Epic Snacks for Epic Play

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Goldfish® but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

My karate kids are growing up!

A few weeks back it was belt test day for all three of my girls and they all passed. Blue belts for both Ava and Lola, and a white belt with two black stripes for my littlest ninja Mathilde.

The girls worked so hard preparing for their belt test. They practiced their kata moves and their sparring skills every week at karate class in the park until they had perfected them.

All that karate work makes for hungry kids and hungry kids need tasty snacks that pack a punch like a blue belt!

Goldfish crackers have been one of the kids' favorite go to snacks for such a long time, so we were super excited when we discovered the new Goldfish Epic Crunch Nacho flavor. A classic favorite with a new twist for my growing girls. The perfect after karate class snack.

Talk about packing a punch! These tasty little morsels sure do live up to their name. The zesty nacho cheese flavor was a big hit with the kids (and grown ups!) and the extra tortilla crunch made for epic snacking fun.

Goldfish Epic Crunch are baked with whole grains and contain no artificial flavor or preservatives. They're always baked, never fried.

The big, bold flavor of Goldfish Epic Crunch comes in a big, bold new size. With a flavor and crunch that appeals to bigger kids, these tasty snacks come in a bigger size for more flavor and crunch in every bite.

A knock out hit with my karate kids!

Looks like we've found our new go to snack for lunch boxes, road tripping and sharing with friends after karate class!

To learn more about about all new Goldfish Epic Crunch Nacho and to find a retailer near you click here.

Summer Camp Fun with Galileo

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Galileo Camps but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.

It may be a grey and rainy day here in the Bay Area, but Summer is just around the corner.

And Summer means Summer camp!

For the past few years Ava has been attending Galileo Camps here in Berkeley and she has always had a blast. This year is no different and she can't wait.

This week the kids are on Spring Break and rather than travelling like we usually do we're staying home and having "Camp Mum". A week of hands-on craft and STEAM activities inspired by Galileo as well as a little exploring out and about. I'm keeping the kids' minds active and learning while we have fun together.

Today we took a fun activity from the Zoom, Fly, Bolt, Blast Steam Handbook from Galileo and made grabbers with simple materials. They were easy enough for the kids to make on their own and provided a ton of fun when done. 

Dino Days at California Academy of Sciences

California Academy of Sciences has long been one of our favorite museums to visit in the Bay Area. With the addition of its new Dino Days exhibit the number one place has been locked in! You know we can't go past some good dinosaur fun!

Dino Days is a fun exhibit featuring five life sized animatronic dinosaurs that roar and move in a realistic way, a climb on t-rex that makes for fun photos, two dig sites for future paleontologists to practice their skills, and plenty of informative displays. 

LMNL at Onedome

A few weeks back the girls had a day off school so we decided to make the most of it and visit LMNL, an amazing new exhibition in San Francisco.

A Fun Toast Snack for Minecraft Obsessed Kids

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Little Northern Bakehouse.

Do your kids like eating toast?

My kids love it, and while I always stick with a healthy, heart-friendly whole grain bread for their toast, they tend to want sugary sweet toppings on it, like jam, cookie spread or Nutella. I get it - these are all super yummy, but they're not the healthiest toppings around.

In a bid to get the kids eating something on top of their toast that's as healthy as the toast itself, I came up with this fun Minecraft inspired snack. All three of my kids, like so many others, are kind of obsessed when it comes to Minecraft (You may remember Ava's Creeper costume from Halloween), so turning their toast into a Creeper character was a hit. And the best part, it's super simple to make!

While the kids were at karate class today I whipped up some healthy Creeper toast as an after karate snack. They're always hungry after their class and I knew that they'd want to fill up on junk if I didn't have something healthy ready on hand. This fun toast is so simple to make and you'll only need three ingredients: bread, avocado and either blackberries or black beans depending on what your kid prefers. 

 

My favorite bread for the whole family is Little Northern Bakehouse. Their products are made from gluten free, non-GMO whole food ingredients so I know I'm giving the kids a healthy choice when it comes to their sandwiches and toast - no matter what they top it with! Unlike other gluten free options we've tried in the past, Little Northern Bakehouse products have all the softness of regular grain bread, and some of the products, including the Sprouted 7 Grain bread (my favorite) are 100% plant based and egg free. This means that Little Northern Bakehouse products are suitable for a wide range of diets without sacrificing taste or texture. It's a win-win!

Lunar New Year Festival 2019

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

It's the year of the pig; Ava's favorite animal and coincidentally, the Chinese year she happened to be born in.

Every year I love taking the kids to the various Lunar New Year celebrations around the Bay Area, but given that this year happens to be Ava's favorite animal of all time, it feels a little more special.
Last weekend we braved the rain and headed to Berkeley's Fourth Street shopping district for the annual Lunar New Year festival.

We arrived just as the lion dance was about to begin. Every year the lion dance is based on a story relating to the animal of the year. This year the lion dance was based on the three little pigs story. Children from the crowd was chosen to be a part of the show - acting as the little pigs. They were divided into three groups, those with a house made of straw, those with a house made of sticks and, you guessed it, those with a house made of bricks.

A Tuk Tuk Tour of San Francisco with Dylan's Tours

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Dylan's Tours. 

One of my favorite things about living in the San Francisco Bay Area is that there are so many amazing places right here in our own back yard to explore. We've got it all here. Natural beauty, historical sites, cultural and artistic highlights, delicious food and fresh local produce, amazing architecture, inquisitive wildlife, fun playgrounds and parks... And so much of this can be found right within the 49 square miles that make up San Francisco itself.  

With San Francisco just a short train ride across the Bay (or rather, under it) we like to spend a lot of our free time out and about exploring the city. Usually we'll pick just one particular place to explore and we'll do it on our own, discovering new (to us) things along the way. Every now and then it's nice to play tourist for real and let the experts show us around.

A few weeks back the kids had a day off school so we decided to go play tourist in San Francisco with a tour of the city. But it wasn't a tour bus that took us around this beautiful city, it was something much more fun: a tuk tuk! How cool is that? 

Thanks to Dylan's Tours we spent the afternoon exploring the city with the wind in our hair (literally!) as our very own tour guide drove us around the city pointing out highlights and regaling us with stories of the city's past and present. Even though we've lived in the Bay Area for seven years now and are pretty familiar with the city, we still learned so much that was new to us. With the open sides and low speed of this fun three wheeled vehicle we were able to see so much more than we would have in a car or bus. The kids decided that this needs to be our new mode of transport and tried to convince me to buy a tuk tuk for ourselves! 

Dylan's Tours are fully customizable, visiting pretty much any area of the city that you choose. We decided to go for the standard tour that took us to most of the popular tourist sites including Chinatown, North Beach, Lombard Street, Palace of Fine Arts, Crissy Field, the Presidio, Nob Hill, Union Square, and the Ferry Building where we started and ended our fun adventure. We chose the Ferry Building as our pick up point for our tour as it's nice and handy to Embarcadero Bart Station and is a great place to pick up snacks for the ride, but you can select pretty much anywhere in the city as your pick up point, including hotels.