I don’t know if you noticed, but I like to go places with my kid. Come rain, or come shine, or come the holiday season, we go places. In fact, I’m so good at going places, that I have cleverly made that our family tradition. This smart mami gets out of shopping, baking, and making wreaths by getting out of the house. I know, I know, they should make me queen.
Now the holiday season is well underway, and we are going places. Oh, we have plans to see twinkly lights, and dancing Nutcrackers in tights this December. We will head down to the city (San Francisco, to be exact) and stand in awe of the giant gingerbread palace in the fancy lobby of the Westin St. Francis Hotel, the doggies up for adoption in the Macy’s window display and the congregation of weird Santas in Union Square.
Every family does the whole holiday tradition differently, but this is our thing. Years from now, I hope my kid remembers that sometimes I made lame attempts at baking gingerbread men, and that sometimes I made more successful attempts at finding the darn best light display in town. Hopefully, he’ll forget the Santa with the dog collar and fishnet stockings.
I’m not the only one dreaming of Christmas this week, head on over to Mother of All Trips, the original Monday dreamer always has something good to share.
I noticed a frog pattern in my photos of the garden. There were frog sculptures here and there.
And then the guide pointed out this real teeny, tiny froggie, which my son immediately put in his hand. The frog immediately hopped out of his hand. I barely had time to snap this picture.
If my son had his way, he would have spent more time by the pond looking for an even bigger frog. I think he would have liked to be that boy in the sculpture.
I’ve always loved the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but I’ve grown to appreciate it even more now that I have my son in tow. Monterey is a great day trip destination for us, so we’ve been going there since he was a baby. As soon as he could, he began requesting frequent trips to the Aquarium. He had fallen in love with it as well. Nowadays, he walks around like he owns the place.
I may be a guidebook enthusiast, but my recent trip to Yosemite National Park tested the limits of those little books. The reality is that some of the kid-friendly places I had in our itinerary were probably the ones my son found the least interesting or memorable. Kids don’t write the guidebooks, but they can help their moms write blog entries. For this post, I’m letting my seven-year-old expert give a list of his favorite things to do in Yosemite and I’ll write my thoughts on those places. Besides, I had to think of something for him to do while he hovered over me and my laptop.
Even if you’ve never been camping before, or your last camping trip is a distant memory, you can still plan a great family camping trip. I’ve made a handy list to help any of you camping newbies who are hesitant to embark on a camping adventure with kids. I’m not going to pretend camping is easy, but with a bit of planning and practice, you can take your kids out for a night under the starry skies. Read on, campers.
