After our visit to the John Muir National Historic Site, we intended to take the kids for a hike. But instead of the hills of the John Muir Site we opted for the relatively flat trails of the Martinez Waterfront Park. A large swath of land near the Martinez Waterfront has been turned into…
Living in the Bay Area, it’s hard to go anywhere without finding something with the name John Muir. John Muir, famous environmentalist who started the Sierra Club, and whose essays and books about the majestic wilderness are still popular reading, spent the last half of his life on the West Coast. He worked to preserve…
Every once in a while I get into a mood to take spontaneous, unplanned adventures. We had such a day. We were driving home after attending a picnic, when my husband said out of the blue, “The Jelly Belly Factory is not to far away. Want to go visit it?” A quick Google search showed…
We haven’t been somewhere tropical in a while, and we unfortunately don’t have any fun international trips planned anytime soon. While looking through TimeHop photos and pictures of others’ vacations on Facebook and in travel blogs, I am trying to quell my thirst with memories of trips past. Cabo San Lucas was our 2nd…
Wine. Castles. Chocolate. More wine. What’s not to love? When my mom was in town she wanted to go up to Napa. I had no ability to take a day off at work so we could go sans kids. That meant we had to go on a weekend and find a child-friendly winery. What a better…
When guests are in town, I love to show my guests the gems that make up the Bay Area. My mom was visiting, and since she’s been here a number of times, we decided to do something a little different. We set out for Old Sacramento, to introduce her to a different California, a California…
My children are NOT good in the car. Ever since my son was a baby, he could never handle more then 2 hours in the car-seat before he wanted out. So when we were planning a weekend trip to Legoland that included 16 hours in the car (not counting stops), I knew I needed to…
On March 8th we celebrated International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the strong, amazing women who have made this world as it is. To the women before us who blazed the trail so we could achieve the goals and dreams we have and to the women today fighting so the girls we are raising…
I wanted to take a weekend trip for President’s Day, something cheap, something that would allow us to bond, but would not break the bank. It had been so long since we did a family trip that didn’t include visiting family or friends. So when I brought up the idea, the kids immediately began their…
At work when an email comes through, “I have four tickets to Disney On Ice for tomorrow night, who wants them?” Faster than you could say “Oh boy” in a Mickey voice I snatched them up and soon, all four of us were packed into a car, fighting terrible rush hour traffic to see the…
Ever since my kids figured out that DisneyLand and LegoLand exist, they have been begging to go. So when I suggested a road trip for President’s Day weekend, both immediately began the campaign once again. After accessing discount tickets from work and running some numbers, I figured out that it was possible. We would have…
I loved roller coasters in my teenage years but it’s been years since I’ve been on one. My son is afraid of even the small roller coaster at the zoo, so even though we now live only 20 minutes from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, attending was the furtherest from my mind. Imagine my surprise when…
The Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park has been on my to-do list for a ridiculously long time. I found out about it’s existence a year and a half ago but I didn’t ever seem to find time to get over there. Then, after a sad week, I put the kids and…
Readers of this blog, and especially people who know me, know that I care passionately about women’s rights. I have ever since I was little and publicly declared at the tender age of 7 that I would never take my husband’s last name. My dad used to call me his “Femi-nazi”, thought he was always…
2016 was hard. There is no doubt about that. It the year people will remember as the one that took too many of our idols, the one were we saw too much violence and hate, and the one were many Americans and the world lost hope and stood in sadness and disbelief as a tyrant…
