California- Monterey Bay Aquarium

I grew up going to this aquarium. It's really just an amazing place!

California- Happy Hollow

The kids had a week off school for Thanksgiving so we decided to head home to Northern California for a week.


Growing up I went to Happy Hollow a small amusement park for kids. It has recently been redone and is almost completely different.

The good old puppet theatre was still there... Here the girls were waiting to see the show.

The girls seriously rode this like 10 times.  SO fun!

The jungle gym was amazing. Unfortunately it was rainy so it wasn't fully explored.

The classic bug cars were still there. 

and the petting zoo was there in much nicer digs.

Maybe this replaced the stepping stones with water all around it?  I have seen so many kids fall in the water.  The risk is gone now.

We had so much fun, even in the rain!

The girls...

One thing I love about afternoon kindergarten is our girl lunches. I cannot tell you how much fun we have together. We are enjoying out time together so much!

Seeing Double installment two...

The girls have had their glasses for almost two months. Things have gone very well. The transition at first was a little hard because they really couldn't see better with the glasses at all but I just remained strict and they got into the habit fairly easily.

At their first appointment I had been told it was unusual to see progress with glasses alone (not patching) but they had recently found that it was a good first step as some do see progress. So at our first follow up (6 weeks in) I was expecting any real progress and prepared the girls for patches. Surprising we got wonderful news both girls had improved their bad eye four full lines. When they put the E they could see previously on the screen it was a huge and the E now is much much smaller. I couldn't be happier. As hard as it was at first the persistence and strictness paid off they are making progress. We will keep checking in to make sure we don't need patching as we might still need that to get it even better but we're off to good start.

Halloween Haunt...

Halloween this year we got three tries to get it right.  First we had Halloween at school which included a parade, parties and too much candy.

Then we got to get dressed up again the next day and go trick or treating at Daddy's work.

Then we had the real Halloween.  We always have the Grandparents over for Chili before so they can see the kids all dressed up.

 All the cousins met together for a quick picture. They love seeing each other in their costumes.
            

We had plenty of fun friends to trick or treat with.

 We received a trick on Halloween when it was rainy and very cold. Luckily it stopped eventually.

 At home in their glow in the dark "bones" a halloween tradition around here.

We set a record this year in the candy department and Lindsey entered her tween years with her first haunted house under her belt.

Lindsey's broken finger...

The other day Lindsey was outside playing and came in claiming she broke her finger. She is a bit of a drama queen so the first claim was not taken seriously until Alan saw the finger and it was bent very strangely. So I popped in the car and headed over to the pediatricians office hoping to avoid the E.R. After an x-ray it was determined that finger tip broke and then completely rotated so we were sent to the Children's hospital where a specialist could set the bone correctly. 

I forgot my little camera so these are cell phone photos.  Here she is during x-ray. She was hurting.

Here is the x-ray you can see the finger tip is bent.

Here they are numbing her up.  You can really see how bent the fingertip was.  Yuck. He told me it was one of the worse finger breaks he has seen.

Amazingly we had to visit the finger specialist once a week and then every other week making four times total. I like to tease Lindsey and say..." leave it Lindsey to make breaking your finger drama"!

* By the way the injury occurred during a game of Capture the flag. She grabbed a boys shirt and he hit her finger pretty hard and twisted it in the process.  Now I know it was an accident but his complete lack of sympathy when she got hurt disturbed me a bit. Hopefully he didn't know what he had done.

Cornbelly"s Fall Harvest Festival...

Every year my sister takes a day off work and takes the kids to Cornbelly's. Which is a fall festival around here.

They have tons of activities for kids and it was amazingly warm for October.

The girls had just got their glasses.  We were trying to see if it would rub off their face paint.

My kids love face painting.

And princesses...

This year I got to experience the maze because in the past I "had" to stay with the twins. The twins loved it.  Don't tell the kids but we never finished it, we got so lost we exited the other entrance and they thought we were done.  It's not easy I tell you.

Thank you Aunt Holly for a great day of fun!