Lazy Days

This is the beautiful Mission Santa Barbara, the 10th of the 21 missions founded by the Franciscan Fathers in the mid-to-late 1700s.  People think it was founded by Father Junipero Serra, but he actually died two years before the mission opened.

I was remembering back 10 years or so when Steve was still traveling around the place giving his "what it's like to live with AIDS" lecture on college campuses.  I traveled with him sometimes, and when he came to Santa Barbara, I came along.  We had an afternoon free and so we went up to the Mission to look around.  We didn't take a tour because it cost money (so we didn't go inside the place), but we sat on a bench on the porch of the mission building and Steve looked out over the beautiful grounds and said something along the line of "So this is where the Catholics tried to destroy Native American culture, huh?"

I posted that to Facebook today and got an indignant reply from my friend Roy Spicer, who has been the choir director there for many years.  He wrote "You'll be happy to know the Indian culture is alive and well, Bev." Yes, I am happy to know that, especially after reading "Ramona" earlier this year.

We went to the mission to restock my supply of Santa Barbara postcards.  I knew the mission had the cheapest cards I had found in town.

Nowadays, the Mission is catering to the tourists, as witness this, which stands just outside the door to the museum gift shop:

It is appropriately labeled...

Of course who would be so silly as to stand at one of those cut-outs in front of such a sacred place of worship...?

We were having a lazy day today.  We hung around the house till about 12:30 and then went out in search of food.  Alice Nan had recommended a Chinese place...

which was delicious.  We had the lunch special, which came with wonton, pot stickers, fried rice, and egg rolls and then the fabulous main courses...

We had the walnut shrimp, and a shrimp-scallop dish, which was kind of spicy.  We discovered as we left that it was a seafood Chinese restaurant, which may have explained why the special of the day was a whole sea bass (we passed on the sea bass).

At 5:30 we went to Tom's for "Family Movie Night."  This is a tradition in their house and we love it when we are there.  The girls don't watch a lot of television, but they do love their movie tonight.  Laurel says she loves it because it's the only time both girls will cuddle with her these days.

Tonight we watched Frozen, which I hadn't seen and which, I understand, is the favorite movie of every child of a certain age.  It certainly is a favorite of the 2 and 6 year olds in this house!  Lacie did get a little fidgety in parts, but Bri was intense in her watching through the whole movie...and it is not the first time she has seen it.

It was a good movie and I'm glad that we had the chance to see it...even happier that we had the chance to see it with the girls.

Tomorrow T-ball at 8:30 a.m.