Here’s some photos from today’s Literacy Parade (read: Halloween parade) for Pre-K.
Holidays
15
Oct 08
Halloween
When we moved to California, I attended school in the Rowland Heights School District. This was back in the 80s, so things were a little more lax back then. On Halloween, the students would dress up and in elementary school, there’d be a parade. The kindergarteners would start it walking through and picking up the first graders, then on to second grade, etc. I didn’t think much about it until I moved to Hollywood. I noticed that the kids at Fairfax High didn’t dress up for Halloween. It was strange to me, but became normal in my 8 years living of Melrose Ave. When we moved to El Sereno, I expected to see the students celebrate Halloween, but noted that last year, they did not.
At this point, I had just assumed that the LAUSD does not encourage dressing up. I can’t say I blame them. With all the ridiculously inappropriate and racially offensive costumes out there, it would probably be best for the kids to focus on their education. So it was with great interest I read the paper that came home with my kindergartener the other day.
In lieu of a Halloween parade, her school is having a Literacy Parade. The students are encourage to dress as a character from a book. Horror characters are not allowed. To make this all homework-y, the students also have to create a poster or bookcover of the book to carry with them during the parade. Somehow, we parents of kindergarteners are off the hook for finding a character, they’re doing 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. The kids will all wear little monkey ears and tails. My daughter tells me they’re going to recite the story in English and Spanish.
I can’t wait to take pictures.
10
May 08
National Clean Your Room Day
Um…I didn’t.
Those are my clothes. My husband has a few clothes in there too, but that stuff has been sitting there for way too long. I won’t say, but let’s just say some birthdays have passed. Geesh. The luggage you see is from YearlyKos. I should probably unpack that since it’s been sitting there since August. I’m not going to share the other half of our room. There’s still paint sitting on my dresser from when we moved in. One of these days, I will finish painting that corner.
26
Dec 07
Las Posadas – Olvera St.
I had never seen Las Posadas before and I thought the kids would be fascinated.
First off, let me address the City of LA…Yeah, in regards to parking near Olvera St. Would it be possible to have something affordable? And know-it-alls, it was $14 to park at Union Station, so don’t tell me to walk. YesmI should have gone with my original plan of taking the train from So. Pasadena over there, but we were running late and if we had, we would have missed everything. Besides, even if we snagged a spot in the full lots ($6), then it would actually cost us more to take the bus/train. So that’s that…better parking near Olvera St.
Okay, so we got there a little late. We missed all the dancers. The Folklorico dancers were cleaning up when we got there. 
Ilia loves Folklorico dancers. I did find out that the bandstand gets turned into a HUGE nativity scene:
Nativity scenes freak me out. Much like clowns or mimes for some people…that’s nativity scenes for me. The bigger and more life-like, the weirder I feel…I find them kind of sacrilegious. Don’t ask me why. At any rate, I must admit that was impressive. The level of detail in the entire scene is awesome. I snapped quite a few photos from different angles, but haven’t uploaded them.
No one could explain to me who these people were and what they did. I’m like, “Why are you taking pictures of them?” “Because they’re posing.” Oy.
And just like in the Bible there were burros and Santa:
Okay, I’m being snarky. The Santa was pretty funny, he was probably like 20 and most kids were hep to what was going on. We were walking behind a dad and his two girls and one of the little girls said, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and the Santa looking up and Ho’d back at her, she then said, “Ho? HoHoHOHo?” The dad turned and looked at her like she lost her mind, me and Santa are laughing and I said, “Oh great! Your daughter speaks Santa.” Some other guy said, “Yeah, you should be so proud of her being bilingual. Do you call her The Santa Whisperer?”
I already mentioned in a previous post how I had never seen the Church before. We walked around a bit and came up this:
Thousands and thousands of flowers and candles. All that vegetative stuff there? Those are bouquets.
A different viewpoint:
All that on floor are candles. I guess they take them out the church at the end of the day. There were 6 altars (is that the right word?) full of candles in the church courtyard. I was trying to explain this whole thing to Ilia, but I’m not Catholic or Mexican, so it was sketchy at best, pulling from what I remember friends telling me. DH was useless, as every answer was, “How the hell am I supposed to know? I just went to Catholic schools!” Yes, from elementary school through college. You’d think he’d picked up something.
The candlelight procession started at 7:30, so we used the extra time to window shop. Man, I found a bunch of stuff I really, really want and it was dirt cheap. There was a poncho that I just adored. $20. A mask that I seen selling for $85 in a shop over on La Brea was $13 here. But wait! The procession is beginning!
Pretty neat, huh?
24
Nov 07
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Happy Thanksgiving!, originally uploaded by fabooj.
Ilia’s been begging me to wear that dress forever, so finally she got her 3rd chance to wear it. She just loved it. For some reason, I don’t have dressy clothes for Alton, so we had to make do. Don’t ask me about her pose. When I asked her, she said, “So I look pretty in the pictures.”
Adrian took the kids down to see his mom, while I stayed home and fixed up the kids room. That was nice. I’d rather have been in Kansas City, but anything that keeps me out of Orange County on Thanksgiving is ideal.
After they got back (way too soon!), we went to S & T’s for dinner. I left my camera, but A took pics so hopefully he’ll get them to us. The food was good, even though I was stuck with a drumstick. I had to chastise S over the use of walnuts, but we’re happy that she’s stop using chestnuts on everything. At any rate, due to the fact that certain people who I detest weren’t at S & T’s, it was very nice to be there. I have to say that not being in the courtyard was much nicer, even though I couldn’t drink as much as I wanted. 
11
Nov 07
Thanksgiving decorations?
Last week, coming home after The Getty, I saw that the people down the street had a HUGE inflatable turkey on their front lawn. You read that? A huge inflatable turkey. Dressed like a pilgrim.
Are we so lacking in decorative holidays that it’s come to this? Really. Isn’t it enough that they have enough ceramic bunnies out there, that they could open a museum? Some people keep their Christmas decorations up into February and people are not only making, but selling inflatable pilgrim turkeys?
I’ll try to get a picture of the house. Usually, I wouldn’t be so shy, but in order to get a good shot, I’ll have to stand in the middle of the street, as they live perpendicular to my street. I don’t know if I want to go there yet.
UPDATE: I just saw that some moron asked on Yahoo! Answers: if someone knew where they could get a 4′ inflatable lawn Thanksgiving balloon.
Yep. Someone was actually looking for this crap.
2
Nov 07
Preschool Halloween Parade
Yesterday, Ilia and Alton’s school had a Halloween parade. I guess it’s official official…I’m a parent. 
All the kids came out and most of them kept their costumes on before the parade started. There were more than a few freaked out by the whole thing. All the kids in Alton’s class loved his costume and kept playing with the tail and touching the mane. One little kid like it so much, he just lost it and screamed, “I love you Alton!” and thing hugged the boy to death.
Here’s some pics. Bear with me. Somehow, I forgot my camera and had to use my phone:
The beginning of the parade. Ilia’s class went first.
Alton saw Ilia and went to be with her. His class went last, since they were the youngest.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNnfuBCDmkc&rel=1]
Here’s a crappy video of the kids. During the parade they sang Halloween songs, but not all of them did it and there wasn’t much enthusiasm for it. You see Alton is next to me. They went around twice before he noticed me. When he saw me, he made a break for it. We marched with his class.
Alton could not get over the kid dressed like a vampire. He had fangs and blood and Alton wasn’t having it.
There were a million parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc there. I got to meet other parents. Oooh boy…some of them…wow! There was one lady there, that I swear used to be a porn star. There was this other couple, there were dressed like a total “power couple” and I totally see where their kid learned to be so damn annoying. One big difference from my old neighborhood, at least I’m in the average age among the parents. Living in Hollywood where most of the moms were 15 – 20 years old than me was weird.