California Academy of Science

I feel like such a loser having been born and raised in the Bay Area of California and I feel like I hardly know my surroundings.  Well a great thing that has got me and the boys out there and exploring the amazing things our area has to offer has been the Discover & Go pass (see last post).  Having kids, especially at Ben's age is inspiring me to get out and take advantage of where we live.  And to really love where we live.  Our favorite place we have visited with the Discover & Go pass is hands down the Cal Academy of Science in San Francisco.  We had an amazing time.  Just the three of us.   

Our favorite area was the aquarium.  It was bigger than I had expected it to be and there were so many amazing creatures.  It was so fun to watch Jackson and Ben's eyes light up as the raced from tank to tank examining the various fish, jellies, and who knows what.

There was also a fun small kids only zone where they got to run and around and play, an earthquake exhibit where there was a simulated earthquake (pretty cool), and a delicious cafe where we shared a big plate of spaghetti.

We almost left without visiting the penguins.  The main door to them was closed for construction so I had assumed that the exhibit was closed.  I thought I'd ask before we left though and I was so glad I was.  We were pointed to another door and got to say hello to the black and white cuties before saying goodbye to the museum.

Can't wait for our next adventure.

Discover & Go

I love the Discover & Go program.  With my handy dandy library card I have access to free or steeply discounted passes to local museums and cultural institutions.  Catch is you can to each venue once in a year, but must of the time you get a full family pass, which means once James gets himself his own library card, we can visit each place again with his pass.  So far we have gone to . . .

The Oakland Zoo.

The Lindsey Wildlife Museum (Walnut Creek).

Habitot (Berkeley).

And The California Academy of Science.  But I'll leave that for another post because it was so much fun and I have lots of cool pics to share.

I try not to do ANYTHING without coupons, so this program is right up my ally.  I mean I literally went online yesterday on my phone to coldstone.com to sign up for their club so we could get a buy one get one free coupon before we walked into the shop since my buy 1 get 1's from the football fundraiser were gone.  The confirmation said I would receive email notification within 24 hours so we waited in the car for about five minutes and then I walked into the place, showed the sales girl my phone and that I joined the club but they hadn't sent me my coupon yet, and then I had the poor girl call her boss to ask for permission to give me a "like it" creation for free.  Sad?  Heck no.  We are saving like mad for a down payment for our first home.  By any means possible.  : )

Love Week

I tried to show the love to my family the week leading up to Valentines Day.  It started with these little mailboxes I got from the dollar section at Target.  I painted each of our names on them and set up a little love note station.  Every night I would write a little love note to my boys and put it in their boxes with an accompanied treat.  Ben liked checking to see if his flag was up.  We also had fun cutting everything into hearts and making themed treats.  Nothing revolutionary, but it was fun.

We were all spoiled by the grandparents with fun treats and little gifts.  The boys got perfect Valentines shirts from their GG which they rocked on the day. 

Had to balance out all the sweets with a healthy treat. Baby Jamba Juice!

I kept it simple on the day of with small treats for my guys.  Cards for everyone, a heart attack for James with notes from Ben and I, and a candy bouquet for James also left in his car.  We spent the night in with the boys and had a yummy meal of BBQ chicken wings, garlic mashed potatoes, and steamed veggies.  For dessert, a red velvet bundt cake from GG.

Ben found and snuck the bag of worms I was going to use.  So he got one lone worm. 

On Saturday I dropped the boys off with my parents for two nights, so that night James and I got to do a little solo celebration.  We ate at California Pizza Kitchen- a bit of a tradition for us (my favorite year was Valentines 2008, the day after finding out we were going to be having our first little boy)!  Then we finished the night with a Nicholas Sparks flick, Safe Haven.  I'll let you in on a little secret about James.  He is a huge chick flick fan.  And we love all of Nicholas Sparks movies.

I love my little trio of boys and am beyond blessed to have them in my life.

Ben's Valentines for his preschool party. 

A ladybug and a french fry

What do these two things have in common?  They were both in my son's mouth today.  Gross!  Ben alerted me to the fact that a ladybug was on our kitchen island last night.  He asked me not to kill it.  I didn't.  But apparently it was already dead because it was in the same spot today.  I see Jackson standing near the kitchen island this morning just touching the wall and then I see him make a really strange face.  I run over to see what was in his mouth and pulled out a. ladybug.  Still fully in tact so luckily he didn't bite into the thing, but it still grossed me out just the same.  And apparently it grossed out Jacky too.  His face was priceless.

We had fries with dinner tonight and I gave some to Jackson.  He's had them before.  But he kept handing them back to me and pointing at my plate because, well, he wanted dip (ketchup).  He liked this new taste.  So much so that he gave a whole new meaning to the term double dip as he pulled out his chewed up, sucked on french fry reaching it towards me for another go.  Not gonna happen kid.

Oh this kid is sure keeping me on my toes now that he's so mobile.  Full blown walking around EVERYWHERE.  Can stand up from a seated position all by himself and everything.  I catch him climbing on everything, including the couch.  Luckily he has also learned how to scoot backwards safely off said couch instead of the suicide face dives he used to attempt.  Unfortunately I still foresee some broken bones in this kids future.  Yikes.  No fear this one.  Ben likes a silly show called Kick Buttowski on the Disney channel about a kid daredevil.  While we were watching this morning Jackson climbed up on top of one of his riding toys and instead of sitting safely in the seat was standing near the back of the sit leaning forward with his hands on the handle bar.  He looked like a mini daredevil, Evil Knievel style (different than pictured below).

Wish me luck with this one.

And oh yeah I do have another child.  I should probably write something about him sometime.  Or at least post an instagram pic of him one of these days. : )