Psycho Donuts

We had another fun day with our house guests.  We stopped at Psycho Donuts for a mid-morning snack since they have vegan donut choices.  

House guests

Over the weekend, Tom went to the Taj Mahal.  I told him that I just wanted one picture of him in front of this wonder and I got it!  

 Today my dear friend Tracy arrived for a little visit.  She was amazed that we have a vegan restaurant in the mall's food court, so we went there for lunch.  Of course, my kids had burgers from Super Dooper Burger instead of vegan food but we all got to eat together.  Here is her girl Maya with Serafina.

 Then we did some swimming.  These two need to work on their timing with the jumps.  Serafina ended up dragging Maya in.

 We had a post-dinner trip to the park.  Here are the girls again.

 Leo played a with Luka, Maya's older brother, who was incredibly patient and sweet with him.  Leo just talked and talked his ear off.

California Academy of Sciences

Ofter when Nana visits, she stays home with the kids while Tom and I run out to do errands or have a date night.  Sure, she might walk them down to the park or the ice cream store, but there aren't many adventures or activities.  Since we have extra days with Nana and it is summer vacation, we planned a fun outing.  We headed up to San Francisco's Golden Gate Park to visit the California Academy of Sciences.  We also liked having an excuse to get out of the heat in the South Bay and go to grey, chilly San Francisco.  

Here are the kids before we went in.  We got there pretty early so it wasn't too crowded for most of our visit.  There were a lot more people there after lunch though.  

 Checking out the T-Rex skeleton.

 Goofy kids.

 Our first stop was the African penguins.  My mom has an app on her phone called "pocket penguins", which streams a live video feed of the Cal Academy's penguin habitat.

It was so cool to get up close to the penguins and have them be so lively and interactive.  Here's a little video.  We watched them be fed by a biologist.  

This place is pretty much nerd heaven.  There are a lot of exhibits and an immense amount of information to take in.  Tom would have loved it and taken forever to look at everything.  Here's Nana explaining the pendulum to the kids.  

 Leo and I went through the earthquake exhibit that had us standing in a room that shook with the strength of both the 1989 and 1906 earthquakes. Leo was nervous about it but he was brave.  I think this exhibit is probably great for tourists to the Bay Area, but for someone who lives with the risk of a big earthquake happening at any moment and creating massive damage, it was pretty unsettling.  In fact, I need to stop writing about earthquakes so I don't bring one about.

Here's Claude.  He's an albino alligator and he barely moves.  He is alive (or so the Academy claims) and pretty creepy looking.

 You can see him from above and also from the lower level, which houses the aquarium.

 They had a snack in a tunnel through a big tank with big fish.

 It was pretty cool.

 After lunch, we visited the rainforest exhibit.  It was in a big dome and it was the warmest place in all of San Francisco.

 Serafina made friends with this frog.

In the rainforest dome, you walked up and up a long ramp with displays and tanks along the way, and the center had plants and lots of butterflies and birds.  Here are the kids watching the butterflies from high up in the dome.  

 Our last stop was a temporary exhibit about skulls.  This wall was covered with sea lion skulls.

 Nana and Leo really liked checking out the skulls.  Now Leo wants to own a skull.

 We checked out this fountain before heading to the car.

It was really fun day and both kids enjoyed the experience.  It tired them out though and Leo was on the fast train to melt-down city this evening, which was hard to deal with.  Hopefully they'll be refreshed in the morning.

From Edenvale to Urgent Care

Since my mom is getting closer to retirement age, she's starting to scope out potential places to move once she's done working.  She asked me if I had heard of Edenvale, which is in south San Jose.  I hadn't, so we decided to go check it out this morning.  We headed to a restaurant for brunch.  

The place is supposedly "famous" for its Swedish pancakes, described  on the menu as "thin, crepe-like pancakes served with ligonberry butter".  It sounded delicious, but the execution was all off and it wasn't very good at all.  They had a weird texture and color like they had been rolled out of Play-doh.  

We drove around Edenvale and Leo kept asking if were were in Sunnyvale.  That pretty much tells you that it looks just like the rest of the South Bay.  Edenvale is home to the Hayes Mansion, which has been turned into a fancy hotel. 

We didn't go inside but we went to the park that is adjacent to the park.  Serafina quickly climbed up this rock and then was too afraid to get down.  We talked her through it and then Leo did the exact same thing.  

 This afternoon the kids invited the neighbors over to swim again.  While Serafina waited for them to come over she practiced some dance moves.

 Before they got in the pool, they decided to play Clue.  The winners were allowed to push the losers into the pool.

 I went to yoga while they played and swam.  After I got home and showered, I started making dinner.  Unfortunately, I decided to break apart some frozen hot dogs with a knife.  I broke them apart alright and also straight through the package and into my hand, right between my ring and middle finger.  I decided to go to urgent care since it hurt a lot and bled a lot.  My friend Katie was kind enough to take me while my mom stayed home with kids.  Katie also reminded the doctor to give me a tetanus shot and snapped this picture while I was getting my stitch.

Pool time fun

 It's hot here.  Probably not India hot, but still pretty hot.  It was the perfect day to go in the pool and have our neighbors over to enjoy it with us.  Julia, Colleen and Anna came over to swim and they all spent hours in the pool.

Last summer when the girls came to swim, Serafina was wearing a floatie and refused to get her head wet.  She's made a whole lot of progress since she swims all over the pool now.  

There was a snack break and I got a picture of these matching kids.  We love having a tomboy as a neighbor since that means hand-me-downs for Leo.  

Ballet Camp Performance

Serafina has been attending "Little Ballerina Camp" at her dance studio this week.  They made crafts, had snack time and, of course, danced.  Today was the last day and they had a performance.  Nana was there to watch it too, which was very exciting for Serafina.  

 Here's the performance.  My camera work isn't great and Serafina gets distracted at one point by another girl's broken crown.

Nana brought Clue for us to play.  Today we got a chance to play and Leo won.  He was very happy.

Yum

Well, it took a few days but I finally gave in to the lure of the convenience meal.  It's a lot of work dealing with these kids by myself so I decided to take the night off of preparing dinner.  

 I try not to hit the drive-in too often, but my kids love In-n-Out, and those of us on the West Coast where In-n-Out is found consider it a cut above regular fast food.

The kids cleaned their plates.  Paper plates, 'cause I really wanted to make it easy on myself.

Dance camp

Today was the first day of Dance Camp for Serafina.  

 Specifically, it is "Little Ballerina Camp" at the same dance studio she attends during the school year.  It's three hours a day each day this week.

 When we picked her up she said it was fun but that the dance they were learning to perform was boring because it was too short.

I think I've mentioned that Leo has been dealing with a lot of night time fears.  He has trouble falling asleep and wakes up most nights with bad dreams.  It's exhausting for everyone.  Last night, he took a long time to fall asleep and kept getting up.  Then he was awake again at 4:30 this morning with a bad dream.  He likes to get in bed with Serafina.  He claims he feels safe.  His top bunk is "too scary, too lonely and too hot".  I believe him that it's probably kind of hot up there.  I'd like him to sleep in his own bed, but last night I was too tired to enforce anything.  For tonight, I came up with a solution.  He wants to be cooler and closer to his sister, so I set him up on a mat on the floor next to her bed.  They both seemed happy with the solution and I haven't heard a peep since I kissed them goodnight and turned out the light.

Edgewood Hike

We took Tom to the airport today.  It was tough to see him go, but I'm not going to whine about being apart too much since I know military wives and single moms handle life without a dad around.  I'll be fine.  At least, that's what I keep telling myself.  

On the way back from the airport, we stopped at Edgewood Park & Nature Preserve for a little hike.  It went better than I expected and ate up some time this afternoon.  Plus, it was pretty.