Getting Into the Groove...

We've been here in Silverlake for a week now, and have been settling in nicely. It's a great location, in a fun, relaxed area of the city. We have been exploring - mostly on foot - and have found some great little places to hang out.

We have found the Saturday Sunset Junction Farmers Market, and sipped coffee with the hipsters at Intelligentsia. We have found a few great looking second-hand kids clothing stores, and done a spot of shopping at the stunning kids shoe store, Wee Souls. The folks at Trader Joe's seem to be recognizing us now, and Jake now recognises the way to Shane's Inspirational Playground at Griffith Park. We have taken a ride on the train at Traveltown, and even connected with the LA Crunchy Parents group and hiked to the Griffith Park Observatory. Not too bad for a week, huh?

Today we took ourselves out to run errands and walked over to Vermont and the bustling shops of Los Feliz. We stopped in at the bank, took care of some business, and then had a browse at Starlight Books. It's a fantastic independent bookstore in the funky heart of Los Feliz. It has a great kids section and Jacob was soon pulling books down and asking to read them. We ended up buying a cute little book about African animals which came with it's very own menagerie; a lion, a giraffe, a mandrill, a zebra, an elephant, a rhino, a python, a chameleon (!), and a crocodile. We then retired to the Coffee Bean on Hillhurst and got to know our animals better over a shared bagel with cream cheese, a frothy milk for him, and an ice-blended mocha for me. Yummy!

We also found that there are "Mommy & Me" movies at the local theatre on Wednesdays!

The best thing was that when we got home Daddy was at the office in Auckland and signed in on Skype! SO nice to talk to him and see him. He's been in Australia for the last 10 or so days and so we have had to rely on e-mail and occasional Facebook chats. Jacob was delighted to see him and they had fun playing with each other via the cam.

While nothing ever makes up for being apart, Skype does help some...