Moision Madness

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!