July 2015

Fourth of July Traditions for our family... Pancake breakfast, which I guess we didn't get any pictures of this year, and this was the second year that we had a front yard barbeque with our neighbors, complete with plenty of legal fireworks ;)

These three boys had tons of fun running around and being silly.  Behind them are the long party sparklers that we used as a grand finale for our own pyrotechnics fun. 

The boys have found more things to build with these building pieces than I could ever list.  This day they made Star Wars ships to fly around the house.  I love the creativity!

Caleb is five!  He opted for pancakes on his birthday, and got a special addition of whipped cream which he was totally into. 

On his birthday he also wanted to go to the Science Museum.  They happened to have the bearded dragon out for feeding and observation through these green kaleidoscopes.  It was really cool to look at!  Take a look below...

I didn't really expect these pictures to turn out, but I put my phone camera up to the eye piece of the kaleidoscope and you could see the lizard's head and green from edges of the table in cool designs!

(Photo of me, taken by Caleb)

I think I've mentioned in previous posts how into puzzles the boys are right now.  These wooden brain puzzles at the museum are a favorite, especially this one. They literally spent a half and hour working on them and I had to drag them away to go have lunch at the shoppe - usually something that motivates them immediately!

Yes, he wore his rain boots to the Splash pad!

Crystal, who works at the shoppe, LOVES the boys and was super excited that we let her take them on a date to go see the Minion movie.  They loved it too, and mommy and daddy got an impromptu date and picnic lunch to Oak Farm Vineyards. A win-win!

During one of my out-of-town Jazzercise trainings, the boys and Jimmy went to a Rivercats game on a Star Wars theme night.  This was part of Caleb's birthday gift, and they LOVED seeing all the people dressed in Stormtrooper costumes.  Super cool experience for them.

Lego building skills continue improving... Though he didn't do every step correctly, Caleb was able to put this birthday set together all by himself following the instructions. 

In mid-July we spend a day in San Francisco with the boys.   We haven't really done much in the City with them yet, so we were excited for it, and especially since we had a special tour planned, too.  My dad's cousin, Mike Phipps, has lived his whole life in San Francisco, is a huge history buff, and is also on the board for the Cable Car Museum.  We planned to meet up with him at the museum for a personalized tour of the facility that powers all of the cable cars in the City.  It was really cool to see how it all works, see the oldest surviving cable car (the only one post-1906 quake), learn how frequently they have to change out all the cable running under the streets because the grooves that give it grip wear down very quickly (something like every few days...), and see the upstairs area, normally closed to the public, where all the maintenance work and storage happens for the cars.  We learned a lot from Mike's tour and it was a really cool experience for all four of us!

Ringing a cable car bell

Upstairs where the cars are parked and maintenance performed on them...

Part of the personalized tour ended up being an offer for us to ride right out of the Cable Car Museum, all the way down to Powell and Market streets, and then back the other direction to the opposite end of the line down by the wharf.  VIPs :)

We have never taken the boys to the Exploratorium, and now that it is in its new location, Jimmy and I were also interested to check it out.  The boys love the Science Museum in Lodi, and this is much, much larger with endless experiments to check out. It was super cool, but we definitely need another trip or two to interact with more of the exhibits because there were so many and lots of people around, too.  

This little room was one of my favorites.  It had a yellow or orange light illuminating it, and the walls had pictures from around San Francisco neighborhoods, along with a bench, this gumball machine, and a few other things.  Everything appeared monotone with the single color light, but when you shone a flashlight on things in the room, the white light allowed all the diverse colors to show... the colored gumballs, brightly colored houses, and different cars.  

I'm not sure if this is a permanent exhibit, but it caught my attention and made me laugh... It is a toilet, never used as such, with a drinking faucet spout installed on it (look closely in front of the little girl).  It was a question of ethics...Would you drink out of this water fountain???  I'm not sure I could!

This is the strangest looking picture the way it turned out, but it is about symmetry, and the machine would take a picture of your face, and replace the right half with a reverse image of the actual left half of your face, and vice versa for the left half.  So in these two goofy images, my right and left sides of my face are exactly the same - mirror images of each other.  What appears to be a widows peak and really bad parted bangs are the way my hair appeared when it mirrored the one side of my face that my hair was parted to.  

Backyard camp out!  Jimmy has attempted on two or three occasions to set up the tent, both indoors and outdoors at home, and try to sleep inside it with the boys.  It has always ended up with the boys wanting to go sleep in their own beds, even after Jimmy has carried their mattresses, pillows, and blankets out into the tent.  It has been awhile since the last (frustrating) attempt, so Jimmy promised the boys they would do it this summer.  Here it is, complete with a bonfire and S'mores (in a hole dug into the dirt).  They actually went to sleep in the tent for the first time, only to have Caleb wake around 2am crying with stomach pains.  Baby steps I guess...  Maybe next time they will actually make it an entire night in the tent!