5)  new hotspot.  i got to check out airborne gymnastics, a new place that i had never been to before.  it’s a training gym for real gymnasts — like the ones who go the olympics.  (that’s what i heard, anyway.)  mommy said that i might get to join maddie’s class when i turn 2.5.

4)  circuit training.  to get through the circuit, we had to slide down a slide, swing on a rope, walk a balance beam, swing on the rings, and even hop through a hopscotch!  the best part was at the end when we got to slide into the giant foam pit.  (see video.)  i cheated and did that last part 3 times  sliding in is SO FUN, but getting out is like crawling out of quicksand.

3)  good friends.  maddie and i have a handful of mutual friends, and it’s always fun to hang out with them because i don’t see them often.  maddie, ava, zoe, kai, and i, all sat together for dinner after working up a big appetite.

2)  baby sister’s friends.  it’s nice that she had friends to play with, too.  after all, it is her half birthday.  while i was sitting with my friends at the party table, baby sister hung out with malia (her buddy who is only 12 days younger).  and when i wasn’t looking, she started “hanging out” with kai, too.  when i saw them out of the corner of my eye, i got SO UPSET that i ran across the room and put a stop to it.  no joke.  i mean, look at the photo.  wth is that all about???

and the number one reason why maddie’s party was so great…

1)  ice cream cake!  ‘nuf said.  happy birthday maddie!

just like last year, i had a blast looking at all of the colorful lights and decorations.  even baby sister was wide-eyed with excitement, trying to take it all in.  it was so cool to see people skating in the ice rink.  we stopped to watch them for a little while.  i have skates, but theirs looked different than mine.  mommy said that i could go skating when i am big enough to fit into the rental ice skates.  i wonder when that will be.

the best part of christmas in the park was the train.  at first, i just watched it pass by.  so cool!  but then i realized that it wasn’t a real passenger train — it was just for decoration — so if i ran really fast, i could get in front of it and watch it go by again.  so i ran.  really fast.  i ran after the train, and mommy and dada ran after me.  it was like a scene out of the movies when a little kid runs into a crowd of people and disappears in and out of view because he’s so little and the crowd is so big.

i can’t wait to go again!  last year, auntie barbara went with us.  this year, auntie mimi.  i think we should make it a tradition to bring my favorite aunties with us to christmas in the park every year.  who wants to join us next year?

when we arrived, we were pretty disappointed.  the place is SMALL.  we were expecting something like the children’s discovery museum in san jose, but the entire place is about the size of the wonder cabinet (the small section of CDM dedicated to toddlers).    mommy figured that we would be in and out of there in half an hour.

inside the junior museum, there were a series of clean green energy machines.  they are supposed to help visitors investigate wind, solar, water, and kid-power — creating connections between the choices we make and our environment.  whatever.  i didn’t really understand it.  all i knew was that i got to press buttons, flip switches, turn wheels, and stuff happened.  it was really cool.  mommy and dada were really surprised at how much fun i was having with all those machines. 

my favorite exhibit in the museum was the bugs.  there were a bunch of different insects in clear blocks.  i put the blocks on the glass shelf and used a magnifying glass to make them really big.  big bugs are awesome.  i kept going back to that exhibit over and over again.  mommy told me not to get any ideas about using magnifying glasses and bugs and sunlight for entertainment.  she says it’s a boy thing, but i have no idea what she’s talking about… yet.

there was also a small area just for babies.  baby sister went inside there for a little while, but got bored quickly.  it was about the size of the closet in mommy and dada’s room, and aside from one fake butterfly, there wasn’t a whole lot for her to do in there.

just outside of the museum is a small zoo.  i saw bunny rabbits, a giant goose, a snake, bobcats, rats, and a few other animals.  the bunny rabbits were hilarious.  they were making me laugh because they clean themselves like koda does.  so silly — they aren’t dogs!  i don’t know why there was a fence around them, but i just climbed over it.  i wanted to pet them like i did with the goats and sheep at other zoos.  mommy wouldn’t let me.  my favorite animals were the rats.  i liked watching them run and run and run in the wheel.  i wanted to stay and watch them and give them high fives.  i kept calling them “baby”.  mommy thought i was calling them babies because they are small, but actually, there were a bunch of baby rats sleeping in there.

mommy was definitely wrong about being in and out of there in 30 minutes.  even though the museum is small, i had so much fun that we stayed for over 3 hours.  i could have stayed all day, but we had to get home because auntie mimi was coming over to go to christmas in the park with us (see next entry).  and even though the admission was free, i made a donation on our way out.

we started the day in bay hall, i had fun crawling under the pier, climbing up to the wharf, and of course, playing with the ginormous train set.  those trains will never get old.

then we walked through the wave workshop.  eh.  not much for us there.  although, we did happen to be there just in time for story time.  matthew and i actually sat through an entire story.  can you believe it?

then we moved on to the art studio.  we made stamp art masterpieces and painted the windows.  i still think that’s so cool.  where else do you get to paint on windows?  mommy thought i would like the sculpting clay since i love playing with play-doh, but i wasn’t all that into it.  baby sister got in on some fun, playing with toys in the mirrored crawl area of the art studio.

after lunch we checked out discovery hall, which had a new exhibition: “out on a limb: adventures with nature and art”.  there was this awesome treehouse that was fun to climb up.  inside it was this talking tube that mommy talked into while she was on the ground, and her voice came out of the tube all the way up in the treehouse!  how cool!  i also liked banging on the drumheads with big sticks in the forest jam exhibit.  they were supposed to make forest sounds, but it all just sounded like banging to me.

we finished off the afternoon in lookout cove.  i showed matthew the fishing boat, then i brought him to to the shipwreck to dig for artifacts.  we took turns shoveling sand into the sifters, then we tried to “shake shake shake” the sand out to see what cool things we found.  turns out that we ended up dumping all the sand out instead of sifting it.  oh well.  the shoveling with the best part of it, anyway.

by 3pm, matthew was ready for his nap.  i wanted to stay longer, but i think mommy and dada wanted to go home and take a nap too.  party poopers.

if you think that thomas is an imaginary train, you are wrong.  he is a real, life-size engine.  he pulled a passenger car that we rode through the town.  the whole train was decorated with pretty christmas lights and wreaths.  however, our train car has one fewer light now — i leaned over the side of the moving train car, unscrewed the bulb, and dropped it to the ground.  i could only get to one before dada stopped me.

on the train, there was an old guy with a white beard, red suit, and black boots.  everyone called him santa.  i gave him a high five, but i didn’t want to take a photo with him.  why would i?  matthew and logan seemed to recognize him, but it was the first time i ever saw him.

in addition to the train ride, there were lots of other “thomas & friends” activities — train tables, ornament-making, face-painting, and lots more.  thomas & friends took over the entire santa cruz boardwalk.  matthew, logan, and i ran all around the place wearing our thomas conductors hats.  i refused to wear my hat forward, so everyone else switched theirs around too.  mama said we looked like thomas-the-train gang members.  good thing we didn’t get kicked off the boardwalk — there’s a sign that says no gangs allowed.  (really, there is.)

what a fun day.  i wonder when thomas is going to chug past our house.

when i went to my first class at the little gym, we mostly sang songs and did some exercises on the mat.  but there’s a new curriculum now, so baby sister got to use a lot of the gym equipment.  she went for a ride on the parachute, did forward rolls on the “cheese” (foam wedge), stood between the parallel bars, and did pull ups on the uneven bars — all with mommeee’s help, of course.  mommeee wasn’t a very good spotter though, because she let baby lean forward and conk her head on the bar.  bad mommeee.

mama and dada hadn’t been to chuck e. cheese’s in a really long time, and they were both sort of hesitant to go.  they thought it was going to be run-down and creepy (rat heads popping out of the ceiling are creepy, right?) and that it would give me nightmares.  but family is family.  so off we went.  we were all pleasantly surprised!  if you haven’t been to chuck e. cheese’s in awhile, lemme tell you about it.

• the restaurant is well-lit, clean, and modern.  there are plasma TVs on the walls and automatic ticket exchange machines (no more counting strips of tickets at the prize counter).
• they do NOT mess around when it comes to child security. a bouncer guards the entrance. you and your family get stamped with invisible ink, then the bouncer lets you through the ropes. and get this… on your way out, the bouncer checks your hand stamp under a black light to make sure that you’re leaving with the same people that you came with!
• animal heads do not come out of the ceiling.  instead, animals (whole ones) sing and dance on stage.  chuck the rat even came out onto the show floor to sing “happy birthday” and “if you’re happy and you know it” with us!
• half the arcade is for big kids.  i tried playing some games on the big kid side, but most of the machines were too tall for me.  and i definitely couldn’t reach the pedal in the driving games.  mama says i am a terrible driver.  i disagree.  i wanted to go off-roading and drive into oncoming traffic.  it’s more fun that way.
• half the arcade is for little kids like me.  i played lots of games, but my favorite was the hungry froggy.  when the frog opened his mouth, i pressed the button to launch the colored balls into his mouth.  i won lots of tickets playing that game, but i could have cared less about the tickets.  i just wanted to feed the frog all day long.  the little kid games were still too big for baby sister.  there was nothing for her to do, so she fell asleep.

basically, chuck e. cheese’s is awesome.  it’s like a dave & buster’s, but for kids. happy birthday lindsey!  thank you for introducing me to chuck e cheese’s.  i hope i get to have a party there one of these days

it was zoe and ava’s first time at gilroy gardens, so i showed them around.  we went on lots of rides together and they loved it.  especially zoe — she was so excited and giggly all day long.  she wanted to ride all the rides with me and she tried to hold my hand.  she even tried to bust a move with the ol’ stretching-her-arm-around-my-shoulder trick.

zoe and i are a match made in heaven.  while dada was eating his funnel cake, she and i hung out by the railing together and watched the trains go by.  she was even wearing a thomas the train shirt!  oh, and get this:  when mama was taking a photo of us on the strawberry ride, zoe told her “you hafta close the door!”  a girl who likes trains and is OCD about closing doors?  i think i’m in love.

i came thiiis —> <— close to being a shark for halloween (again) this year.  but mama finally came to her senses and got me a new costume.  i was superkyden!  the three of us were superheroes:  spiderman, superman, and supercow

we went trick-or-treating at booths set up all over the park.  most places gave out healthy treats like fruit leather and organic crisped rice bars.  at one booth, they let us drive (well, sit in) the sharks zamboni.  how cool!  at first, i thought i got to sit in there cuz sharkie and i are buddies, but it turned out that they were letting just about anyone drive it.  after we got tired of collecting healthy halloween treats, we fed the goats, played some more, and then called it a day.  i liked the healthy snacks, but dada was disappointed that he didn’t find any chocolate when he raided my candy bag.