It's a Small, Small, Small, Small World

We are back, as of yesterday, from our big birthday trip to Disneyland, courtesy of Aunt Nonny. And what a trip it was. Last Sunday, the day after their birthday, we (Rocket Boy stayed home to have a little peace and quiet) drove 160 miles from Ridgecrest to the Disneyland Hotel. We gave my car to valet parking and went to check in.

Nonny and I both remember the Disneyland Hotel from our extreme youth. NOT that we ever stayed in it, of course. Our parents took us to Disneyland twice, in 1967 and 1969, but we stayed in lesser hotels. Still, the Disneyland Hotel sticks in our memories because there was an elevated, enclosed walkway leading from the hotel to the Monorail. Being able to take a walkway from one's hotel to the Monorail seemed like heaven to us.

It's all different now, of course. No more elevated walkway to the Monorail. But it's still a nice hotel. It consists of three large buildings, referred to as "towers," around a huge swimming pool complex. We stayed in the Adventure Tower.

The Adventure Tower had SIX elevators, much to Baby B's astonishment and joy. Four hotel guest elevators and two service elevators. He was in heaven. Nonny had a small room on the 9th floor with a view of the pools, and we had a larger room on the 4th floor facing Downtown Disney. The room was large and comfortable, outstanding for sharing with the kids.

One of my favorite things was that wall panel behind the beds. The "fireworks" in the picture lit up when you flipped a switch, making a great nightlight. I also liked the tiny reading spotlights on the far side of each bed. I could turn my light on and not bother the twins.

The first thing we did after checking in was to go swimming. And honestly, the kids probably would have been happy to spend the whole vacation in the pools. They loved them, especially the Monorail Water Slide.

But we were there to see Disneyland, so after an hour in the water we dried off, got dressed, and ate a quick dinner at the restaurant by the pool. Then it was off to Disneyland, via the Monorail. The twins found the Monorail very exciting. When we got off, they raced off toward the exit, and Baby A managed to bang into either the gate or the railing -- we were never sure -- resulting in a nasty cut under his eye. So our first stop in Disneyland was a bathroom, then a gift shop where Nonny bought the boys Buzz Lightyear Star Command Blasters, and then the First Aid station.

We got a lot of attention at the First Aid station. The nurses cleaned the cut and put a bandaid on it, which Baby A immediately removed. Meanwhile, both boys kept shooting off their Buzz Lightyear Star Command Blasters. Then the nurses told us we really ought to go to Urgent Care or the hospital and have some glue put on the cut. I thought of my car, tucked away in valet parking. "Could we walk to Urgent Care?" I asked, but no. Fortunately Nonny is a nurse too, and she didn't think the cut needed any glue

After all that drama, we had ice cream and waited for the fireworks to begin. The fireworks were spectacular! And we soon learned that they are spectacular every night! (We watched them from our hotel room the next two nights.)

Both Monday and Tuesday we had a room service breakfast and then headed for the park. By early afternoon each day the boys were wiped out, so we returned to the hotel and rested, and then went in the pools. On Monday after swimming both boys fell asleep in the room watching TV, so Nonny went to Disneyland by herself in the evening. On Tuesday I managed to get them to go back to the park for dinner and the parade.

Both boys enjoyed every ride they went on. Baby A's favorite ride was Pirates of the Caribbean. Baby B's favorite ride was It's A Small World.

We also enjoyed the Spinning Teacups.

On our first night I spotted this rocket ride and we finally rode it on Tuesday morning.

I found it terrifying and spent the whole 90 seconds or whatever it took wishing that it would end. I just don't like fast rides. Boos were not fazed by it, however.

Soon it was time to go on It's A Small World again.

The longest line we waited in was for the Storybook Canal Boats.

A close second was the Buzz Lightyear ride.

Unless I'm forgetting something, I think this was my 5th trip to Disneyland. There were the two visits when I was a kid. More recently, Rocket Boy and I stopped off at Disneyland on our honeymoon, ten years ago. We just went in the park for an evening, were horrified by the crowds, and went on (I think) one ride. $50 apiece for one ride. This is why RB didn't want to come along this time.

But Nonny and I went to Disneyland together at least one other time, when we were in our 20s. She was about to start nursing school at UCLA and I drove down from the Bay Area to see her. The Disneyland part of the visit was not very successful. She wanted to go on scary fast rides like Space Mountain. (I kept my eyes closed the entire time, praying it would end.) I wanted to go on silly rides like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (which she hated). We both remember her saying to me, angrily, "This is the happiest place in the world!" For us, at that moment, it wasn't.

I knew this visit would be different. For one thing, we've learned our lesson: we don't like to do the same things at Disneyland! But more importantly, this visit was for the twins. Nonny had some things she wanted to do in the park, and she went off and did them by herself (Space Mountain, Splash Mountain). My favorite ride in the park is the Haunted Mansion, so I did that by myself. But the rest of the time we focused on making sure the twins had a good experience.

Thus, the main things I did at Disneyland, this visit, were (1) go to the bathroom (I think we must have gone to every one in the park); and (2) ride It's A Small World.

Tuesday evening we had dinner at the Mexican restaurant in Frontierland. Boos did not want to eat bean and cheese burritos, so a woman working there suggested I run over to the Coke place on Main Street and bring back some hot dogs for them, which I did. I loved the fact that none of the restaurants in the park are in competition with each other. And they have such good food! I had delicious vegetarian sandwiches both Monday and Tuesday for lunch, and fish tacos Tuesday night.

After dinner we ate popcorn by the lake and watched the big ship go by.

Pretty soon it was time to go on It's A Small World again.

But you know, it's OK. Baby B just loved that ride, and Baby A enjoyed it too. They've been singing the song around the house ever since we got home, except they don't sing it right. They just sing "It's A Small World After All" over and over again at the top of their lungs.

Finally it was time for our last trip on the Monorail...

...and that was it for Disneyland -- our 3-day passes had expired. Never even got near California Adventure, though Nonny went by herself Monday night.

But the next morning we had one more treat -- breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen. It's a buffet, and that's a little complicated when you're Baby A and have to be cajoled to eat ANYTHING for breakfast. I think he had two bites of a piece of pizza and some juice. But Baby B ate two pieces of pizza and a Mickey Mouse waffle, and they were pleased to receive birthday cupcakes and badges.

We were also visited by numerous "characters," most of whom frightened the boos. All around us, families were having their picture taken with Captain Hook and Goofy and a princess, while we cowered in our seats. Baby B did interact just a little bit with this nice baboon, who I think is called Rafiki, so that was fun.

After breakfast we packed up, Nonny caught the shuttle to the airport, and we drove back to Ridgecrest to see Dad and reunite with all the joys of dentist appointments and moving plans. I think I like the Magic Kingdom better!

Happy Birthday

And it truly was a happy birthday, even though things worked out rather strangely. We had planned a party at John's Pizza and invited 17 of their little friends from daycare/preschool: their entire class plus four special friends from the other class. Lots of other people were having parties there today too, but the 11-12:30 slot was still available, so we took that one.

After picking up the cake at the grocery store at 10, we arrived at John's around 10:45. We discovered that they don't even open until 11.

Another little boy waited with us. Turned out he was a guest at the other party scheduled for the same time as ours.

They let us in a few minutes early and we found our tables all ready for us.

We had another table besides the one you can see here. We didn't even use this table at all, just the other one. The tables in the back were for the other party. That party actually had some guests. For the first 40 minutes of our time slot, we had no guests at all. So we played air hockey...

and rode on the little car and the little horse...

and FINALLY one little boy guest showed up, followed by two little girl guests. I never was so happy to see anyone in my life as that first guest and his mom. We had hoped that some other kids would come, even though they hadn't RSVP-ed, but no one else did. Three out of 17. So weird.

We had to hurry up and have the party, because they were going to kick us out promptly at 12:30. We had ordered three pizzas (cheese, pepperoni, and veggie) and pitchers of lemonade, iced tea, and water. There was rather a lot of everything left over. The cake didn't taste very good, but it was certainly impressive.

All that cake for five little children, one of whom was allergic to it. The mom told me about the allergy, but I didn't put two and two together, so I didn't bring a different dessert for her. Fortunately our waitress found her some cherry cobbler.

And then we opened presents, and boos loved everything they got -- Legos and cars.

The other children and their parents decided to stay a little longer to play in the game room, but Baby A and Baby B wanted to go home and play with their new toys. So we did that. And had leftover pizza for dinner.

And then, after dinner, it was time to drive out to the Inyokern Airport to pick up Aunt Nonny, and was that ever a thrill for the boos. And tomorrow Nonny and I are taking the boos to Disneyland. So it's all good, all fun.

But three out of 17. It just blows my mind. Thank goodness the kids are too young to understand or care.

Death of a Desert Tortoise

In March, desert tortoises come out of their burrows after their winter brumation (reptile hibernation). We were looking forward to having our two tortoises come up, so we could spend a bit more time with them before we move and have to give them up.

Instead, our old tortoise, who we call Grandpa, came up in mid-February. And stayed up. He wouldn't go back down in the burrow.

In the picture above (taken last September), Grandpa is the big one on the left.

It was too early for Grandpa to be up, but we couldn't get him to go back down in the burrow. He didn't seem to have the tortoise virus again (no runny nose). So we asked for advice and were told to put him in a box in the garage for a few weeks. We did so, but on warm days we let him sit in the pen. He didn't want water or food, which is normal for a still-brumating tortoise. He seemed very out of it, but I put that down to his not quite woken up state.

Sunday evening I went out to get him, to put him in his box in the garage for the night, and he was dead.

The odd thing was that at first I couldn't tell for sure. There's so little difference between a live tortoise and a dead tortoise. What told me he was dead were three things:
1. He was lying in the middle of the pen with his legs sticking out. Not a normal tortoise position, especially since the sun was going down.
2. When I picked him up, he did not pull his legs in. When I touched them, they were stiff.
3. His eyes were weird. Sunken.


I carried him inside and called for Rocket Boy. We put him back in his box and rushed down the street to ask our very knowledgeable neighbor what to do, but he was out of town. He emailed me when he got home. I was struck by a line in his message: "X tells me that your tortoise may have died." It's really so hard to tell.

We wondered whether the tortoise might need an autopsy, but no. Lots of CTTC members have had tortoises die this year, mainly because so many tortoises are sick when they're turned in to the club. And this particular tortoise was known to be very old and to have had the tortoise virus several times. His death was probably due to organ failure and he had probably been dying for a while. All we could do was bury him. So we chose a spot in a corner of the yard, and tonight Rocket Boy and I dug a grave.

I didn't want to put him in a box. Desert tortoises spend much of their lives underground, in their burrows, and it seemed fitting that he should go back to the earth. So we just set him in the grave. I hope this photo doesn't offend anyone.

I said a few words and then we covered the body with dirt. I hope he can stay there for a long time. No one's likely to dig up this yard any time soon. Maybe the ants will find him and all that will be left will be the shell.

Out and About

I've been neglecting this blog again, and I fear that will be the norm from here on out... only two more months until we move away from Ridgecrest, and after that I probably won't write in here again. Unless something Ridgecrestian happens in my post-Ridgecrest life. I guess that could happen. Anyway, during the next two months I am going to be really really busy getting ready to leave, so the blog will suffer. Maybe. Or maybe I'll feel the need to post a lot, to document our last days. We'll see.

We've been going out and about a lot the past few weeks, continuing to try to see everything we haven't seen and re-see everything we're going to miss. It's all quite impossible.

Two weeks ago, actually 2 days after the last post, we returned to the CALM Zoo (CAlifornia Living Museum) in Bakersfield, where we had been twice before.

I like that zoo a lot, and it's so kid-friendly. Glad we could see it one more time, but I'm sure that'll be our last visit there -- maybe ever?

Last weekend we re-visited Fossil Falls, which is just up 395 from us, less than an hour away (so it's practically in our backyard).

This time, Rocket Boy and the twins walked down into the canyon formed by the falls -- it's probably technically not called a canyon, but whatever.

I stayed behind and watched for them. I can't remember if they're actually in this photo or not, but eventually I did see them from this vantage point.

Afterwards we drove back towards Ridgecrest, but stopped at the park in Pearsonville where we had a mini-barbecue dinner.

This weekend (yesterday) we went back to Death Valley. For once -- seriously, it's probably the only time in our lives -- we got a fairly early start and made it there before noon. It was a beautiful day, blue sky and clouds, not windy, even a few wildflowers blooming. After a pleasant lunch at Stovepipe Wells, we drove on to the Furnace Creek Visitor Center. The twins hadn't been inside since they totally redid it. It's very very nice.

Our excuse for visiting Death Valley this weekend (if one ever really needs an excuse) was MarsFest, an annual gathering of members of the Mars Society. We couldn't attend any talks, but we looked at the exhibits out on the patio. The twins loved this one:

In this photo, the scientist is changing the batteries on the little Mars Rover. Once he got it going again, all the little kids took turns controlling it -- as it zoomed around the patio -- using the joystick and computer you can see there.

Later we drove northeast, as if we were going to Beatty, Nevada. Just after you leave Death Valley National Park, but before you hit Beatty, you come to the ghost town of Rhyolite, where we had never been.

Honestly, this national park is so amazing. Every single time we go, we see something different.

Near the ghost town is a little art museum. We didn't go inside, but the twins enjoyed playing on and around this interesting sculpture. By then it had gotten very cloudy, almost as if it might rain, but it didn't.

And then of course it was time to hurry back to the sand dunes, where we played until the sun set.

Death Valley is one place that I know I *WILL* see again, if I possibly can. It's an incredibly wonderful park. Maybe in six or eight years we'll come back with the twins, see if they have any memories of it. Do you think they will?

Oh no, it's Whiskey Flat Days!

Yesterday we decided that if we wanted to see any more snow this year, we'd better go now, since it seems to be getting warmer every day. Our plan was to drive to Kernville, have lunch at the diner there, and then continue on to the Shirley Meadows ski area. Shirley Meadows is closed due to lack of snow, but we thought there might be enough around for sledding.

As we were driving up around Lake Isabella, we were passed by a large group of old classic cars. "It must be a classic car club, out for a drive," I guessed. But then, as we drove through the outskirts of Kernville, we saw regular cars parked all up and down the side of the road, and people walking along the road too. Parade floats. Carnival rides. People dressed up in old-fashioned clothes. "What is going on?"

What was going on (I'll cut to the chase) was Whiskey Flat Days, an annual extravaganza that celebrates the Old West days of Kernville and its environs, before there was a Lake Isabella. I'd heard of it, but had forgotten it's held on Presidents Day weekend. Thank you Ridgecrest newspapers, for not mentioning it.

We crawled along in traffic (normally Kernville has almost no traffic). The roads were lined with people. The restaurant we had planned to go to is behind all the tents in the photo above. Oh well. No place to park anyway.

We finally got out of town and headed south to Wofford Heights. We'd never noticed a restaurant there, but maybe... yes! There was a restaurant. We almost missed it, but pulled over just in time. The Chatterbox Cafe. They were busy (perhaps full of Whiskey Flat escapees, like us), but eventually we got served. Quite good food! We would definitely go back if the occasion presented itself.

After lunch we turned right on Highway 155 and headed northwest to Shirley Meadows. At first there was no sign of snow, but as we got closer we finally saw some. Still, it was pretty bare for a ski resort. We parked and got out and walked around a bit.

The kids didn't want to wear warm coats or mittens, so they got cold quickly. Baby B slipped down a snowy hillside and had to scramble back up bare-handed.... he came back to the car crying and I had to read a Ms. Frizzle book (The Magic School Bus: In the Time of the Dinosaurs) to him to calm him down. Pretty soon we gave up on Shirley Meadows and drove down the hill to where Rocket Boy had seen a hill that looked sled-able. Oh yes! Very sled-able!

At first the kids did not want anything more to do with snow. So Rocket Boy climbed the hill and went down on the sled himself. This looked like so much fun that Baby A and then finally Baby B agreed to do it with him. They each went down a few times, but then they were too cold and climbed back in the car for more of Ms. Frizzle. Rocket Boy was disappointed in them.

"It's OK," I told him. "Next year we'll be back in Boulder and they'll learn to love snow and sledding. We'll just take it slow. It'll be OK."

We went back to the Chatterbox Cafe for pie, and then drove on home to Ridgecrest (avoiding Kernville this time).

Now they're saying we're going to have rain and possibly snow on Tuesday and Wednesday. Maybe that wasn't our last chance for the year?

Resolutions

It occurred to me that I never wrote a post about my New Year's resolutions... and, you know, it's probably too late to do it now. But tonight I took a quick look at my list, just to see how I'm doing with them. Many of the resolutions refer to things that are going to happen (or not happen) later in the year, such as *Move back to Boulder, *Get a job, and *Get twins settled in kindergarten. Others, such as *Walk regularly, *Go to sleep earlier, and *Stick with WW, are coming along reasonably well, which is to say, sort of OK, sort of not OK, you know how it is.

I have noticed, through the years, that often one resolution will knock out another. They compete for my time, and I have only so much time (not to mention almost-five-year-old twins). I can't write AND sew AND keep up with photo albums AND play the piano AND read AND watch movies AND walk AND go to concerts AND blog AND do volunteer work AND do art projects with the kids AND have a garden AND AND AND. Some people can probably fit all these things into their lives, plus more, but I can't. And when I start working again I especially won't be able to.

The resolution that seems to be knocking out others this year is *Spend at least 1 hour (preferably 2) on writing, at least 5 times a week. Now that the twins are in daycare from 9 to 2, I have a lovely little writing niche in my days. I get home around 9:15, do some chores, and am sitting at my computer by 10. I write from 10 to 12, and then there's time for lunch and more chores and errands before the twins get home. It's completely fabulous.

On the subject of writing, I have some news. Again this year, I made the first cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. If you go to http://www.amazon.com/abna and click on mystery/thriller, you'll find my name and entry (which incidentally has the same title as this blog). I will probably not make the second cut, but I'm having fun.

Today the News Review (local Ridgecrest paper) published a book review I wrote of David McCullough's John Adams. Only in Ridgecrest can you write a review of a 12-year-old book and get it published. And last week the brochures for the Ridgecrest Desert Wildflower Festival came out, and they contain a poem of mine! It's nothing special, and they left out a word, and there's a word in there that should have been a different word... but I'm still kind of tickled. Never expected to have a poem published. Here is the corrected poem:

My little boy can recognize one flower,
and as we walk along he points it out:
"Dandelion!"
said always with such confidence, such pleasure.
"Yes," I agree, but add, pedantically,
"Desert dandelion."

We've had so little rain this year that I'm afraid there won't be many desert dandelions around in the spring, but you never know. Meanwhile, I'll keep writing.

Where NOT to go with twins

Oh dear. Just when I think we've got the whole travel thing worked out, we have another disaster.

Today we had planned to go up past Kernville to Shirley Meadows to look for snow. Although the East Coast is blizzarding, out here we're starting to think about spring. Not much time left for sledding. But we had a busy morning and it got too late for a long trip like that.

So we made a new plan. I've been trying to get Rocket Boy to buy some new pants, but he always says he doesn't need any. Then on Friday he had to make an emergency trip home from work because his pants split. So we decided to go to Kohl's for new ones. Unfortunately, Kohl's is in Palmdale, 90 miles away. To make the trip a little more twin-friendly, we decided to include a visit to the Cat House in Rosamond (otherwise known as the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound's Feline Conservation Center). We drove an hour to Mojave for lunch at Denny's, and then it was maybe 15 minutes more to the Cat House.

We arrived around 2:30 pm, parked in the dusty lot, and walked up to the entrance (that is, Rocket Boy and I walked, while the twins hopped, danced, and ran). You enter through the gift shop, well stocked with interesting cat items. After we paid our $24 ($7 adults, $5 kids), the woman at the counter told Baby A and Baby B the rules: (1) Don't run, (2) Don't yell, (3) Don't go on the grass, (4) Don't chase the peacocks. I thought about turning around and leaving right then, but it's hard to turn around and leave when you've just spent $24 and your children KNOW that they're about to enter a kind of zoo. We'd been talking and talking about the big cats we were going to see.

Anyway, you can probably write this next paragraph for me. We enter the zoo. Boos spot the grass, begin to run across it. We chase them: "Don't run! Don't go on the grass!" They spot a big, interesting rock on the grass and want to climb it. We say "No! Don't go on the grass! Come see the cats!" They start to yell and then to scream. A mountain lion that has been eating its dinner runs and hides. We say "No! Don't yell!" They run over the grass again. A park employee tries to help out by urging the kids to come and see some other cats. Reluctantly they go with her, but Baby B continues to yell at me about how he wants to go on the rock, and then starts kicking the fence around the cats' cage, hard. Everyone is staring at us and the cats are getting more and more agitated.

I give up, pick him up, and carry him out of the park, still screaming.

Above you can see the grass that we weren't allowed to walk on and just a corner of the rock they wanted to climb on. This is the only picture I took at the park. Things fell apart too quickly.

It took forever to calm them down enough to get in the car, and Baby B screamed pretty much all the rest of the way to Palmdale. He kept saying "I wanted to see more CATS!!!" It was horrible.

In Palmdale, Rocket Boy and Baby A shopped at Kohl's, while I stayed with Baby B, who was too freaked out to leave the car. A long long time later, RB and Baby A emerged from the store with one pair of pants that had cost $63. WTF??? I thought Kohl's was a discount store. "That's the last pair of pants I'm buying in California!" Rocket Boy declared. It had not been a good shopping experience.

We were back in Ridgecrest by 7 pm. Maybe by tomorrow I will have calmed down.

On the plus side, the experience reminded me why I am moving back to Boulder. There's a Kohl's six miles from our old house in Boulder. Six miles. Do you know how different today would have been if we had only needed to drive six miles to go shopping?

Hello February, hello stress

So now it's February, which means I'm supposed to be happier. To some extent I am. Some of the things that are good about February are (1) it's short, (2) it has a cheerful candy holiday in it, and (3) it's followed by the month (March) in which spring begins. In addition, there's more light in February, which makes everything seem better.

But there's no question that I'm more on edge this year than usual. I finally got myself to take a Barbara Pym novel off the bookshelf and put it on my nightstand, but I haven't opened it yet. (Normally I like to spend all of February reading B. Pym.) Still spending most of my time doing puzzles, not reading. I'm pretty sure it's the coming move that's making me jittery. Our progress on said move seems stalled, though we have not changed our tentative dates (late April to early May).

Here's where we stand with the move:

1. Called two movers to come give us quotes.

     a. 1st mover came by, looked at our stuff, and quoted us $18,000. (To be fair, that quote includes packing our breakable stuff. We have since decided to pack everything ourselves.)

     b. 2nd mover didn't call us back. This past week I called them again. They claimed they were just going to call us back and might be able to come over either late in the day Thursday or late in the day Friday. Heard nothing on Thursday. On Friday I checked messages around 2 pm to discover that they had called at 9 am, offering to come by at 10 am. I quickly called them and the nice lady said they couldn't possibly come now, but she'd give us another call next week. I'm not feeling optimistic.

     c. Debating whether or not to call a Bakersfield mover too.

2. Rocket Boy's old SUV needs a smog check this year for us to be able to register it, and we're almost certain it won't pass. So our plan is that he will drive it to Boulder and register it there (as non-operational) with the idea that he will get it fixed later (there's a good Mitsubishi repair guy in Boulder), and then fly back here. Need to choose a date (SOON) for him to do this crazy thing.

3. Need to start freecycling stuff; haven't. Hate freecycle.

4. Every time I tell RB I want to leave something behind (Papasan chair, microwave, old kitchen table, changing table, washer & dryer) because we won't have room for it in the Boulder house and we need to lighten up the moving truck so as not to pay $18,000 for the move, he says, "We could put it in the cabin."

5. Didn't get the job I applied for at the University of Colorado. Remembering vividly what it was like to do temp work when I was 37. Wondering what it will be like to do temp work when I am 52/53.

If you were me, wouldn't you be stressed? Just a little? And there's all that Valentine's Day candy in the stores...

On the other hand, it's still at least two and a half months until our move date. Maybe I should just forget about the move and have a pleasant February.

San Diego adventure

We're just back from a lovely long weekend in San Diego, visiting an old friend of mine and her husband. Betty and Mark actually let us stay in their new house with them, which was great -- but also a bit terrifying, knowing as we do how destructive the twins can be. They weren't TOO bad. I think the only breakage was one wineglass. Unless I'm forgetting something. It's easy to block these things out.

We drove down there on Thursday afternoon, arriving in time for dinner. It's about 222 miles from our house to theirs, and we made the drive in a little over 4 hours, including two short stops.

On Friday, we spent several hours at the fabulous San Diego Zoo. Here we are looking at the flamingos.

Next, we saw the orangutangs being fed.

And then we decided it was time for our own lunch. After lunch we asked everyone what they wanted to see. Baby B wanted to see gorillas, Baby A wanted to see lions, Rocket Boy wanted to see polar bears, and I wanted to see Galapagos tortoises. So we first took the Hippo Trail to the gorilla exhibit (didn't get a good shot of the gorillas, but here are the men sitting on a statue of a hippo),

saw lots of monkeys and birds and other animals, and finally reached the polar bear exhibit, at the far end of the park. The twins were more interested in the statue of the polar bear than the actual animal, but the adults had a good time looking at the bears, reindeer, and arctic foxes.

The "polar plunge" section was not too far from the lions and jaguars.

We got to watch the jaguars being fed "blood popsicles," which was quite interesting, if a bit gross.

After the big cats, we had to take a very long walk around the zoo to get back to the entrance/exit, and we were all very tired when we got there, so we let that be the end of the day. I was a little bummed that I didn't get to see the tortoises, but only a little. It was a really nice day.

Saturday we drove over the famous Coronado Bridge to Coronado Island, where we had lunch right near the water and then took the ferry back to the mainland. Here's the ferry we took:

And here we are getting off it, after a pleasant ride:

We walked along the pier to Seaport Village, where there are lots of shops and restaurants -- and a carousel, which of course we rode. Baby A, as usual, insisted on riding with me on what he calls a "couch" -- the animals are just way too scary for him.

But Baby B was unexpectedly brave and decided he wanted to ride by himself on a giraffe (a non-moving one). I was so proud of my little boy.

Afterward, as a special treat, we let the boys choose balloon creatures ($3 each from a vendor, and we got to watch them being made).

After a snack at the local independent bookstore (and several purchases, of course), we walked back to where we caught the ferry for the ride back to Coronado. Here we are getting off the boat.

Another really nice day all around.

Today we got up and packed, said our goodbyes, and went off to shop at Fry's and Trader Joe's before beginning the long drive home. About a half hour out of town we stopped in Escondido and spent an hour at a wonderful park there, Grape Day Park, where the kids played on the cool grape-themed equipment,

and got wet in the fountain.

The rest of the drive home involved the usual screaming and fighting over inconsequential things, but eventually it ended. And you know what? January is finally over! It's February! I'm so relieved.