Pedalfest 2015

A few weekends back we attended Pedalfest, one of our favorite local festivals.

Pedalfest, held at Oakland's waterfront Jack London Square, is a day full of bike related fun. We watched BMX riders do tricks, made pedal powered smoothies and art, decorated our bikes, took part in a parade, learned bike safety skills, powered a stage with our pedaling, rode crazy bikes, and took in the atmosphere of the festival.

First up Ava and Lola took part in the kids' parade. We've always missed out on this in the past so the girls were pretty excited to join in. They decorated their bikes with ribbons, stickers and pipe cleaners courtesy of Oaklandish and then followed El Arbol the Bike Tree, through the festival.

52 Weeks: Week 30

Week 30: Frozen Yogurt, Squirrels and Pink Hair

It's been pretty hot here over the last week. Well, hot by Bay Area standards. The weather here is generally so mild that when it reaches 24C/75F it feels positively sweltering!

When the weather is hot like it has been we like to cool off with a frozen treat. Frozen yogurt, gelato, ice cream... We like to mix it up and visit different places. Right now the girls' favorite place for a frozen treat is Menchie's Frozen Yogurt. Menchie's was on our way home from the Botanical Gardens earlier in the week so we dropped by for a treat. Poor Mathilde was exhausted from running around under sprinklers in the Botanical Gardens and slept through our time at Menchie's, but the big girls and I enjoyed our delicious yogurt.

The Day the Crayons Quit: The Musical

Recently we got to experience one of our favorite books and one of our favorite places together in the most wonderful way.

"The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers, has been brought to life by Bay Area Children's Theatre as a musical. As fantastic as that sounds, it gets even better. The performance was held at Children's Fairyland.

"The Day the Crayons Quit" is a huge favorite in our home. More often than not it's Lola's first choice of books for a bedtime story. So when the girls heard that they were going to see a live performance of the book, they were super excited. The chance to spend the day at Fairyland after the performance was just the icing on the cake.

UC Berkeley Botanical Garden

On Monday the girls and I ventured to a popular local spot that we had never visited before; UC Botanical Garden here in Berkeley.

This weekend, UC Botanical Garden had their biggest weekend ever in terms of attendance and it was all due to one special flower. Trudy, the garden's resident Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum) or Corpse Flower was blooming for the first time. What makes this flower so special? Well, first of all it takes at least seven years for the plant to bloom for the first time, and then that bloom only lasts for a few days. Second of all, the flower is absolutely massive. I believe that Trudy reached 56 inches in height! And last but not least there's the smell. When the Corpse Flower blooms a foul odor reminiscent of rotting flesh is released to attract flies for pollination. I'm guessing you can tell where the name Corpse Flower comes from!

When I heard about the blooming Corpse Flower I knew I had to take the girls to see it. I mean, how often do you get to see a flower that's bigger than your whole body? Or smell a flower that reeks of rotting flesh? But as the UC Botanic Garden is perched high in the Berkeley Hills where regular buses don't go I wasn't sure how we'd get there. As luck would have it, it turns out that the UC shuttle buses I see driving around town aren't just for UC students (as I has always thought) and there's one that goes right to the entrance of the gardens. Woo hoo!

Trudy's bloom was at its peak on Sunday - and so was the number of visitors. We waited until Monday when I knew it would be a little quieter to visit. While it would have been amazing to see the flower completely open, the large crowds would have been too much for the kids.

52 Weeks: Week 29

Week 29: Brushstrokes Studio

Now that we're all over our jet lag and getting back into the regular swing of things I'm trying to come up with fun activities to keep the kids occupied for the rest of the Summer break.

One thing that we did last Summer that we all enjoyed was decorating ceramic plates at Brushstrokes Studio here in Berkeley. The girls had a great time decorating their plates and were really pleased with how they looked after being glazed and fired. I thought it would be a nice idea to visit Brushstrokes Studio every Summer and decorate another plate. That way the girls will end up with a nice little collection of their very own hand-painted plates.

We headed down to Brushstrokes Studios earlier this week to get creative. Unfortunately they were out of stock of the plates that we decorated last time. I was pretty keen for the girls' to stick to the same kind of plates as last time but I also didn't want them to leave empty handed, so to speak, seeing as we'd spent quite a while walking there. So we decided to paint something different this time around and paint the plates another day. The girls checked out the large assortment of blank ceramic items available and settled on painting espresso cups with matching saucers. We drank a lot of babyccinos while were were in Australia recently and the girls are keen to have them at home as well. Espresso cups are just the right size and we don't happen to have any at home, so that worked out pretty perfectly.

After discussing design ideas and colors, the girls got to work with the paint.

Out and About in Adelaide

During our recent trip to Australia we spent much of our time in our home city of Adelaide. It was so great to catch up with friends and family, but it was also nice to share our home city with the girls. Ava remembers life in Australia before our move to California, but as Lola had only just turned one year old a week before our move she has no memories of Adelaide. And of course, for our American born baby Mathilde, everything was new.

So we tried to get out and about in the city and see as much of it as possible. It was also a great chance for the girls to experience many of the things that we experienced growing up.

Cleland Wildlife Park

Kangaroos and koalas...

That's the first thing most people think of when you mention Australia, right?

We couldn't travel all the way to Australia and not meet some of the country's most well known furry residents. Ava had seen kangaroos and koalas on many occasions before our move to California, but for Lola and Mathilde these marsupials were just something they'd seen in books or on tv. So, during our time in our home city of Adelaide we headed to the hills and visited Cleland Wildlife Park.