San Francisco (and then some)

The third week in November Alex got his Christmas present a little early when we took a weekend trip to San Francisco and attended the 49er game! It was the first NFL game for all three of us, and it was a very fun weekend.

Before we get to the trip, we have a few days of playing at the park and other activities

First, Olivia enjoying herself just a little too much on the swing :)

'Those stairs are pretty far away...yup I'll just go up this slide'

Olivia was so happy to meet someone her size, but was confused at why he didn't respond when se pushed him against the wall...

Storytime with Daddy :). I just can't get enough of these pictures...Are you my mother is one of her favorite books. She will go to her bookshelf and either pull off Pat the Bunny, one of her Aladdin board books, or Are You My Mother. She regularly ditches me in the living room to go read books (or throw them :)) in her room.

This picture surprised me, but this is a regular occurence when Alex takes Olivia in the morning and lets me sleep in. He creates this little throne for her to watch Jake and the Neverland Pirates while he makes breakfast. Alex is a genius for creating this, because it's the only way I know of to keep Olivia out of the kitchen while you are cooking, and it only works for him :)

And early Saturday morning we headed to San Fransisco. It's about a 3 hour drive with no stops, and since this is the longest Olivia has sat in a car in a few months, we made a couple stops to get her exercised. We got to San Mateo (south of SF) around lunch time, and decided to go to CuriOdyssey, a children's discover museum/mini zoo. Overall, I would recommend this as an activity with young kids. Quite plainly, it was a poor man's discovery paired with a poor man's zoo that made for a fun couple hours :).

Olivia's favorite thing in the discovery center was the fog machine. She climbed up onto the stool and played with it until we took her down to let some other kids see. She also loved the bird area in the zoo, where she was able to chase a few birds that were either very slow or being generous by allowing her to get within inches before waddling a few more steps.

After CuriOdyssey we got checked into our hotel, and after learning that Olivia wasn't going to take a nap, we headed back to the same park, but to the actual park they had outside. It was "Magic Mountain Playground", and I absolutely loved it. Here is Olivia and Alex sitting on the dragons head

There were two dragons, one on each side of the castle. The back of each dragon was all formed out of that new squishy playground material, and had two racing slides on it

Between the two dragons was this awesome three story castle that had slides and rock climbing walls and bridges and other fun things. The huge tunnel slide at the top says for ages 7-12 only, so Olivia and I averaged our ages and got 12, so we rode down together. Alex, on the other hand, went by himself, totally breaking all the rules.

Olivia really enjoyed the park, but it was very cold and she was having a hard day (multiple faceplants, including one off the bottom of a slide that was totally my fault and one off the hotel bed that was totally Alex's fault), so this was the closest to a smile I got from her.

We decided to stay in San Mateo, with the furthest north being Candlestick Stadium for the game. This worked really well for an overnight trip to the Bay area because we ended up driving a lot less. Our hotel was right next to the airport (thank you free parking) and the park was about a block away. We drove around a little bit trying to find places to eat, but we had a lot of time to play instead of sending the whole weekend in the car.

After a long, sleepless night (O does really well on trips, but she takes a few days to adjust anywhere, so an overnight trip is really hard on the parents), we got up Sunday morning rearing and ready to go to the 49er game. Here is Olivia and I ready in the hotel. I'll note that yes, I did buy her a 49er shirt for the occasion and I wore purple, but in all fairness, we both ended up wearing jackets and wrapping up in blankets so it didn't really matter.

Our view from our seats. They were at the endzone on the sideline, but they were great seats. Under cover, set back enough that we didn't feel a lot of the wind. We had a great view of the field, and had a good enough view of the not-so-jumbo-tron that Olivia was entertained. She always watches the TV at all sporting events. I guess her experience has told her that that's where the real action is :).

In our seats. Yes we took some pictures with Alex, but they are all on his phone, so they aren't included today. Olivia was very tired from a lack of nap and lack of sleep the night before, and ended up sleeping the entire second half and most of the 1/2 hour walk back to the car. She also slept most of the way home, and still had a successful nights sleep, so I think she got around 16 hours, which was good to catch her up.

This post is feeling about a mile long (not to mention has taken three different nights to complete, so I'm not going to ramble about these pictures. They are from the few days before Thanksgiving. Olivia discovered that the onions and potatoes are in the bottom of the pantry, and apparently likes the taste of both. I wish I had a onion picture, but I have cooked both onions and potatoes with full on bites out of them...maybe we should put the brocolli and carrots down there so she could get her vegetables for the day!

She stared at these bikeriders for a long time, I'm sure she was trying to figure out how she could get her legs to go around like that :)

Waving hi backwards in the swing :) Loved this

Whew! You can give yourself a pat on the back from me if you made it to the end of this and read at least half the words (I'll admit it, I picture-read too).