Dragon Boating

Today was the Kaiser Permanente's San Francisco International Dragon Boat Festival and not only did we attend but I actually competed in it. I found out about this festival a few years ago through my rowing club.  Apparently, every year the River City Rowing Club enters a boat and every year they do very well. our friends, Trevor, jocelyn, and Betsy were good sports and competed in my boat along with me and about 20 of my RCRC teammates. Doug and Mara enjoyed from the shore. Our boat ended up finishing 4th out of about 200 boats entered. Not too bad considering we row crew and only practiced 4 times prior to the race! Both the racing and the Asian festivities proved to be a good time. That's one more thing to check off the life list of things to do before I die! 

Family Day at Fairy Tale Town

 

So today  was "Family Day" at Fairy Tale Town. What is Fairy Tale Town you ask? Fairy Tale Town is a magical land where characters and objects from your favorite fairy tales come to life and a land where every adult must be accompanied by a child. On family day, admission is free and arts and crafts are all over the place so by the time you leave you are covered in glitter, glue and ink from markers all over your clothes! Mara loved it!! However, she did not love Clifford the Big Red Dog, who she watches religiously on PBS every morning. She preferred to see him from afar.

The Great Duck Race

Every year the Special Olympics of Sacramento puts on a fantastic fundraiser called "The Great Duck Race". It is exactly that, a great duck race. To participate, you show up and buy as many rubber duckies as you want to enter into the race. Your duck s given a number and all ducks purchased get dumped at off this bridge in Old Sacramento and race their way to the Tower Bridge, which is on the opposite end of Old Sacramento. The first few ducks to cross the finish line gets a prize! Although we did arrive too late to purchase some ducks--we did watch the race while enjoying lunch at Joe's Crab Shack. Oh and this is were we found out for the first time that Mara is afraid of oversized costumes. :)

Ballerina and Bart

Our friend and next door neighbor Kamara spent the weekend out of town and Mara, Doug, and I told her we would keep an eye on her kitten (who Mara calls Chicken---even though his name is now Guy. His name was Chicken for a quick second when Kam was still trying to decide on a name). That morning Mara wanted to put on her tutu to show Chicken. So we put her in her tut and headed next door to play with the kitty for a little bit. Chicken was not impressed by the tutu but Mara still had fun twirling for him. 

After our quick visit with Chicken we drove to Oakland for my Dragon Boat practice. And after practice we jumped on BART and headed to the city for a little shopping and dinner with Trevor and Jocelyn. We ended up at the Market Street Mall where we ran into Dr. Karin (Mara's pediatrician who had just moved to San Francisco) while looking around in Janie and Jack. I bought Mara the cutest little velvet jacket which she refuses to wear and then we were off for a delicious dinner. 

Just before leaving the mall we indulged in a bit of chocolate. Yummy...

Beating The Heat

On this very warm September day in Sacramento we decided to leave our nice air conditioned apartment and head out to some other locations that offered cool and cooling-off activities. We were off to the Arden Fair Mall, however, not for shopping, but for multiple rides on the carousel of course!! Mara's favorite. Grandma Rose babysits Mara on Tuesdays, and after their storytime date with Mr. Steve at Barnes and Noble, they usually go tot he mall next door for 2 rides on the carousel.

After we got tired of the mall we headed home and  stopped in at The Big Spoon. Also, one of Mara's favorite local hang outs. It is a locally owned frozen yogurt bar where you build your own yogurt with endless amounts of sugary toppings.

RaisinEtte

To poopie, or not to poopie? That is the question. To help answer that question Doug and I started offering Mara all the raisins she could eat. And she looooooved them!!  So much in fact that i think she should be the Sun-Maid poster child--don't you think?

8:00a.m./p.m. treatments--with a trip to San Francisco in between

This week Doug in on his soft tissue surgery rotation. I have no idea what exactly he does on that service but i do know that it means he has to go in every day at 8:00am (sometimes as early as 6:00am) and then again at 8:00pm for "treatments"--and again, i have no idea what that is either. I assume it means he has to go in for checkups on his patients that have come out of surgery and administer any meds if needed??

Anyhow--so we took off to San Francisco to the Exploratorium shortly after Doug completed his 8:00am treatments and just as long as we were back in Davis for 8:00pm treatments, everything would be great. When we arrived at the Exploratorium, we walked around a bit and enjoyed the fresh air and the beautiful San Francisco weather. Inside the Exploratorium was a world of wonder and excitement--and we all enjoyed it very much. Mara really liked all of the experiments with 

water and/or bubbles, and this orange and white merry-go-round thing. Doug, liked everything and we practically had to drag him out of the building when it was time to go home. 

We made it back to Davis just before 8:00pm. Doug threw on his lab coat and ran inside the vet hospital and Mara and I played, tumbled, and chased around the patch of grass in front of the hospital. After an hour had gone by and it was getting dark, i was happy that we had stopped in Berkeley at a bookstore and picked up a couple of books for MJ to read. Just then, Doug came out and we continued on our way home to Sacramento. Pictures here.