Amelia's prayer, and marker #534

I'd like to open this blog entry with a prayer. Specifically, I'd like to share Amelia's meal time prayer with all of you:

"Bless my mommy and my daddy,
both so dear to me.
Help me, through the coming day,
a loving child to be. Amen."

Amelia's prayer is great, and she's been reciting it at dinner time for a few days now. After she recited her prayer on Saturday, Diana followed with a prayer of her own:

"Once upon a time,
there was a little bit of Jesus,
and a lot of broccoli."

You can't make this stuff up.

Honestly though, Diana's prayer was sweet and she mentioned both the most important prayer recipient (Jesus) and the healthiest choice on her plate (broccoli). But, on to the blog and the events of the day...

Today the girls and I hit the road hoping to make a little cash by selling used baby clothes at Once Upon a Child. In the off chance that no one would be available to purchase my fine collection, I found a historical marker to visit nearby.

I spent quite a bit of time this morning sorting baby clothes into piles. If the clothes had any stains or showed any sign of wear, they were culled from the pack. When I left my house I left with five grocery bags completely full of clothes for little girls ages newborn to twelve months. When I left Once Upon a Child I left with a used DVD (Pooh's Heffalump Halloween), a check for $27.00, and five almost completely full bags of baby clothes. According to one of the women who had reviewed my bundle, many of my clothes were rejected because they weren't the current style.

You can't make this stuff up.

I guess it was a good thing that I had also planned to visit the Vaca-Pena Adobe. The adobe was relatively easy to find. It wasn't as big or exciting as the Petaluma Adobe - the doors were locked and the museum was closed - but the girls enjoyed the visit. Most importantly, I got a photograph of the girls in front of California State Historical Marker #534.

(I've basically given up on having the girls pose for these photographs. As long as they're in the shot, I guess that's what matters.)

The area around the adobe wasn't especially well maintained. The park had a small pond that was completely green with algae and contained a discarded plastic orange chair, as an example. The park also had a public restroom, but maintenance personnel locked its door sometime between our arrival and the point when we actually needed to use the bathroom. But the grounds had pamphlets available and with the guide I found the "second oldest orange tree in California" and a great shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Next door to the park was a strange sight. An old amusement park for children sat behind a chain-linked fence, falling into ever worse disrepair. The park's owners lived on the property and it had several notices reminding folks to KEEP OUT. Beyond the chain link fence were some cute ponies, who probably used to give little girls rides, an old go-cart track, and a drained lagoon with a bizarrely twisted stairway that likely used to lead kids across the pond and into waiting boats. Very odd to see a place like that looking such a wreck.

Despite the strange imagery of it all, or maybe because of it, this was certainly one of my favorite stops so far. The girls loved the ponies and made a fun game out of rolling pine cones across the empty parking lot. These pine cones were very compact and sounded almost like rocks when they hit the pavement. I mention this because at the end of our trip, poor Diana threw one up in the air and it came down right on top of her head. I felt terrible for the poor girl when she started to cry.

She's fine, of course, but I guess that shows just how dangerous pine cones (and the natural world in general) can be.

Lisa