Mommy Daughter Culture Day: Huntington Library

A few months ago I started doing regular Mommy Daughter Culture Days on Sundays with Hannah.  It was mid-December, I'd just figured out how to pump while driving (hands free bra and car adapter) and I was ready to stretch the pumping tether that had me staying close to home from the time Hannah had been born.  So we went to LACMA, where Hannah got a free kid's membership that entitles her to go to the museum free with an adult until she's 18 (yeah, I sniff out culture deals).

So that got us started on Mommy Daughter Culture Day.  It's a nice time for us to go do something special, it gives J a break at home, and it gives me a chance to go out and do stuff in my city that I wouldn't normally do.

Since that LACMA day in December she's been to the Norton Simon in Pasadena, the Getty, the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica, the Riverside Art Museum, and some other places which I now forget.

We welcomed Spring with a trip to the Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.  I've been wanting to go to the Huntington for ages - they have an amazing collection of old maps, and it seems like every time I look at a map in a history book, it's courtesy of the Huntington.

They have the most amazing gardens - 120 acres divided up into gardens from lots of different countries.  So there's a Shakespeare garden, an Australian garden, a Japanese garden (with a bamboo forest - amazing to hear the trees blowing in the wind), a Chinese garden, and a jungle garden.  Kind of reminded me of the first time I was ever at Longwood Gardens when I was about five or six, when we were walking around for what seemed like hours, and I thought I was going to die of thirst.

Anyway, that's just the grounds.  Then they have like three buildings full or art and old maps and other cool stuff.  I'm considering buying a membership so I can go more often - I can't imagine that I could ever get sick of that place.

A special highlight was that Hannah sat in grass for the first time ever.  Up here in the mountains we don't have much in the way of fresh grass, and anyway, it's been winter.  So she had a good time sitting in the grass, pulling on it, trying to eat it, etc.  And I had a good time trying to keep her from eating the grass, etc.