Family

My friend Tiffany and I had a low-key activity planned for Veterans Day — the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo. It’s nice and small, and very contained so great for squirrelly kids (and their moms). We’d checked the hours on the website and it looked like they were going to be open. Alas, no.

Plan B was another zoo Tiffany knew about, Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, which turned out to be a much larger undertaking, but a fun day nonetheless. First up after a very long line getting in (we were not the only ones with this Plan B, apparently) was the carousel.

After that we headed into the animal exhibits. There were lots of good ones, but the only one I took a picture of was the meerkats.

After lunch we went to the park area which had the biggest play structure I’ve ever seen. The kids loved it.

After that, some wanted to go on the roller coaster, some didn’t, so we split up. I took Jacqui and Ezra to the maze …

… while Tiffany took Finn, Lucas, Arianne and Gabby on the roller coaster. It screamed out for a slo-mo video.

Then we waited in line for about an hour for the boys to ride these things.

On the way out we stopped to see more animals when we realized there was another side to the zoo. Ezra was particularly happy.

In our effort to have a fun outing each weekend, on November 8th we honored Ezra’s request to go back to the Exploratorium. This time we decided to go by Caltrain, which is very convenient because of the station is so close to our house. We also brought Baris and Alexandra for added fun.

Oh, and Finn brought his hedgehog, General Fuzz.

We got to San Francisco around lunch time, so we stopped for lunch at the Ferry Building. After lunch, Bruce and the boys took a pedicab to the Exploratorium.

After our ice cold August weekend in the City, I was braced for another freezing day, but it was clear, warm, and frankly, perfect. Here are some shots from our day.

This last exhibit is little pieces of dry ice floating in some liquid. It’s mesmerizing. I could have stayed there all day. In fact, we did stay there until closing time!

In early November we took the boys to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. The first thing we saw was this Andy Goldsworthy installation called Stone River.

The kids loved it. It’s kind of hard to capture the scale of it.

They also liked the sculpture garden.

Here’s my one picture from inside the museum.

The boys (all three of them) also really liked this huge maze thing outside.

Halloween this year had all the usual facets: pumpkin carving, costume making (and buying) and trick-or-treating. The kids also had a new experience this year, as their school lets them wear costumes to school and participate in a parade. Here are some pictures from all of the festivities. First, pumpkin carving.

And, the finished products:

Bruce got into the costume action this year when his Loon team decided to dress up like the team leader. It’s really not that different than how Bruce dresses for work, except he doesn’t wear running shoes. Or white socks.

I’m still waiting to see the group picture with everyone dressed the same …

It seems like we switch off homemade versus store-bought costumes every year. Last year, Finn was a very elaborate house and Ezra had the store-bought Ninja costume. This year, Finn wanted to be a gladiator so we bought his costume.

Other than the rip in the shoulder of it that happened immediately upon his first trying it on, it was a good costume. Perhaps the cutest gladiator ever. (Just one mom’s opinion, of course.)

Ezra wanted to be an Enderman from Minecraft. I think they make costumes for the Minecraft characters, but the ones I’ve seen are just block heads. He wanted something much more involved, so he and Bruce designed and built his costume. It came out really good. The dirt block he’s carrying also served as his candy receptacle.

I should have taken video because the still pictures don’t capture how funny it was to watch him move in that huge costume. The kids at the school parade went crazy and kept holding up the line because they were playing with Ezra’s costume.

Here’s a shot of Finn’s class along with their fifth grade buddies who walked in the parade with them. Finn’s buddy was “Tomato Man” and is wearing a black mask and a shirt with a T on it. He’s right behind Finn, and I love this picture because he’s holding onto Finn’s shoulder. Finn is completely enamored of his buddy, and this gesture is just so sweet.

The kids spent the school day having parties and other fun activities, and came home fully sugared up. For trick-or-treating that night, both boys invited a friend and we walked around our neighborhood. Here are the four of them before we headed out. That’s Finn’s friend Kyuhyun as a knight and Ezra’s friend Lucas as a stormtrooper.

Our neighborhood was surprisingly quiet and Ezra didn’t last long carrying around that heavy costume, but the kids still managed to haul in quite a bit of candy because many neighbors were so happy to see trick-or-treaters that they really loaded them up with candy.

Here they are at my friend Marlene’s house; she gave them full sized candy bars. I think they thought they’d died and gone to heaven.

And soon we were back home for the traditional sorting of the loot.

Another successful Halloween! (I have many more pictures here.)

On October 18th, NASA’s Ames Research Center held an open house to celebrate it’s 75th year. Unlike JPL, they don’t do open houses every year; I think the last one was almost 20 years ago (but don’t quote me on that). At any rate, Bruce got last minute tickets from someone at work so we decided to brave the crowds. Perhaps it wasn’t our smartest decision.

We skirted most of the traffic by driving to Google and riding our bikes from there — a nice jaunt down Stevens Creek Trail. I really can’t express just how many people there were, and the hordes were coming via all modes of transportation. Cars were being redirected back onto the freeway (after sitting in a long line of traffic) because there was no place to park. The bikes gave us quite an advantage, but clearly we weren’t alone — check out a tiny portion of the bike parking.

After a long wait in line — during which I felt the need to set straight a myopic couple behind us spouting misinformation about JPL — we made it inside to find even more people. I was reminded that this is why I never went to the JPL open house.

Anyway, we did see some interesting things, most notably the wind tunnels. This one is so giant I had to do a panoramic photo to get it all in.

We saw this one, too, and talked to one of the engineers about some of the logistics.

They also had a Mars yard type of place and a rover, but the yard wasn’t as good as JPL’s. I swear, this outing turned me into a total JPL snob.

I think the boys were really more interested in this giant pumpkin we saw once we rode back to Google.

This day definitely falls into the category of things I’m happy to have done … and happy to be done with!

The boys had October 10th off from school for a staff professional development day, so I decided to take them to Google for a lunchtime visit. Bruce and I realized they’d never seen all the Android statues, so we decided to meet there. (Not being an Android user, I didn’t know that they name each version of their software after a sweet. They have statues representing all of them outside of one of the buildings at Googleplex.)

It seemed like the perfect venue for a time-lapse video.

Then we headed off to the cafe for lunch.

Bruce has been working some pretty long hours lately, so it was extra nice to see him in the middle of the day.

On October 5th we participated in a Bike Palo Alto event, which promotes, obviously, bike riding in Palo Alto. They prepared three routes that highlight the bike trails and bridges around the city, and there were treats stops along the way. Finn didn’t come because he was at a classmate’s birthday party, but Ezra, Bruce and I joined up with our new friends the Aubins who recently moved here from Calgary. Ezra and their son Lucas have become fast friends. Most of my pictures are blurry because I took them on my phone which was attached to my [moving] bike. But here’s one of Ezra and Lucas on one of the lovelier trails.

The treat stops were generally healthy (oranges/bananas, water) and informative (route options and advice), but the best stop was at the Sweet Shop in Los Altos, where we got free frozen yogurt and admired their Little Free Library. Bruce had also made a fast friend — the Aubins’ oldest daughter Gabby.

There was another stop at a park, which gave the kids a nice play break. I had to leave from there in order to pick up Finn  from his party, but everyone else continued the loop.

I’m not sure if the timing was coincidental or not, but the next Wednesday was Bike to School Day. We bike to school every day so of course we participated. They made a chart to show how everyone got to school. Pretty good!

We spend a good deal of our afternoon time in the park adjacent to the boys’ school. It has some great spaces, including this climbing tree Ezra and his friend Lucas quite enjoy.

The boys also live in the cul de sac across the street, especially now that there are even more kids there — a total of seven, ranging in age from 4 to 12. Mostly they ride bikes and scooters, roller skate or play various ball sports. But seeing how this is the Silicon Valley, one of the neighbors (the Tsunamiball guy, Chris), made a hovercraft out of plywood, a shower curtain and a leaf blower. It was a summer project that sat just barely unfinished for a while, but in September it was completed and the kids couldn’t get enough.

Googlers are encouraged to do community service and there are have been a couple of opportunities since we’ve been here. We missed the first one — a beach cleanup day — because it was the weekend we traveled to SoCal. But we were around on September 20th for a cleanup of the San Francisquito Creek. We started in East Palo Alto with a bevy of other volunteers, many of whom were high school students doing their community service.

Altogether, the group cleaned up a lot of trash; this is just a fraction of it. I was shocked at the stuff that lined the creek bed.

It was a lot of walking for the boys, but a good experience for sure. And there were donuts, their favorite part.

September was a month for concerts for Bruce and me. I dragged him to both Passenger in Oakland (on his birthday!) and Better Than Ezra in San Francisco the following week. I think he had a good time.

Learning from the experience of standing up for long concerts, I chose to buy seats to Passenger and we had a great spot in the balcony. Our view was clear and the show was magnificent. What a performer!

Not so lucky for Better Than Ezra — it was a long night of standing — but as usual they put on a great show. They did an all acoustic set because their equipment truck had broken down somewhere along the way. Their manager advised them to cancel the show, but they borrowed some acoustic guitars and went on anyway. I’m sure glad they did!

They did some Journey and Elton John covers. Always entertaining.

As a bonus, Jamma came to visit and babysit for the Passenger show! My photos, the few I took, are terrible, but she really was here so I’m putting them in anyway.

The boys were clearly happy.

At my optometry appointment a few months ago, the doctor — a longtime Palo Alto resident — told me there were two things to do in Palo Alto that he wished he’d known about earlier. One I can’t remember but I know that we’d already done it, and the second was Foothills Park, a beautiful open space area available to Palo Alto residents only. Of course, the residents-only policy (reminiscent of San Marino’s policy for Lacy Park) makes me squeamish, but we figured what the heck, so long as we live here we might as well take advantage of it. We’d heard they have campsites available too, and we thought that could be fun for a close-to-home overnight, so we checked it out in September.

If there’s one thing Palo Alto does right, it’s their open space. The park is lovely, well-maintained but not too fussy. The camping area wasn’t great but there’s a lake, a network of hiking trails, barbecue area, and big open fields. Here are a few pictures. We’ll definitely go back.

The boys have been riding bikes a lot lately and they love to jump off the curbs in the neighborhood, which drives me crazy as it’s not always possible to see if cars are coming. So, you know, of course Bruce decided to build them a real bike ramp so they could jump in a safe place.

Ezra helped, too.

Apparently, no bikes are necessary.

Ah, but bikes make it even more fun.

And slo-mo makes it even better.

Some Google engineers developed a way to bring the virtual reality experience to the masses. It’s called Cardboard and Bruce brought one home a couple of months ago. Basically, you just download a free app and put your smart phone (Android only, of course) in it and “walk around” in another world.

My photos don’t do it justice — all three of these Moisions looked super silly and had a great time in the VR world.

The first day of school at Fairmeadow (in mid-August, which is weird for us) gave us the opportunity to ride our bikes to school along with many of the neighborhood kids. It’s a little over a mile to get there, about half of it through the park on a bike path so quite pleasant. There’s plenty of bike parking at school.

I tried to be a good mom and get a nice shot of the boys before they went to their classrooms. This about sums up their desire to be going back to school in August.

This one’s a little better. At least someone is smiling.

Here’s a Hyperlapse video of our bike commute. It isn’t from the first day of school, but seems appropriate for this post anyway.