Fun-filled Weekend

We had a great weekend relaxing together as a family, despite a bit of a rocky start. We had to cancel our planned date night on Friday when worked reared its ugly head (Friday night...is nothing sacred!). After that inauspicious beginning, the weekend took a turn for the better when on Saturday we motivated to take Sonia to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose. At first she was a bit intimidated by all of the noise and other kids, but she quickly settled in, climbing around like a little monkey and grinning the whole time. Or should I say grinning most of the time, except for when it was time to leave when she threw a fit like the little kid she is rapidly becoming. A vision of the future, for sure.

We thought we would beat the crowd by heading over to The Old Spaghetti Factory that is nearby at around 5pm (admittedly, Saturday night in our world has changed a bit in the last year), but when we got there it was completely packed with young girls running around in princess costumes. I thought it was one very large, very surreal birthday party before I finally realized that this restaurant was the closest to the HP Arena where "Disney On Ice" was playing that night. Talk about a vision of the future -- there is nothing like seeing 100 6-year-olds running around in full-blown gowns and tiaras to make you ponder how you should raise your young daughter. Or at least make you wonder why you did not buy stock in Disney when they introduced this whole "princess" theme a few years ago. Unfortunately all of those princesses led to a very long wait time, which means Sonia had a mini-meltdown from hunger in the waiting area and basically ended up eating Pirate's Booty for dinner while we waited. And then of course the kitchen was "a little backed up" getting our food when we finally did get a table, so needless to say by the end of the night our "no binky except for sleeping" rule was broken and Sameer and I set world records for how quickly one can scarf down spaghetti and meat sauce.

On Sunday we drove up to San Mateo to split the distance with the Glotzbachs (who live in SF) whom we had not seen in ages. Despite the fact that the park I picked out online turned out to not be exactly as advertised (the park's "train" turned out to be only slightly larger than a toy train), it was still tons of fun to see them and watch the kids play together. After a brief lunch where Sonia refused all food besides Cheerios, we then drove back to Palo Alto and went to a handful of disappointing open houses. Then we closed the day with another visit to the park (and another tantrum upon leaving), before Sonia finally collapsed at the end of the day exhausted. Mission accomplished.

I guess we missed the memo about resting up for another crazy week at work, but it was well worth it.

Below are our pictures from February...and yes, Mom, I will post another video very soon. :-)