Picture This Dinner: We're Back!

We've returned from an incredible week-long trip out to San Jose, California where we visited my sister Bonnie and her husband Michael. I truly enjoyed every minute we were able to spend with them, as did the kids (and Jeff too of course). We had so much fun that I can't possibly fit it all into one post so my plan is to write several posts over the next couple of days.

Our trip started out last Wednesday. I was a little (okay, a lot) nervous about the plane ride. We had a direct flight from Ft. Lauderdale to San Francisco. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not because it meant we'd be on a plane for 6 hours straight...with an impatient 3 and 5 year old. We flew Virgin America, which I had never flown before. I wasn't too impressed with them. We were delayed an hour before we even got off the ground due to some luggage issues. Apparently some luggage strap had broken on the plane and the had to move all the luggage from one compartment to another. Why this took 1 hour to do, I still don't know. Seems to me it could be done in 15 minutes, but what do I know. We finally got off the ground and the flight itself wasn't too bad, even though I am petrified of flying. As much flying as we've done these past few months you'd think I'd be used to it but I still have a hard time with it. Luckily both kids took decent naps on the plane and they were very well behaved.

Six hours later (mind you, we'd been on the plane for 7 1/2 hrs total) we landed in San Francisco and couldn't wait to get off the plane. Only problem was we couldn't get off. You know that little doohickey that comes out to meet the door of the plane so that you can walk into the airport w/o falling to the ground outside (I'm sure there is a name for it, I just can't think of it right now). Yeah, well apparently that doohickey wasn't working right or it got stuck or something. At first they told us it would only be 5 min...it ended up being another half an hour. Needless to say, we were quite thrilled when they finally let us off. We were even more thrilled when we met up with my brother in law Michael (unfortunately Bonnie had a meeting so we wouldn't see her until we got back to their house). An hour later we arrived at their house! Total elapsed time - 12 hours door-to-door. Not too bad considering we were on the other side of the country that morning. That night was pretty low key, we just recovered from our long trip and enjoyed spending time with Bonnie and Michael. My sister also gave me a birthday gift - a flip video recorder! I was so excited because Jeff and I were in the market to buy one and since my sister was sick of watching the crappy quality of the videos that I post on my blog she decided to beat me to the punch and buy me one! And I absolutely love it - it's so easy to use and so little - and the quality is AMAZING! I took a few videos on the trip and will include them in my posts.

The next day we got up and walked to a park near my sister's house where the kids enjoyed the tire swing:
And the big tunnel slide:
After the park, we walked back to Bonnie's house and then headed to a place called Happy Hollow. This was the second time we have visited Happy hollow. The first time was two years ago when we were visiting my sister. Since our last visit Happy Hollow had undergone a complete renovation and we barely recognized it. The old, quaint, quiet little amusement park down the street from my sisters house had become quite the attraction. They added some more rides, even a little roller coaster and all sorts of other stuff. Daniel was only 13 months last time we were there and he actually went on his first ride during that trip. Here he is two years ago:

They still had the ride and the kids rode it again but unfortunately I didn't get a picture of them on it because my sister was with them at the time. I'll have to get one of the pictures that she took (hint hint Bonnie - send me a picture if you have one). I did get pictures of them on a couple other rides though:

And they thoroughly enjoyed the ginormous jungle gym:

They even went down this HUGE slide:

Aunt Bonnie even went on it:
One of the last things we (we meaning Jeff, Bonnie, Allison and Daniel) did was ride the roller coaster. Daniel couldn't wait to get on that thing. His favorite ride is Goofy's Roller coaster at Disney World. This roller coaster wasn't too much different and he loved it. Allison, not so much. I managed to get a video of all of them on the coaster. You can kinda see during the second loop that Allison wasn't too happy. But I was impressed she was willing to go on it. After she went on Thunder Mountain at Disney I didn't think I would get her on a roller coaster again.

The kids had a great time at Happy Hollow and can't wait to go back on our next visit. After we got home, we ate dinner and then it was time to make smores in the backyard: