Still Playing Catch-Up: Blessing of the Animals- Easter 2007

In Los Angeles the Blessing of the Animals is a long-standing Angeleno/Catholic tradition. The Saturday before Easter people bring their pets to Olvera Street to be blessed by Cardinal Mahoney. You see an amazing variety of pets: snakes, turtles (little Sydney brought hers), dogs, cats, horses, geese, rabbits, chinchillas, fish, birds, cows, donkeys, etc., etc.
Mom and I took Jeff's 4 youngest (Madison, Sydney, Logan and Devon) downtown to experience the day. We started in Chinatown where the kids threw coins in the famous Chinatown fountain, ate bobba (they spit it out when I told them it was fisheyes... not true but they didn't know it!), bought souvenirs, and walked through the fish markets, herb markets and experienced many new things. From Chinatown we went to Olvera St. and had a nice mexican lunch, walked through an art gallery that had paintings done on tortillas, watched traditional Mexican dancers and the whole ceremony of the blessing. Next we toured through Union Station to admire the beautiful art deco architecture. The kids weren't impressed with that but Mom and I were.