An Alligator and a Muffin

Thursday, July 17, 2008

The BIG Day!

If you know us personally, or if you read this blog with any regularity, you know of Luken's obsession with octopuses. He lives and breathes them (with a few snakes and spiders thrown in here and there, just for fun! ;) )

When planning our San Francisco trip, we decided that a drive down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium would be a MUST! After all, where better to see a Giant Pacific Octopus but Monterey?

Todd's sister and her kids decided to join us, and of course, his parents were with us, as well. In addition, my dad - "Bicycle Grandpa" decided to drive down from the North Bay to join in on the fun, and he got up before the crack of dawn to meet us at the house and ride along in our car. We managed to get 11 bodies there in 2 cars, and we made judicious use of the carpool lanes whenever possible! :P

Luken, inspecting the guide pamphlet. (OK, he was probably looking at a photo of an octopus!)

And where do you think he wanted to go first? Hehe!

These pictures are pretty terrible, as the octopus was in low light (they are nocturnal, though one of them gave us quite a show right away) and no flash is allowed, so I just had to do my best...

Eventually we were able to pry him away from the octopus tank and explore other parts of the aquarium.

Examining some starfish:

Some little wormy guys. Luken was quite enamored with the eels that were next-door to these guys, but my picture of them didn't turn out at all. I thought these were kind of cool, though!

Keeley, checking out some fishies:

A diver in the kelp exhibit, feeding the sea animals:

Keeley, enamored with something, and looking terribly lovely! Yes, she is wearing her octopus dress, of course! :D

Oh, look, another octopus! This one is tiny and hiding in someone else's shell!

Keeley was mesmerized and frightened by a section of the aquarium where waves crashed overhead. Here she is reacting, looking quite rattled. But she refused to leave, haha!

Oh, no - she's being eaten by a giant clam!

And it found Luken, too!

Just being cute...

Getting hands-on:

Me, I think octopuses are cool, and I LOVE indulging Luken in his love of them, but my heart lies with the jellyfish. They are just so amazing and beautiful and calming, and a well-done aquarium will almost always have some darkened rooms filled with well-lit-to-glow jellyfish that just mesmerize me. In my dream home, I want a meditation room with a giant jellyfish tank! ;) Here are some of the ones on display in Monterey:

They even have jellyfish art there. These babies go for $1,000!!!!

I'd rather have a tank with real, live ones!!

After a VERY full day at the aquarium, (we broke for lunch at Bubba Gump's, then went back for some more) and laying out probably way too much at the gift shops, we hopped in the cars and headed back north.

I think we wore the kids out. Oh, and Bicycle Grandpa, too, haha!

We had planned to get back to the South Bay/Peninsula around dinner time so we could enjoy yet another food favorite for dinner, Amici's Pizza!

When Todd and I lived in San Mateo, we discovered the deliciousness of their wood-fired pizza, and fell in love with the combination of pepperoni and fresh garlic. It is amazing! We miss Amici's and 360 almost daily out here in TX, so whenever we are back home, we MUST get our fill! (This time, we only hit each restaurant once, but on other visits, we have gone multiple times in as many days!!)

We were still a party of 11, so there were a lot of other people at the table. We were quite upfront about the fact that we would not be sharing. Period. This baby was allllllll ours!

More drooling...

It was perfect! Ahhhhh!!

After dinner was over, (*sniff, sniff*... goodbye old friend!) we needed something sweet so we walked down the street to a yogurt place for dessert.
Here are Luken and Ashleigh enjoying their cool treats!

Keeley was not so enamored with her concotion - chocolate frozen yogurt and M&M's. The girl is an M&M FREAK, and was not pleased with the stuff in the way.

So, I had Daddy ask for a small cup of JUST M&M's.

And this is how she felt about that!

Being goofy with Grandpa:

Boy, we were all exhausted when we got back to the house. It was after 9pm by the time we got back! We had left the house at 8:15am!

It was well worth it, though. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is truly world-class. I know I have been spoiled by seeing some of the most spectacular aquariums in the US -Monterey, Seattle, and Maui. I know there are some fans of the Dallas World Aquarium out there, but there is just no comparison! We really enjoyed our amazing day there!! We will be back!

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!)