It’s “Fire Service Day” on the second Saturday of May (the 10th this year)!  Head to your local station and meet and thank all your local heroes (they’ll happily give you a tour and let little ones sit in the trucks, as long as they’re not called out to an emergency).  Or you can celebrate the day with pancakes…

Every year the Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Society helps the Los Angeles Fire Department celebrate “Fire Service Day” with a firehouse pancake breakfast. Prepared by active and retired firefighters, these pancakes are the best in town.

And there’s more than just pancakes – fantastic eggs, sausage, coffee, hot chocolate, and other breakfast goodies. Sit in the plaza outside the LAFD Museum and share a delightful meal with your neighbors, active firefighters from Fire Station 27, and community leaders.  Then tour the Fire Museum, and visit the Hollywood Station right next door.

Take a docent guided tour through the trains that you usually can’t climb aboard!  Historic trains are open for tours on the second Saturday of each month.

Looking for a great way to spend the day with the family while celebrating mom? Join Riverside Drive Charter Elementary School at their International Bazaar. There will be food, fun, entertainment, vendors, games, inflatables, special guest performances, an over the top silent auction, slithery snakes, a fantastic prize booth and much more! Don’t forget mom: there will be a garden booth with treats for mom, a photo center and lots of arts and craft booths to make mom something special.

Have your kids ever seen the “Game of Kings” played live?  It’s majestic and relaxing to lounge on a blanket with a picnic brunch or lunch and watch horses pound up and down the field right before you.  (Players often let the kids on the field between matches to meet the horses.) Learn a little bit about polo, watch a match and then hike the park or tour Will Rogers old house (he was a huge horse and polo fan).

Matches are free and open to the public all summer.  Saturdays from 2 p.m. – 5 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Usually the trip to American Girl Place is special for kids, but this one will be even more special for Mom. In honor of Mother’s Day, moms and daughters can spend an extra special evening together having dinner at the store and making a paper family tree. You’ll also receive an American Girl book, a commemorative photo and frame and keepsakes to take home. Reservations are required.

There will be fireworks on the field and in the sky tonight, as the Dodgers take on the Giants. (And hopefully pay them back for giving us a lousy start at home this year!)

On the weekend Santa Anita race track has a Family Fun Zone with a field full of activities for your little jockeys to enjoy, from inflatable jumpers, face painting and carnival games to pony rides, a chance to meet Seabiscuit and the Santa Anita Playground. Plus, you enjoy an exciting day of racing as the horses run around you.  Family 4 packs give you admission, parking, racing programs, hot dogs, chips and sodas for the whole family, plus 2 pony rides and 8 carnival games.

What says Mother’s Day weekend like a tractor and car show?  Actually, it is probably the perfect illustration of a mother’s love, as nothing else but doting on a wheel obsessed kid could drag most of us to something like that.  But to see the look on their faces, we will.  It’s also a Strawberry Festival, with berry picking, a petting zoo, face painting, horse rides, music, food (with a strawberry theme, like strawberry snow cones, strawberry jams, or a funnel cake with strawberries and whipped cream on top) and more.

Admission is free, parking is $3.

Cubist artists like Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso broke down their subjects into simplified shapes to create collage-like paintings focusing on shape and pattern. Take inspiration from cubist works in the collection, and create your own cubist collage.