(mini) staycation!
Posted by laralynnian on 08 Jul 2011 at 09:18 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Grandma Rapoza arrived for a month-long visit from Hawaii last week, and we’ve kept her on her toes with all sorts of fun. We started the weekend with a trip to Roseville to visit the Hams. Grandma got to meet Ella and see the twins, who she last saw at our wedding when they were just nine weeks old. We “enjoyed” 100 degree weather by the kiddie pool (beers in hand) and some water fun with cousins, then made it back to Berkeley in time for Jupiter and ice cream with Lily and her family.
We started our Independence Day celebrating early, with a play group BBQ at Lily’s pad. Luckily our Berkeley weather was also warm enough for the kids to dip in the wading pool – even Nalani had fun playing with the big girls and eating pulled pork. Joey and I enjoyed plenty of beer (thanks, James!) and stayed long enough to make it home safely.
We spent the holiday on a picnic at Memorial Park, which has become our serendipidous annual tradition. No pony ride this year (and Melina wasn’t brave enough to try the mechanical bull), but we did enjoy a water balloon toss, plenty of music and sunshine, and a kiddie bounce house. Nalani had a great time walking up to other people’s picnics and trying to walk off with their food. She actually made it a few feet with someone’s bag of watermelon before I caught her.
Later that afternoon the kids, Grandma, and I took a bike ride to the park around the corner, and that evening Melina got to see her first fireworks from the Rose Garden. The view was a stretch (Kai was bummed we weren’t right under the show), and the kids had to perch on grown-ups’ shoulders. But we had far better luck than when I took Kai up there a few years ago and the low fog was so thick we couldn’t see a thing.
Joey and I both took several days off work to hang out with the kids and his mom, so we decided to round out our staycation with a trip to the Academy of Sciences in SF. It re-opened at least three years ago, and the first time we tried to visit last summer we made it as far as the parking garage and Melina threw up. This week’s trip was a greater success, and by heading there on a weekday we got to breeze through the line to the butterfly rainforest, and get front row seats to watch the penguin feeding. The girls and their friends had a blast, though the hot dog lunch was as big a hit as the fish behind glass.