in LA with Kids by MommyPoppins Los Angeles

MommyPoppins 100 Things to Do With Kids in LA

This is Mommy Poppins Los Angeles’ bucket list “of must-do activities for LA kids.” It covers just about every kind of activity imaginable: hikes, amusement parks, museums, aquariums, and festivals, just to name a few. And the list also provides inspiration to visit various places in the Los Angeles area: Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Malibu, Griffith Park, Catalina Island, downtown, beaches, and many other places. Some activities are definitely more easily accomplished than others.

18 hikes in Best Easy Day Hikes: West Los Angeles by Bryn Fox

This hiking guide provides descriptions and maps for 18 hikes that are easily reachable from the West LA area. It is not specifically meant for kids, but since they are described as “easy”, we thought it would work well as a guide for hiking with kids. One feature I particularly like about the book is that it has a list of best hikes for beach/coast lovers, waterfalls, children, swimming holes, views, geology lovers, and nature lovers. We can choose a hike based on an area we want to visit or the kind of hike we want to experience.

6 geocaches in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area ParkCaching Program

We discovered this challenge quite by accident. I had picked out the Solstice Canyon hike from Best Easy Day Hikes: West Los Angeles, but got my canyons mixed up when looking at a satellite map to see if we could add some geocaching to the hike. I thought we were headed to a canyon with tons of geocaches. Once we parked, we quickly learned that the geocache-filled canyon was not Solstice Canyon, but the one right next to it. It ended up being a lovely hike to a waterfall and ruins of an historic home with amazing views, but it only had one geocache for us to find. That geocache, however, turned out to be one of six in a series put out by someone working in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. At each cache, you can pick up a collector’s card; and in the end, all six cards complete a puzzle. The quest for these remaining geocaches will take us to various places in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area: the Visitor Center in Thousand Oaks, Paramount Ranch, Satwiwa Native American Indian Culture Center, Circle X Ranch, and Cheeseboro/Palo Comado Canyons, all places I’m totally unfamiliar with and eager to explore.

Does your family have any kind of checklist of activities that serves as an inspiration to get out?

Our crazy sports schedule!

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Patricia Zanuck

Slowly but surely, we’ve become a family with a crazy after-school sports schedule. Five days a week we find ourselves preparing for some kind of sports activity. Currently, we even have two activities on Saturdays.

But it wasn’t always like that and I always thought we’d never be a family with such a busy extra-curricular schedule. It all started so innocently and calmly. At age 2, Sonny began playing soccer with Coach Mark. It was only for an hour once a week on Saturday mornings. I was pregnant with Doobie so Daddy usually took him alone and often they hung out at the park with another dad and son afterwards.

For a long time, Doobie just tagged along to Sonny’s sports activities, whether it was just a general sports class or practice and games with a team. But it was only one sport each season. It was very manageable (except that some of the seasons were across town in Brentwood or Pacific Palisades which was a bit inconvenient with what LA traffic can be).

Then it was time for Doobie to play his own sports. It started at age 3 with soccer classes once a week with Coach Milton. Then he wanted to play on teams like his big brother. Soon both boys were each on a team each season. This was when we realized how important it was to stay close to home for sports teams, otherwise we’d be spending too much time commuting. Our local recreaction center became a life saver. Continue reading →

Geocaching Party at Will Rogers Park

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Patricia Zanuck

One of my favorite activities is geocaching. I can be a bit fanatical about it, as described here when we scramble to be “first to find” a new geocache in our neighborhood. For those of you who don’t know what it is, geocaching is high-tech treasure hunting. We use our iPhone to seek out containers of all sizes (from ones the size of your pinkie fingertip to huge boxes, see pictures below) in various locations (from within our neighborhood to across the world, in great urban sprawls or deep in the wilderness).

: Very micro cache with rolled up log

: Micro cache

: Very large cache!

Sometimes we just sign the log and replace it. Other times we also trade trinkets or we may pick up or leave a travel bug or geocoin. Then we go online and share our experiences with the geocaching community. It’s a great family activity. It adds some fun and excitement to what could otherwise just be a “boring” outing according to the kids. It also often brings us to places we would otherwise not have visited or even known about.

This past weekend a friend and I had the opportunity to introduce geocaching to a few families from our school. We planned the event at Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades. It’s the perfect setting for such an activity. In the middle of our urban sprawl is this beautiful escape into the wilderness. Continue reading →

Kon-Tiki at the Scandinavian Film Festival LA 2013

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Patricia Zanuck

SFFLA program cover The Scandinavian Film Festival LA is one of my favorite local Scandinavian events. I’m always eager to see what Norwegian films will be screened at the annual festival and I look forward to absorbing myself in my native language.

Usually, I need to run the list of films by my parents who live in Norway to see which ones they recommend, but this year there was no need for that. I had heard about the movie Kon-Tiki long before I saw it would be at the festival. It had been nominated for a Golden Globe and had made the short list for an Academy Award nomination (and then did become one of five films nominated). Kind of exciting that a Norwegian film gets that kind of recognition. Also, I’m familiar with the topic. I’ve visited the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo several times. I’ve taken out-of-town guests and also my own kids. I certainly wanted to see the Norwegian film that had made it this far in the film world and was now so close to home. Continue reading →

Family Hike: Hollywood Sign

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Patricia Zanuck

I was inspired by the suggestion of the California State Parks Foundation to explore more California state parks in the new year and then I came across the First Day Hikes initiative… So I suggested a family hike for New Years Day. We made plans to explore Griffith Park and the Hollywood Sign, an area I’ve been eager to hike for a long time. (It turns out the First Day Hikes initiative is actually guided hikes in certain state parks around the country, but hey, we were going out to a park in our state on the first day of the year, good enough for us.)

Our goal ahead!

I had two goals for us on our outing — to make it above and behind the Hollywood Sign and also to find possibly five geocaches that I’d picked out in the area. Neither goal was accomplished unfortunately, but it was still a fantastic outing, one that I want to try again now that I know the lay of the land. Continue reading →

Christmas in Los Angeles

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Patricia Zanuck

I’ve lived in Los Angeles just over 18 years so I’m finally getting used to celebrating Christmas dressed in short sleeves and surrounded by palm trees. While living here, we’ve had the occasional cold and snowy Christmas in Idaho with Hubby’s family or in Connecticut with my sister and her family, but more often than not, we’ve been in warm and green Los Angeles.

Our family advent calendar

Now that we’re a family, we’ve got a good little thing going with a family advent calendar that helps us prepare for the holiday and get in the Christmas spirit. Every day the boys open a box and pull out a slip of paper with an activity for the day. Slowly but surely, a picture reveals itself as they replace the box backwards. Some activities are totally related to Christmas, like decorating the Christmas tree, reading Christmas stories by the fireplace, visiting Santa, and watching a Christmas movie. Others are just activities to help us feel like it’s winter, like making paper snowflakes to hang in the windows, enjoying hot chocolate with all the fixings (marshmallows and candy canes), and making s’mores by the fireplace. And then there are the activities that are just special family times, such as having breakfast for dinner, having a picnic dinner in the family room (after the tree is decorated), and having a family game night with special treats (this year with chocolates and “seigmenn med nisseluer” (jelly men with Santa hats) thanks to my aunt!). Continue reading →

Norwegian Church’s Christmas Bazaar (2012)

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Patricia Zanuck

Thanksgiving hadn’t even passed yet, and we attended our first Christmas event. Every year the weekend before Thanksgiving, The Norwegian Church in San Pedro hosts their annual Christmas Bazaar. It’s an opportunity to not only support the church by buying handmade goods and Scandinavian products, but also to remind Sonny and Doobie of some of the unique qualities of their heritage. Christmas is a special time in Norway and the church certainly recreates some of that.

The kids were a bit reluctant to go. It is a 30-minute drive away on the freeway (assuming no traffic) and they were happily and lazily enjoying their first days of Thanksgiving vacation at home. The promise of Solo and waffles did help get them motivated to go, however. I also told them they could help pick out something special to bring back home.

The bazaar is nothing super big and fancy, but it is very cozy and joyful. We were warmly welcomed with hot gløgg and gingerbread cookies in the entryway which was decorated with a Christmas tree. Just beyond that, we could see the Christmas lights on the booths and hear Christmas music playing. Right away the Christmas spirit came over us. Continue reading →

Stand Up Paddleboarding in Malibu

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Patricia Zanuck

Earlier this month I got to try something for the first time that I’ve had my eye on for a long time… stand up paddleboarding! Doobie and I were invited to join friends at their beach house in Malibu. Sonny was off to an event with his dad so we seized the opportunity, especially given that it was supposed to be a beautiful summerlike day… in November!

And it was a gorgeous beach day. It felt like we were on vacation at some faraway vacation destination. We had clear blue skies, warm sun with temperatures in the 80s, no wind, a totally still ocean. We wore sun block and beach hats. It was the middle of fall and it was nothing like any beach day we had experienced during the summer when I was usually huddled under a towel trying to enjoy myself. Continue reading →

Presidential Election 2012

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Patricia Zanuck

It was an exciting day on Tuesday, November 6, not because we were eagerly awaiting the results of an election that would determine the president for the next four years, but because of how excited the kids were to be involved in the process. I am unable to vote, but my husband made sure to take the kids with him to the polls when he went so they could see first-hand how it’s done. Then we all watched TV as the results came in. Continue reading →

A Viking in LA

All things Scandinavian through books, films, and events in the Los Angeles area and virtually

Home Run for Kids Walk/Run

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Inspirations to Get Out

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Our crazy sports schedule!

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Geocaching Party at Will Rogers Park

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Kon-Tiki at the Scandinavian Film Festival LA 2013

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Family Hike: Hollywood Sign

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Christmas in Los Angeles

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Norwegian Church’s Christmas Bazaar (2012)

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Stand Up Paddleboarding in Malibu

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Presidential Election 2012

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