Quick post about our quick vacation

Presidents' Day Weekend! You have to celebrate that, right? And if you find yourself halfway through Saturday and realize you have no reason to be home before Monday night, shouldn't you celebrate that with an impromptu vacation? Isn't that what our founding fathers would have wanted? Staycations? I thought so.
First up, we met up with some friends and their new baby in Oakland to visit the Chabot Space & Science Center, and a good time was had by all. You would not believe how long a toddler can flip switches in an old space capsule and be thoroughly entertained. Also, grownups have fun. (Hey Fortney, nice job with the extra hand. No, I'm not going to Photoshop it out.)

On the way I downloaded a new app to play with photos on my phone. Aviary is not sponsoring this post, but you can send them hate mail if you're annoyed. Anyway, after the space fun we headed up to a hotel in Fairfield, and everyone had a pizza night out. At a table right next to all the video games.

The next morning brought swimming in the hotel pool (later deemed by Finn to be the best part of the trip), followed by TV while the parents showered. The boys are now familiar with commercial interruptions, and are justly angry at how unfair they are.

Once we were all dressed, we hit the Jelly Belly visitor center for the factory tour, and everyone ate as much candy as they wanted -- frankly, not much. We haven't even finished the free samples we got from the tour. But we are all stocked up on their new cocktail flavors if you want to come try them. Mojito jelly beans! Pomegranate cosmo jelly beans! What could be better? Well, lots of things. But we did have fun. See?

And now here's a video of Graham talking, because it's been sitting in the queue waiting for your enjoyment.

Our house

For Christmas we turned our office into a playroom, because we never actually used it as an office, and we figured our house was too small to have a whole room we never used. Then I was going to post some before and after pictures, and I realized I didn't HAVE any before pictures. Oops. So then I was just going to refer back to the old video walkthrough of the house, but after searching back through the blog, I realized that only existed in my mind. Huh. So then I made a NEW (first, only) video of the house, and even edited a little. But when I uploaded it to Vimeo, it got all squishified because Vimeo didn't understand the aspect ratio even though the dang thing looked fine on our computers. So then I gave up.

But then! Then Jonathan was out of town again this week and I reformatted/exported/something the video, and now you can view it non-squished. Pretty boring if you've been to our house; less so if you haven't and have been wondering what it's like here.


So now it exists, in case we ever do a big remodeling project, or find a way to lead a clutter-free existence (ha).
Also, have some photos.
1: The Ultimate Winter Couscous from Plenty, which I highly recommend. Even if you don't want to cook from it, just look at the pictures.

2: Remember when Finn melted down at his birthday party? Some classmates had a party at the same place recently, and he had a much better time. Here he is on the zipline.

3: Sometimes when you turn your back they DON'T destroy everything in sight. Sometimes you go to answer the phone, and when you come back the Lego wall is twice as tall as when you left the room. And it has eyes.

4: Finn and Graham's first time bowling. They loved it. And I got my first (and likely last) turkey.

5: Graham's 3rd haircut, and his first one not sitting in my lap.

6: I went to a conference in Dallas in January and got to meet Jeanette Winterson, who's only, oh, I don't know, probably my FAVORITE AUTHOR EVER. I was so sure I was going to miss her that when I saw she was still there I cried. It was pretty embarrassing, but I got a signed advance copy of her new memoir. Best. Conference. Ever.