Sunny CA

Last week we decided to drive down to CA to visit Grandpa Charlie, Grammy Carol and Auntie Leslie.  San Francisco here we come!

We had so much fun playing in the city with Grandpa Charlie!

We visited some of the places Mom used to go with Grandpa Charlie when she was about 5 years old!

We got to see a huge cruise liner, ferry boats, sailboats, tankers, tug boats, and even a fire boat!

We were able to get into the Exploratorium (huge hands-on science center for children...and adults!) for free with our membership card from our small local science center.  Sweet!

Cole LOVED playing this drum activity!

Actually he loved any activity that he got to wear ear phones with!  Not sure what Rob is putting Dylan into in the background!?  But it must be cool because someone is waiting in line to stick their head in a big tube!

The boys spent what felt like an hour at this spinning sand table activity...very cool!  How could we make one of these at home to entertain the boys!?

They were so exhausted after playing at the Exploratorium all afternoon, that Dad had to carry them BOTH to the car.  Thanks Dad!!

Beautiful dome, columns and gardens outside of the museum.

Cole liked it too!

The boys were so excited to get up in the mornings and go and wake up and play with Grammy Carol.  Mom and Dad were also so excited...since Grammy Carol insisted that we sleep in.  Well OK if you insist!!

Can't pass up story time!  I wonder how many pictures we have of friends and family reading stories to the boys?  Many.

We went to a marine wildlife rehab center to check out a sea lion hospital...and discovered they were showing sculptures of trash the artist found on the beaches in Oregon.  We actually saw these sculptures at the Oregon Aquarium this winter!

One of the highlights for the boys was to go to this big Lego playroom place.  Cole and Dad had fun building a big house with these huge Legos...

...while Dylan was in boy heaven playing with all the 'regular' sized Legos.  There were endless drawers and bins of any and every Lego piece you could imagine.  You are supposed to clean up you work before you leave, but Dylan was about to cry when I told him he had to take apart his creation.  So we just put away all the other Legos we saw and left his boat creation on the table...he was so proud!

We visited several fun playgrounds...here is Dylan who constantly pushed my height/climbing comfort zone!

And we all had fun playing in the pool!!

Before we left we spent one more day playing in SF...with the highlight being our visit to the playgrounds in Golden Gate Park.

Very cool, long, concrete slide that you have to sit on a piece of cardboard to go down.

And a super cool fish mosaic sculpture garden.

On our long drive home we made a few fun stops.  The first being the Jelly Belly factory!  We all had to wear these funny paper hats...and I think the boys would have been just as happy to skip the tour and just have the bag of jelly beans they give you at the end...but it was interesting to see how they are made!

We also stopped at another science center type place in Redding that also had a parrot enclosure where you could feed the parrots (lorikeets to be specific).

The boys were excited until they realized that the birds flew around and landed on your hand, arm, shoulder, and head to get at the food in your hand.  Dylan keeps looking over his shoulder because he really doesn't want one to land on his head!

 Thanks for a great trip to CA!!