Dolores Park Playground

Time for another amazing playground, this time a little closer to home.

When we first moved to the Bay Area one of the first places we visited was Dolores Park in San Francisco's Mission District. It's an amazing park with sprawling lawns, breathtaking views over the city and some pretty interesting views of the (not always dressed) locals! One thing that was missing, however, was a playground.

Fast forward to April this year and a new playground has been opened in Dolores Park. And what an amazing playground it is. The kids absolutely love this new playground. I love this new playground!
We visited the new playground while attending the Cinco de Mayo Festival in Dolores Park. As you can imagine, the park was absolutely packed with festival goers. That said, the playground has enough to keep kids occupied even with huge crowds. I think the only thing the girls had to wait their turn for was the swing and the long slide. Other than that it was go, go go...

The playground at Dolores Park

I won't go into too much detail about the playground. I'll just let the pictures tell the story.

Dennis the Menace Park

Back in April we went for a short trip down to the beautiful coastal town of Monterey. The highlight of our trip was our visit to Monterey Bay Aquarium - you can read about it here. While the aquarium may be the biggest drawcard in town there are a few other "must see" places to take the kids.

Once such place is Dennis the Menace Park; quite possibly one of the coolest playgrounds ever!

This playground was designed by the creator of Dennis the Menace, Hank Ketcham who was a local in the Monterey Bay area.

Dennis the Menace Park

Now I must admit that not being a fan of Dennis the Menace I was a little skeptical when I heard the name. However, I'd been told by quite a few people that it's a great place. Well, they weren't wrong. This playground has everything: slides, tunnels, flying fox, swings, bouncy suspension bridge, rock climbing wall, a maze, plenty of things to climb, a weird spinning ride that I couldn't possible name...

Modern Communication

I thought I'd share this photo of the girls chatting to their Nanna through Skype.

Hello Nanna!

Got to love modern technology. It certainly makes keeping in touch with family and friends on the other side of the world so much easier. Between Facebook and Skype we're always up to date with news and the distance just doesn't seem so big.

Home Grown Pickles

As you would have seen in my last post today was Ava's pre-school graduation day.

Ava's teacher was also "graduating" from pre-school after 26 years of service. All the children and parents contributed to a group present, however Ava really wanted to give her teacher something special just from herself.

Ava's teacher really loves pickles. In the past Ava has given her teacher several pickle related presents; a simple jar of pickles for Valentine's Day and "Pickle Party Beans" (green jelly beans) for her birthday. We needed to come up with a new pickle themed idea for a graduation present.

As Ava's teacher is retiring and plans to spend her time gardening we thought she might like to grow her own pickles.  One jar, a few packs of Pickling Cucumber seeds and a half dozen hand drawn labels later and we had our gift.

Teacher Meri's Home Grown Pickles kit

Graduation Day

Today Ava graduated from pre-school... again.

I say "again" as Ava also had a graduation from pre-school just before we left Australia last year. This time though it was an official graduation with her whole class.

Ava's class made special graduation t-shirts to wear for their big day and performed a few songs for family and friends before receiving their certificates. It was all very cute.

"I am a promise with a capital P..."

Artichoke Flowers

Two weeks back I purchased a few bunches of artichoke flowers from my local fruit market.
My eye was instantly drawn to their dramatic, almost succulent like look. While they may look similar to succulents the artichoke flowers are not at all fleshy. Rather they are quite tough and spiky.
The colours worked perfectly for my living room and the flowers took pride of place in the middle of our dining table.

Spiky artichoke flowers

Fast forward two weeks and my artichoke flowers have changed completely. Just as I thought they were starting to die off the flowers decided to surprise me with purple petals coming out the centre.
The resulting look is much softer and adds a nice splash of colour to our living room. It's just like having new flowers.

Just like a whole new flower

The purple blooming out of the centre really shows that artichokes are a member of the thistle family.
I've always thought that thistle flowers make a beautiful (yet ouchy!) display.

Lawrence Hall of Science

Time to cross another place off the "Bay Area with Kids" list...

A few weekends back we visited Lawrence Hall of Science here in Berkeley. 

Lawrence Hall of Science is actually part of the University of California Berkeley - let's call it Cal for short. Being a university town, a major part of Berkeley is made up of the Cal campus. And it is huge. 

Cal not only offers a learning environment for college students but is home to a large array of family friendly, community venues from Botanical Gardens, to sporting venues and science museums.

I wasn't really sure what to expect at Lawrence Hall but I had heard from other parents at pre-school that it's a hit with kids around Ava's age. Well, it certainly was a hit with Ava too!

Lawrence Hall is full of fun, interactive science exhibits that kids can get involved in. 

First up we made paper planes and attempted to fly them through targets. I say "attempted to" as I don't think we actually got any through the target! We had fun though and that's the main thing. 

This one looks like it might go through...