Winner Winner Winner!!

These are the happy faces of Cora and her theatre classmates who had a great day at the Hart District Theater Festival on Friday. 

This was the first time for most of these kids to participate in this competition, which included all seven district high schools. It was a long day, and took place when we had that huge 7-inch rainstorm. 

Cora took part in two big acts - she was one of the ex-wives of Henry VIII in a musical number from Six. These girls took home the Best Supporting Actor award, and second place for overall musical number.

And, more importantly for us, Cora WON Best Supporting Actor for her role as Jaques in a scene from As You Like It. In this scene, she has the iconic "All the World's a Stage" monologue. She killed it! We are so, so proud of her. 

Art

More artwork from my talented girls.

Violet is a girl who always has a sketchbook with her, and often her travel watercolors as well. 
 

Logan asked Cora to paint this set of figures for him, and she was happy to oblige. Her attention to detail is superb - these are SO tiny.

I got something big done regarding my "art," my writing. I decided to finally take the time and work on the rest of the blog books, and they've now all arrived. I'm actually up to date on publishing blog books! 

Snow, Downpours and Rainbows

It's not very often we see snow flurries on our weather app! Sadly, we didn't get any snow at our house, only rain and a bit of hail. But nearby, lots of our friends and family did get flurries!

The snow level fell pretty low, where the lower hills got a dusting that "stuck" for a couple of days. This is a hill above Sylmar, near Granada Hills when I was taking Cora to Logan's house for D&D. 

I believe this was a heavy hail on the wood chips near the mall.

Incredibly, we got about seven inches of rain in 24 hours. Good thing we have all those usually dry river beds around town. Definitely don't want to be hearing about water restrictions or drought this year! We've received way more than our 17 inch yearly average of rain, and the season isn't over yet.

Stace, Violet and I went on a drive and spotted this snow in Placerita Canyon - this is by the Waterfall Trail. Would have been pretty cool to hike back there but it was super muddy and COLD, obviously!

Placerita Canyon

We've spotted some gorgeous rainbows lately!

Poppy Pleasure

Violet asked if we could go to see the blooming poppies with Liana. Colleen was aware of some pretty areas in Castaic, so we met up with them on Monday, a day off from school for the girls for President's Day.  At one spot, we saw a couple of killdeer running around! Unusual and pretty birds for us in our area.

We found some! Not far from here, we saw a little group of seven deer! And quail as well.

To cap off the fun, we stopped by Foster's Freeze, the last one in our area and scheduled to close soon because they're losing their lease. I love chocolate-dipped ice cream cones, which are hard to find.

I promise, Violet does smile in real life.
 

Violet Fun

While I was babysitting Ellie on Friday, Grandpa took Violet to her mounted archery lesson. 

We always appreciate it when Grandpa brings his good cameras out!

And on Sunday, Violet went with them on a whale watch, as her Christmas gift. They saw hundreds of dolphins and they even saw a whale!
 

Sunday Stream Adventures

 

Nick and Melanie brought Ellie up on Sunday so they could see the new Marvel movie. Stace and I took her to Placerita Nature Center for the first time, where we walked through the center and then had a walk and stream adventure.

"Come on, Auntie Lisa!"

Uncle Stace helped her walk across the stream on the rocks. So fun!

Eloise had a lot of fun throwing sticks and watching them float away, and throwing rocks and watching them splash.

When we got home, Cora and I took Ellie to our little park. 

Week in Review

Hart's girls and boys soccer teams have been VERY good this year, both winning league easily and moving forward through the playoffs. Stace had wanted to watch the boys team, but they normally play during the week at 3 p.m. 

On Saturday, the boys team had a playoff game at Hart, so we went over and watched half of it. It was exciting, ending with a Hart win in penalty kicks!

And I got to see my friend Dinorah, whose son is on the team. 

Our front ornamental pear tree is blooming beautifully right now!

On Friday, I babysat Ellie on Friday afternoon and took her to their nearby park, where she went up and down this slide over and over. She's getting to be such a big, strong girl!

After Nick and Melanie were able to get out for a couple of hours, Melanie took me (and Ellie) out for a belated birthday treat. We ate very well at a Spanish tapas place and the beautiful Americana shopping center.

On Saturday night, JT and Jim and the kids met us at Vasquez Rocks, where the local astronomy club was there with an event with the big telescopes to see the night sky. It was cold but an interesting experience together. We then stopped at McDonalds for a treat before going our separate ways.
 

Winter/spring are the prettiest here. Violet and Liana took these from our hill.

For Valentine's Day, Stace and I met up at lunchtime and got a special heart-day coffee drink at one of my favorite coffee places, Havana Savannah. 

Celebrations

 Cora and a few of her friends celebrated her birthday on Saturday with an escape room and lunch, while we got together with family on Sunday.

The group managed to escape from "The Hideout" with 9 minutes to spare - pretty darn good! 

We then went to Vincenzos a block up the road for lunch. 

There was lots of laughter! 

After lunch, I took Cora and Logan to his house for D&D, as he is the Dungeon Master for their long-running Curse of Strahd campaign.

The preteens had their own table.

On Sunday afternoon, we met up at MB2/Mountasia with Grandma, Grandpa, Ellie and Mel (Nick was working).

Cora and Stace had another epic battle of axe-throwing. 

And we had a round on the go-karts, while Ellie and Mel and the grandparents played mini golf.