Backyard Travels: 10 Great Things To Do in SoCal

1. Ride a Duffy Boat in Newport Harbor. Putter around with the family to gawk at million-dollar yachts in one of these adorable little electric-motor boats. www.visitnewportbeach.com


2. Go ice-skating on the beach. For a brief span from mid-December to early January, you can carve up the ice among the palm trees in Huntington Beach, which is more often known for its waves than its figure-eights. www.surfcityusa.com


3. Release a monarch butterfly. The St. Regis Monarch Beach near Laguna Beach offers a nightly butterfly ritual for a limited time during the summer months. A butterfly butler tells the story of the migration of the colorful insects as he releases several of them into the sunset. www.stregismb.com


4. Go see The Blue Boy at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. The iconic Thomas Gainsborough painting never ceases to amaze. And the rest of the collections aren’t too shabby, either. http://www.huntington.org


5. Take a long walk on SoCal’s longest wooden pier. It happens to be in Oceanside, where you can also catch some of the Golden State’s most spectacular sunsets. www.visitoceanside.org


6. Take a gondola ride in Long Beach. If it’s more about the experience (and less about the romance) load up the family and take a relaxing cruise aboard an authentic Venetian gondola. You can even opt for the “Pizza Cruise” and enjoy some Italian flavors with your “Oh, Sole Mio.” www.gondolagetawayinc.com


7. Check out the Millennium Falcon at Legoland. Behold The Force as the brick-themed park will unveil its new Star Wars Miniland in March 2011. http://california.legoland.com


8. Take the train to Capistrano. Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner slices right through this scenic town and stops just steps from the Mission San Juan Capistrano as well as the area’s adorable shops and cafes. Just hop on the train, cruise down the coast, and spend the day exploring. www.amtrak.com


9. Take your dog to San Diego. Watch your pooch play in the waves at Dog Beach at Ocean Beach and Coronado. But make sure they dust off the sand before checking into one of the city’s numerous dog-friendly hotels. Loews Coronado Bay Resort even has a “Loews Loves Pets” program (and kids are welcome, too). www.sandiego.org


10. Go see a lighthouse. The focal point of Shoreline Village in Long Beach is the scenic Lions Lighthouse For Sight overlooking Rainbow Harbor. A pleasant walking trail encircles the grounds. Nearby and a bit more authentic is the lighthouse at Point Vicente in Rancho Palos Verdes. The interpretive center is open daily. www.palosverdes.com

Find even more travel ideas at the Visit California site.

Feeling a Little Horse

Like many little girls, I used to daydream about a life filled with horses. I would ride my wagon through the yard, imagining the long, flowing mane of my trusty steed blowing in the wind. My imaginary horse was gray and long-legged, sleek and fast, and we rode many adventures together.

Seeing Cavalia in Burbank brought those romantic images of my youth to life in living, galloping color – and with a beautiful soundtrack, too. As the audience files into the gleaming-white tent that houses the show, anticipation builds, and there's a certain horsey giddiness that fills the stands. Then, when the first mustangs sprint across the sand-covered stage, the audience gasps in unison, followed by a chorus of "Awwws."

If you're not around horses a lot – and even if you are – it's easy to forget how striking and elegant these creatures are. And when you bring them together with elegant riders in beautiful costumes, acrobats soaring overhead and a score filled with haunting music, the experience of Cavalia delivers a truly special form of entertainment (and in my case, a flashback to my youth).

As the show gallops along, the live cellist, vocalist and other musicians weave together a horse-infused acrobatic stream of consciousness with influences ranging from Native American to Argentinean, with a dash of Medieval princess thrown in for good measure. The flowing curtains and billowy backdrops breathe 3-D life to the show's many scenes, which feature everything from dance and trick riding to traditional dressage and trampoline acrobatics. At times, all eyes are on the amazing aerialists and acrobats, who bounce, flip and twirl from the big-top ceiling using the elegant equines as a backdrop to their feats of physical prowress. But then there are those amazing moments when all eyes are fixed on the animals, who reveal their power, grace and beauty in various ways.

There was plenty of action for horse lovers, but I preferred the quieter moments when the horses were just standing together, nuzzling each other, rolling in the dirt and just being. That way, I could recapture those days when it was just a horse – and a romantic imagination.

Cavalia appears under the White Big Top in Burbank through Feb. 12. Ticket prices start at $49, $69 for weekends (packages that include refreshments and a visit to the stables are available, too). The show is long – almost two hours with a 20-minute intermission. And plan ahead for potty breaks; the restroom tent can be a bit of a trek, depending on where you're seated.

Having the Resolve

I'm a Capricorn (a New Year's Day one, in fact), so it will come as no surprise that I like lists. They're not only great for groceries and party planning, they work perfectly on blogs. However, I hate New Year's Resolutions. And those cheesy retrospectives that the local news stations and other insidious sources put us through.

But for parents, sometimes it's good to take stock of the year you've just survived in a retrospective list. We need to calculate our accomplishments as moms and dads, and neatly file those little snapshots of your life in a mental scrapbook. That way, when you're exhausted from some parental exercise and wondering aloud, "Why am I doing this?" those little retrospectives serve to remind you why you do all those things.

Here's a look back on a few parenting milestones for 2010, tossed in with some resolutions, all sewn up in a handy list!

1) Get in the game. We stuffed ourselves with Dodger Dogs and left promptly after the Seventh Inning Stretch. But hey, we made it – and we even found our car again. The Resolution: Make memories. A Broadway musical, even though I don't like musicals. The beach, even if it means spending the next day vacuuming sand out of the car. A Dodger game, even whey the team is not doing that great, is something the kids will remember way into adulthood.

2) Remember the love. This last year, 6-year-old Jack fell hard for all things Star Wars, thus trading his Thomas the Tank trains for his TIE Fighter and beloved Clone Wars jammies. Out with the old; in with the new. The Resolution: Keep a good scrapbook, write down the funny things the kids say, hug the stuffing out of them as often as I can, even when they're bugging me.

3) Get the picture. Kate, at age 10, can now appreciate the subtleties of art, understand the struggles of artists, grasp their vision and their plan. She can learn and visualize and emulate and empathize and soak up the paint and the pain. Jack spent his time at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena obsessed with the electronic gadget that spews forth the guided tour – and the museum offers one that's recorded just for kids. Kate chose the more "adult" versions of the interpretations and hung on every word. The art is knowing that they're both taking away what they like, and to get out of the way of that. The Resolution: Guide them to soak up as much culture as they can squeeze into their little brains. Then, get the heck out of their way and let the glue and paint and sparkles spill.

4) Ditch the list. The irony is not wasted here, believe me. But I do tend to schedule tightly, attempt to keep things in order, follow a regimen and keep to a schedule. So when the kids plead, "Mom, can we sleep outside tonight?" I invariably scrunch up my face in a That Is Not The Plan grimace. But they love it, especially when they wake up in the morning and can hang in their tent, sharing Pop Tarts with the dog. The Resolution: Be more spontaneous, and let the kids do more nutty kid stuff.

5) Stop and smell the flowers. As an adult, it's easy to forget how wondrous the world is. But as we're zooming along from one place to the next, Jack will stop me dead in our tracks to stare at a crack in the sidewalk. Kate will pick up a pretty rock, make a dress for it and build a special home for it to "sleep" next to her on the pillow. The two of them will run INTO the rain instead of recoiling as though acid is being dropped on them, as most of us adults do. The Resolution: Remember to see the world through a child's eyes. Be a little less jaded, Carolyn. The world's a pretty cool place.

Now, onto to the next item on the list.