Summer 2016 Vacation

This year's summer vacation is coming to an end and I am sad that it's almost over! Our criteria for planning a vacation with 3 young kids is that it has to be easy, kid-friendly, and budget-friendly. So we decided to spend a few days at my parents' house in the Bay Area (budget-friendly lodging!), travel to nearby places (easy!), and do fun kid activities (kid-friendly!). Here's what we've been up to:

Saturday: We drove down in the afternoon and immediately headed to our good friends Jon and Danielle's house for a BBQ. We were greeted by lots of our old friends and it was such a great surprise! The kids played in the water and we had a great time catching up. Between the 5 couples we had 12 kids.

Sunday: On Sunday the boys went with Adam and my Dad to an Oakland A's game. They rode on BART to get there, and tasted cotton candy for the first time at the game. (Neither of them liked it). I went with Jenna and my Mom to visit my Grandma. She turns 98 next month!

Monday: Monday was probably the boys' favorite part of vacation. We picked up Adam's Mom and drove down to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. It was freezing when we got there but eventually it warmed up. 

The boys went on a couple ride before we went down to the beach for lunch. We spent a couple hours down there and I forgot to put sunblock on Jenna right away. It was overcast so it slipped my mind, but I know better because I know you can still get burnt when there are clouds out!

After Lucas got knocked down by a couple waves we went back up to the boardwalk and continued going on rides. We ended our long day at Chipotle in Santa Cruz and didn't get home until after 10pm.

Tuesday: We planned this day to be kind of a "rest" day. When Jenna woke up with an awful sunburn on her face and a blister on her cheek, we knew it was a smart choice to keep her indoors. I feel so bad that her poor little face got so badly burned! We took the boys to see Finding Dory at the movie theater and then spent the afternoon doing a little shopping in Fremont. We ended the day with dinner at my parents' house followed by some fro-yo!

Wednesday: We originally planned on going to San Francisco on this day. We were going to visit Pier 39 but ultimately decided the kids wouldn't have a lot of fun there. After tossing around a few ideas, we ended up deciding on the Oakland Zoo.

The elephant was our favorite animal! He was swimming around taking a bath, and then as soon as he got out he sniffed up a bunch of dirt and shot it all over himself. Silly elephant! I told my boys they are just like the elephant....getting dirty as soon as they get out of the bathtub.

It was hot and we were all tired. Adam got a workout in pushing all 3 kids in the stroller.

After the zoo we came back to Newark and crashed for a couple hours. Jenna napped, the boys watched TV, and I read. Then we went to Dino's for dinner with the Lemos family. We had a kids table and an adult table!

 

And tomorrow we drive back home. It feels like our vacation went by really quickly, but we are all really tired so I guess we did a lot! Adam and I agreed that we need an adult vacation now so we can rest after our family vacation. ha! It's been a really fun week in the Bay Area and I wish we could have seen more family/friends and done even more fun activities. Now it's back to reality!