Daddy is awesome

Now you might be thinking, "Yes, I already know that." But let me give you a couple more reasons for his awesome-ness.

• He sacrificed his evening and weekend, so we could play today. He showed up in the middle of lunch to take me to Cisco Family Day. I was so excited to see him that I didn't want to finish my lunch.
• At Cisco Family Day, he let me skip my nap so I could get a tattoo (a shooting star on my arm), jump around a bounce house and get a shark painted on my face. Don't I look fierce?

• He fed me a cookie for afternoon snack.
• He took me to a meeting, where I got to watch Mickey Mouse Club House on his computer.

It was just me and dada today. Dada rocks!

Winner, winner

Talk about a busy day. In addition to meeting Curious George at Matthew's school and Wipeout Cancer obstacle course, we had a block party this evening. It was super fun!

First, there was a fire truck! Not a toy one, but a real one. Mason and I got to sit in the truck.

We had a good time hanging out with our neighbors and meeting new ones. Mama and dada met a new family that moved in down the street. They have 2 girls who are almost the same age as me and Mason. We also discovered that one of our neighbors has a new baby girl who's only 5 months old. Potential new playmates!

There were activities for the kids too. We drew pictures in the street with chalk. Katie, our neighbor, made us balloon animals. We played with bubbles. Mason liked dumping the bubble juice on the ground and trying to blow them. At one point in time, we both sat in a puddle of bubble juice.

To top if all off, there were raffle prizes. The prizes included T-shirts from a local bike shop, mixing kit and cookbook from Whole Foods, gift certificates, plants from a local nursery and an iPad mini! (One of the party organizers works at Apple.)

Guess who won the iPad mini? Mason! Was he excited? Not really, he was more interested in the bubbles.

Wipeout Cancer

Have you ever heard of a TV show called Wipeout? Neither did I. How could I when mama and dada don't let me watch TV?  But, I found out what the show is this weekend when I participated in the Wipeout Cancer kids obstacle course. The organizer is friends with mama and dada. She won Wipeout, an obstacle course competition, in 2010.

When mama found out about the event, she wanted to sign me up right away. But we had some scheduling conflicts - birthday parties. Good thing those parties got rescheduled so mama could sign me up (even though I didn't meet the age requirement...shhh). I was excited when mama told me about it, especially when she told me that Matthew and Kyden were going to do the obstacle course too.

When we got there, mama and I checked in, got my goodie bag, T-shirt and lunch ticket. We dropped our things next to Matthew's tent, said hi to auntie Christi, auntie Judy and auntie Mimi (who were volunteering), and went to pick up my lunch. On our way to lunch, I got to meet auntie Liner, the organizer.

After lunch, all the kids in our "wave" gathered on the grass so auntie Liner could warm us up and walk us through the course. Mama did the warm-up with us. While I waited for my turn, mama told me that she'd be on the course with me, but I'd have to do the obstacles by myself. Well, I did great! Here's a run down of the course:

• Running through tires: I opted to walk over the tires
• Army crawl through a net: No problem, except that I crawled diagonally across instead of straight ahead. Mama said that she used to swim diagonally when she did triathlons. It must be genetic.
• Balance beam: Piece of cake...just like little gym, except I had my shoes on.
• Running under hurdles: Yup, I remembered do duck. 
• Going through a spider maze: this one was kinda tricky. good thing they had great volunteers to help me figure it out. Mama really wishes she took a photo of me doing this obstacle, but she was busy trying to coach me along.
• Over/Unders: I didn't have any problems with the jumping over, but my head kept getting stuck on the unders. Don't worry, the "hurdles" were made of foam noodles. So they were soft.
• Kicking a soccer ball through cones: again, thanks to super volunteers who helped me with this one.
• Moving water-filled, wet balls between two buckets of water: those balls were slippery! the volunteer was really helpful. I was a little bit disappointed that I didn't get more wet. I wanted to do swing on the trapeze over the water hazard, like the older kids.
• Giant inflatable slide: Wee!!! I went down the slide twice!

The older kids had more obstacles including, climbing a cargo net wall and swinging across a water hazard, and their races were timed. At the end, we all got medals and mini Jamba Juices. Yum!

I had a great time. I can't wait to race again next year!

Meeting Curious George

Matthew invited me to storytime with Curious George at his school today. Kyden and Sienna also came.

I got to check out his school before one of the teachers read us a Curious George book. After the book, guess who showed up? Curious George!

You'd think I'd be excited about meeting him, especially since I really like Curious George books. But I wasn't very interested in meeting him. I was more interested in the balloon animals in the other room. I asked for a pink helicopter with blue propellers.

I liked playing at Matthew's school. He has neat things at his school, like a tent with a play kitchen and musical instruments outside. After playing for a while, I decided it was time to meet Curious George. I even let mama take a picture of me with him too.

They served lunch, but mama only let me eat a banana. I was going to have lunch at the Wipeout Cancer event soon (more on that in a separate post). After playing for a while, we all left for the obstacle course.

Thanks for inviting me to check out your school and meet Curious George!

Disneyland with friends

For the record, mama and dada are not crazy Disney fans. But based on our recent vacations, you'd think otherwise. Of all the vacations I've taken in my lifetime (7 including this one), 4 of them have been at a Disney resort.

This latest trip was with my buddies -- Matthew, Edison, Kyden and Sienna. This is an annual trip for Matthew and Edison. It's part of their family pilgrimage to ComicCon. Kyden and Sienna were visiting LA for a wedding. Mama thought it would be fun to go with everyone because I'd have friends to hang out with. Dada said he could use a break. Mama kindly reminded him that a trip to Disneyland with me and Mason might not exactly match his definition of a break. I don't know why she'd say something like that.

Here's a recap of our trip:

Sunday (7/14): We loaded up the Swagger Wagon and drove to Disneyland. Mama told me that I would Disneyland was really far from our house and that we'd have a very long drive. Mason and I did great on the drive down. We listened to CDs, played games and took naps (except for dada). We even stopped for foryo at the Yogurtland in Tejon Ranch!

Monday (7/15): Mason was so excited about Disneyland that he woke up at 3:30 am. Dada tried to get him back to sleep, but he was too excited about Disneyland and pillows. So, they went out for a run at 5:00 am while Mama and I slept a little longer. Since we were all up early, we got to ride a few rides in Disneyland before we met up with my pals for a character breakfast (more like brunch) at Paradise Pier. After brunch, we hit California Adventure. While Mason and Sienna napped, us big boys went clubbing at Dancin' with Disney, followed by the Disney Jr. show. After the show, we rode the world's slowest bumper cars (Tuck and Roll's Drive 'Em Buggies) in Bug's Land, followed by Luigi's Flying Tires in Car's Land. Dada and Uncle Mike got to ride the Radiator Springs Racers. From there we headed to the Little Mermaid ride. I started to fall asleep while we were in the Toy Story Midway Mania line, so I didn't get to ride that one. After dinner, we said good bye to Kyden and Sienna and made plans to meet up with Matthew and Kyden at Disneyland the next day.

Tuesday (7/16): Mason and I slept in, which made mama and dada really happy. We spent the day at Disneyland. We rode all my favorites - Autopia, Buzz Lightyear (twice), Dumbo, the Carrousel, the Astro Orbitor, Small World (twice), and the train. I also got to experience some new things like Pirates of the Caribbean, Casey Jr. Circus Train, Tom Sawyer Island and the water ball in TomorrowLand. I didn't like Pirates because it was too dark. Mason's favorite was the water ball. Mama can't believe that we spent all that money and drove all the way to Disneyland for a water ball that we could've found at a park or shopping center.
At lunch, mama and dada offered me the following choices:

1. If we go back to our hotel and take a nap, I can stay up late and watch fireworks.
2. If we continue to ride rides without a nap, no fireworks. 

I chose option 2. Who wants to watch fireworks when you can ride more rides?!

Wednesday (7/17): We drove home. The drive home was just as good as drive to Disneyland.

I can't wait to go back for another visit, but mama and dada have been talking about going someplace called Mexico for our next family vacation. I hope there're good rides at Mexico. If you have any good recommendations for other non-Disney family vacation spots, let us know!