I never get tired of Golden Gate Park. It’s urban enough that it always has people and things to do, but it’s never crowded or rushed, which makes it perfect for a day that’s both relaxing and ennervating. I decided to take the children to the De Young Museum for their Viewing &Doing Art activity,…
Category: Out & About
The Too Much To Do Weekend
Typically, the first weekend after school ends is packed with activities to kick off the summer with a bang. Typically, we go to the North Beach Fair, to a nice restaurant for Father’s Day, and to the concert of our choice. This particular weekend, the choices of fun, exciting things we might like to do…
The Ultimate Hollywood Experience
A lot of people go to Hollywood proper, or take an official studio tour so they can experience, or at least see, the industry that makes the world’s television shows and movies. But I think we encountered the real thing simply by having Neil go out for the Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?…
The Cube Experience
Whenever we drive down to San Diego, we pass by a huge cube just off I-5, which happens to be a science museum. Neil loves science museums, and we have a membership card that gives us admission to most of them, so it was only natural that we’d take this opportunity to check it out….
The Legoland Experience
Dare I say it? I like Legoland more than Disneyland. It’s less crowded, less overtly commercial, and since Neil’s been going there since the year it opened, we already have many fond family memories there. Disneyland works hard at being a pleasant place, and it is an exceptional amusement park, but it can’t overcome my…
The Call from Hollywood
Peter and Neil are fans of the television show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” So when the show announced it was casting for a new class and invited eligible children to send in videos of themselves, we went ahead and made an audition tape of Neil and mailed it off. I figured that…
Our Memorial Day Parade
One of our favorite neighborhood traditions is the annual Memorial Day parade. It begins just half a block from our house, on the street just behind the nearby elementary school and winds for about a mile past our local playground and to another elementary school. Children from both schools comprise a choir that sings patriotic…
Shakespeare in the Redwoods
Yesterday was Open House at Neil’s school. As part of their Open House presentation, his grade 4/5 class selected 5 scenes from Shakespeare plays and performed them. We saw Hamlet fight Laertes and die by Laertes’ poisoned sword; Romeo grieve and commit suicide when he finds Juliet, seemingly dead; and Neil, as Petruchio, ably teasing…
Round and About at Happy Hollow
Kelly’s been asking me to take her to Happy Hollow for a few weeks now, and I figured it would be a pleasant thing to do today while Neil and Peter were at the Maker Fair. We didn’t get a chance to see the zoo part today, which was probably good news for the zoo’s…
Walking the Tightrope at the Lawrence Hall of Science
I promised Neil a trip to the science museum of his choice if he got a good grade on a book report. His teacher took a good 6 weeks getting his February book report back to him, but he got the requisite grade, and requested a trip to the Lawrence Hall of Science. My friend…