California Academy of Sciences

We visited California Academy of Sciences back in December just a few days before Christmas.
I had been eager to visit the Academy before the end of the year due to a few special Christmassy themed exhibits. A visit to the Academy was one of the featured activities on the girls' advent calendar.

Now, we had actually attempted to visit the Academy back in November when we spent an afternoon in Golden Gate Park. However it was Thanksgiving long weekend and it was extremely busy. Plus a surcharge during busy holiday periods pushed the ticket price up to $35.00 for adults and $25.00 for children making for one very expensive afternoon.

Surprisingly, when we visited the Academy two days before Christmas it wasn't as busy as I had expected. I guess everyone was busy with Christmas preparations. I booked our tickets online to avoid the queues and even managed to find a coupon for a discount. Got to love retailmenot.com :)

Kim and the girls with Claude the Alligator 

Fun in the Bay Area

The Bay Area has some pretty amazing places to take the kids.

There are so many opportunities for fun. Creative fun, outdoor fun, sporty fun, family fun, educational fun... There are so many places here that fall into that last category and they're so much fun that kids don't realise they're learning until it's too late. Insert evil laugh here.

I'm always discovering somewhere new to add to the list of places to take the kids. So I figured it was time to make a check list of these exciting places to take Ava and Lola.

Here goes (in alphabetical order)...

Aquarium of the Bay, San Francisco
Bay Area Discovery Museum, Sausalito
Cable Car Museum, San Francisco
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
Chabot Space and Science Center, Oakland
Children's Creativity Museum (formerly Zuem), San Francisco
Children's Fairyland, Oakland
Exploratorium, San Francisco
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
Habitot Children's Museum, Berkeley
Jelly Belly Factory, Fairfield
Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley
Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey
Museum of Children's Art (MOCHA), Oakland
Oakland Zoo, Oakland
Pier 39, San Francisco
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
San Francisco Zoo, San Francisco
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Santa Cruz
Tilden Park, Berkeley

Of course, there are many more wonderful places to take the kids and I'm sure this list will grow.
My mission is to try and visit all of these places (and more) with the kids.
I'll share our visits here on Little Hiccups as we cross them off the list.

First up, California Academy of Sciences...

Valentine's Day

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and for the first time ever I'm actually excited about it. Not for lovey-dovey romantic reasons mind you, but because Ava's class at pre-school will be exchanging valentine's cards/chocolates/treats etc - just like on tv!

In Australia Valentine's Day is really just for couples. Here in America Valentine's Day is embraced by everyone in honour of all the people they love; partners, family, friends, classmates etc. I really like this way of celebrating Valentine's Day. Sure it's over the top and Hallmark and Hershey must make a fortune from it, but it's nice to think about all the people who are special rather than just one person.

Ava will be exchanging valentines with 27 of her classmates tomorrow (plus her 3 teachers) and as with every other opportunity to hand out cards we've decided to go with something home made. I was going to help Ava make personalised cards for each of her classmates but this was going to be very time consuming and a lot of work for Ava. Instead I decided that we'd bake sugar cookies for the class and print labels that Ava can personalise with each child's name. More work for me but much, much less work for Ava.

Now, in my opinion Valentine's Day cards and gifts must have the cheesiest wording on them possible; think "I choo choo choose you" from The Simpsons. I ran through a few different heart and cookie themed cheesy sayings before Ava decided that "Sweet hearts for my sweetheart" was perfect. Actually, she thinks it's absolutely hilarious and laughs like a maniac every time she says it!

To make our little heart cookies even sweeter we decorated them with coloured sugar. I think they came out quite pretty. They're also very delicious!

Sweet little heart cookie

Winter?

It's Winter here in California - although it seems that nature missed the memo...

While it was actually quite chilly here today, this cooler weather was uncharacteristic of the weather we've had recently and for much of Winter. A few days ago it was 21c and sunny. 21c and Sunny! That's like Winter in Brisbane. Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is supposed to be cold and grey; or at least that's the impression you get in Australia. For the most part, Winter here has been warmer than I anticipated. Most days have greeted us with blue, cloudless skies which, considering we don't have a car and the girls and I walk everywhere, is not a bad thing. A little variety would be nice though.

The trees seem to be really confused about which season it is at the moment. While walking Ava to and from preschool this week I couldn't help but notice the amazing variety in seasonal attributes amongst the trees.

Some trees have decided that Spring is already here and are covered in blossoms in varying pink hues.
The sweet scent of their nectar fills the air and the sound of bees gently buzzing by imparts a warm fuzzy feeling - although Ava is freaked out by the bees and she runs as fast as she can past the trees with blossoms!

Spring blossoms

Lola's 1st Birthday Party

I feel like such a bad mummy...

I've only just realised now while posting about Ava's birthday that I never got around to posting about Lola's birthday back in October. Let's put that slip up down to the stress of an international move with small children.

So, here it is, more than a little belated, Lola's 1st birthday party...

Lola's 1st birthday fell just before our move to America. This made organising a party a little tricky as I was so busy with the move but with the help from friends we got there in the end and had a lovely day.

Lola's 1st birthday party was also our farewell party. As we had already moved out of our house the party was held in Botanic Park in Adelaide. We were very lucky to have a beautiful sunny day.

Now, as I was so busy with the move I didn't get a chance to make up paper invites to post out like I would normally do. Instead I decided to set up a Facebook event for the party. Not really the best option in hindsight as I didn't count on the number of people who don't check Facebook regularly. Oops!

Lola and I had a little photo shoot on the beach to use as the event image on Facebook. I didn't count on the image not being large enough for anyone to see the detail. This seems to be the one image on Facebook that you can't click on to enlarge!

The image from the Facebook invite

Ava's 3rd Birthday Party

Seeing as it was Ava's birthday last week I thought I'd share a few more of her past birthday parties.

You can find a post on Ava's 4th birthday party here and a post on her 2nd birthday party here.

This time let's go back to 2010 for Ava's 3rd birthday party...

For Ava's 3rd birthday party invitations I decided to use one of her drawings of herself.
It's amazing how much her drawings have changed over the last few years!

The invitation for Ava's 3rd birthday party

Happy Birthday Ava

Last Friday was Ava's 5th birthday.

Ava had been planning her 5th birthday party pretty much as soon as her 4th birthday party was over. She had such great plans: bouncy castle, pony rides, face painting... most of which were never going to come into fruition! But of course, our move to America made all of these party plans a little tricky.

I was a little worried that Ava might not have made many friends by the time her 5th birthday came around so I was looking into ideas for a small family weekend trip. It turns out though that Ava HAS made a few good friends at preschool and she was very eager to celebrate her birthday with them.

So Friday afternoon, after preschool, our roof top garden became party central for Ava and a handful of friends from preschool.

I felt a little disorganised for this little party. Normally I would have made invitations that would have been posted out weeks in advance. Normally I would have spent ages working on a cake design, party games and party bags. This year there were no paper invitations. There was no pinata. No face painting. There wasn't even any baking on my behalf, other than the birthday cake. Instead it was just a few kids running around on our roof top garden making their own fun.

There were party bags, of course. Ava decorated these herself with drawings of butterflies and girls with long hair (her favourite things to draw at the moment).

A few of the party bags