February - California, here we come!

The kids and I headed South to Sacramento to get away from the long Winter here in Washington. It was not only weather related, we got to meet the newest addition to the Ruano family - 6 week old Lucas!

Rachel and Raf's house was like a citrus wonderland to our kids. With an abundance of orange and grapefruit trees, we didn't eat much else for the entire first day. Parker's face bore the brunt of the vitamin C O.D. We had to stop him from going out into the yard - he ate so much, he broke out! But even I couldn't lay off the fresh squeezed juice. Yum!

We spent a fun day in "Old Sac." Cruising the wooden sidewalks, checking out the old buildings, a "wild west shootout", the saltwater taffy store and some giant ice creams rounded out our first day.

We woke up the next morning Parker woke up with a 103' fever. That's always nice to do to a family with a newborn. Maybe we should have let him keep going with the oranges...

Regardless, we drugged him up and Raf treated us to a grand tour of San Francisco. The kids had an absolute blast at the Exploratorium. A pumped up science center that provided even a sick kid with 3 hours of fun! From there it was onto the marina district to get a view of Alcatraz - which the kids were well versed on thanks to Scooby-Doo Meets the San Fran-Psycho. This lead to a lot of questions about failed jailbreaks, why, where did they end up? Who wants to go to Fishermen's Wharf?

Here the kids got to ride on the double-decker merry-go-round and meet their first celebrity impersonator - Forrest Gump. They didn't quite get it, having not seen the movie, and especially that Mom encouraged them to take candy from this stranger's box of chocolates.

All in all it was a great long weekend. The kids loved spending time with Mati and singing songs with him (Wheels on the Bus again and again). Parker, feeling better, got to chase a flock of wild turkeys (turns out they don't defend themselves as geese would), Maddie got her hair done by someone who could actually make a french braid, Mom got to snuggle up baby Lucas and visit with her good friends. A fun time had by all. But we all missed Daddy and were glad to be home with him again.