An Alligator and a Muffin: Day Two, Heavy on the Nostalgia

Tuesday morning, the kids were up bright and early. I mean, really, ridiculously early. Not just "still on Central time" early, but "we're in a strange place and it's light very early" early. Keeley did not sleep very well on the trip at all, and Todd spent some time snoozing on the couch downstairs with her to help put some more time in her sleep bank (and his.) Luken slept in a sleeping bag in Grandma and Grandpa's room, and I'm sure they really enjoyed their early wake-up calls, haha!

Anyway, it was an unscheduled day, so once we got ourselves ready to go, Todd and I decided to fulfill our cravings for 360º Burritos. (Seems they are calling themselves a "World Grill" now, but that is neither here nor there. We knew what we wanted! :P )

We decided to drive to Walnut Creek, where we lived at one point, to see what's new there. Shortly after we crossed the Bay Bridge, BOTH of the kids fell asleep, hallelujah! (Keeley almost NEVER falls asleep in the car, so this is big news!) In an attempt to extend the naps as long as possible, we just kept driving east until we got to the small town of Clayton, where Todd did most of his growing up. The last time we were there, Luken was around 6 months old, so it's been 4 years. A lot has changed - there are a lot of new houses out there, and the Clayton store, where Todd and his friends did all of their candy shopping during childhood, has become a post office. Many of the standards are still in business, though!

Here's Todd, looking at his childhood home!

Looking good!

Soon, the kiddos awoke, so we headed back to our original destination.

YUM! We both ordered our old favorites - Todd, the Cajun Chicken burrito, and me the Cajun Chicken Quesadilla. It was every bit as good as we remembered. Another restaurant we wish would venture east. There was, in fact, a 360 at the DFW Airport for a while, in the D terminal, but it didn't last very long, and apparently did not offer the Cajun Chicken option, which made it useless to us anyway (not to mention extremely expensive to get to, as it was behind airport security, and would have required a boarding pass to get to!)

My quesadilla:

I'm drooling as I'm typing this out, haha!

Todd, taking the first bite:

I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that the kids were nonplussed by the whole experience, and ventured as far as eating my tortilla chips. They didn't even want their plain quesadilla, though Luken did eat the leftovers later.

Well, the Cajun Chicken filling is kind of spicy, and it was HOT HOT HOT out there in the East Bay, so we drove off in search of ice cream. We came upon the San Francisco Creamery.

They sell the most enormous sundaes you've ever seen, but we didn't know that until we'd ordered entirely too much ice cream!

Strangely, the kids didn't eat very much of theirs, but they did enjoy a few bites!

After the ice cream, we headed back to the car, deciding that it was really just TOO hot to walk around.

Did I mention that it was HOT out there?? Like, heat wave hot. Yes, we'd purposely planned a visit back there in July so we could escape the heat. I was SO very happy that we were staying IN San Francisco, because even when it's 110º+ around the area, SF can be counted on to be in the 50's or 60's. Let me demonstrate:

As we left Walnut Creek, the thermometer in the car read 110º. (It rarely gets THAT hot here in TX!)