Museums, musems, museums

Museums, Musems, museums. A lot of our time away from our small apartment has been at the Children's Museum in San Jose, 10 minutes from our house. We have season passes to this too. Since we don't have any toys and are living in a 2 bedroom apartment with minimal furniture, our plan was to save money on an unfurnished place and have a bit of extra money to explore beautiful California! It is such an incredible museum that we have been many times and by the second visit we had got our moneys worth! The photo above is of the special "Curious George" exhibition they have on at the moment.

This photo is hilarious because it just plainly tells the emotions of what Savannah and Hyrum are experiencing. Savannah is in girl heaven, in the craft corner in the middle of making these incredible corn leaf dolls. Hyrum is also 'attempting' one (but of course it isn't a doll, it's a robot) and is rather fed up. But I didn't have to tell you that!

This area is a very serious section of the museum. Beth's favorite.....I sit at the table and Beth is my waiter and asks me what type of pizza I want. They have a menu, she sets the table for me, she cooks it in the fire oven, etc. I love it because I can sit down. I also love it becuase I snap my fingers and say waiter....'wheres my drink'? I pretend to be cranky and Beth is delighted! Oh...the simple joys of childhood!

Beth making my pizza and Isaac "helping'.

Now I pay her $61 of pretend money for my yummy pizza....apparently that is a really good deal.

While the big kids are off making rocketships in the big kids room, Beth and Isaac get to do some hands on craft in the little kids room. This is fantastic hands on craft and textile activities for Isaac, escpecailly since I am doing limited therapy with him at the moment.

This is my favorite section where they have all these fun water activities and machines that spray up balls etc. If they are happy, I am happier!

Those balls are all about to spray up with the water pressure build up.

Hyrum gets the drama queen rights! He is our drama boy and this picture just sums him up completely! He is totally pretending that he is dying and in pain, and his darling older sister is delighting about giving him a 'special' dose of his own medicine.

Serious stuff here....Hyrum showing Isaac how to play mini golf. I am enjoying the fact that my older children are doing a lot of the helping with Isaac! It has been a real treat. (Because I definitely run out of patience some days.....or ALL!)

Captain America!

It is not actually called "Captain America" but I got confused initially and now can't seem to get it out of my head!! About 10 mintues down the road we live on is the largest theme park in Northern California called 'California's Great America' and with the season tickets we got, we have already been 5 times. We went today and we plan on going tomorrow night (Friday) so we can attempt the water rides with 2 adults and two sets of hands.

This place is great. There are numerous rides (both adventurous and tame), including some great rollercoasters which Hyrum and Savannah can't get enough of as well as a large waterslide park. One thing we love is that the lines to the rides are usually short (compared to Disneyland they are basically non-existent), so we can go, get a few rides in and then head home.

I love this one of Beth. She has been in kid heaven with all the characters!! Not even complaining when she has to wait while Savannah and Hyrum go on crazy rides that she is still too small to go on. (She is just as keen though!)

Isaac likes all the rides he can go on too.

Bring back the old cartoooooons!

Isaac still hasn't figured out these cute and crazy characters!

Savannah is such a good sister and takes him on all the rides he can go on. They even have a baby rollercoaster ride he can go on.

Boy heaven. Savannah, Hyrum and Beth all went on the bumper cars together and were the only ones on it. I told the children to take all their frustration with each other out on the bumper cars....they had my permission!! Hyrum lifted his eyebrow and looked a little too pleased with the idea.

Savannah, Hyrum and Beth got to participate

in the circus act.

Strawberry heaven

This week the children, Megan and I went on a beautiful day trip to Davenport. Megan is a cousin of my gorgeous Diana. Her husband Reed also has an internship here for Apple. We went strawberry picking and strawberry eating to our hearts content. So much so, that we often heard these cute little strawberry burps from Isaac. Then we enjoyed eating lunch at the beach.

In one of the pictures above, their is a photo of Hryum with his straweberries. Megan and I hadn't seen Hyrum (or more importantly, hadn't heard him) for awhile. So when we went to investigate....he was sitting down in the middle of the patch, nibbling a little bite from each strawberry to make sure they were sweet. He had a little pile of rejects. When I went to make smoothies with them, we all knew which were Hyrums. They were the first to go in the smoothies, much to Hyrums disgust!

Megan is expecting her first little baby in July. She is such a great friend to go on crazy day trips with my kiddo's!

Here is a dead seal that the children were just fascinated with. It was so dead, we could see some of the bones and the smell was.......mmmmm. Hyrum possibly thought that was better than his hot dog!

The children just loved putting their fingers in the anonome and seeing them close around their finger. You can always find things to fight over. Although their were a million little pools of anonome around, they would fight over the ones next to each other. Can't have an outing without a sibling fight, it just wouldn't make a family day out complete!

Yes!!! One less kid complains on the way home. It took about 80 minutes in the car, so we needed all the help we could get!

Beth's Bladder

So, the weather wasn't what we had expected. Where we are in San Jose it was beautiful, hot and sunny. We did check the weather and it was going to be 10 degrees cooler. Don't know why we were all in shorts and tees! Optimistic I guess! (Hyrum is so cold he is wearing my lovely pink jumper. Goes with his complexion don't you think?)

Behind me here is Alcatraz. We were tempted to drop the kids off in one of the cells. The children weren't as excited about the bridge as Dave was. They did enjoy seeing a dolphin and a seal however. This is a famous windy road called Lombard street. It was really lots of fun and a little scary. Driving up it is so steep and when we had to stop, right at the top, Dave made a comment that freaked the kids out. "Watch out, the car just might flip over if we aren't careful! We loved it so much, we went down it twice! Tourists everywhere.

I was so excited to get some fresh seafood. The children and I got calamari and were so disappointed with it. I'm not sure if it was the batter or something they used but it just tasted disgusting. On the other hand, Dave was in heaven with his clam chowder. It was inside a big sourdough roll.

Isaac had been very bad so he just get's bread crumbs!

Don't go to Nick's fish and pasta place!

How funny is this photo?? As we were waiting in a busy line, it amused our bored and hungry children!

At the moment Savannah and Hyrum are the same height. They are gettiing many comments about if they are twins or if the 'boy' is the oldest one?? (Poor Savannah.)

Mmmmm, clam chowder.

So many fun things to see along the wharf.