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A few months ago the newly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences opened up in Golden Gate Park. I've been dying to take the kids but I also have a low tolerance for all the crowds a new museum brings. So finally this week I took the kids along with Nana and Papa. I loved the Academy of Sciences and Steinhart Aquarium when I was a kid, so it was fun to see that they kept so many of the original displays. We were all pleased to see our favorites return (mine was African Hall, Nana's was the alligators, and Papa's was the pendulum). If you haven't been, it's a must see. We plan on returning as much as we can in the next year (with our newly purchased family membership).
Patrick finally got to see a complete dinosaur fossil (skeleton?). He's been asking to see one. Here he is in front of the T-Rex, which it turns out has freakishly tiny hands.
Nana and Molly at the touch pool in the aquarium. Molly really, really liked it and probably would have happily climbed right in with the starfish. BYO Purell.
The alligator exhibit had some silly mist being pumped in so they were hard to see. This is the albino alligator. And they kept the art deco seahorse railing from the original building. Very cool!
More Academy pics on Flickr! Plus pics of our Christmas tree, check it out!
And in house news, out bathroom remodel is 95% done. Whoo hoo! We're still missing the quarter round trim tiles for the shower. Never mind that they were ordered the first week in October and we were told they would be in in a week. Don't order tile from Walker-Zanger unless you have nothing but time. The tile won't be here until mid January, so Jo will finish once that comes in. He's still got a few tiny things to do like adding cabinet hardware but we're mostly done. I need to figure out where to put the towel rack, and ideas? Common sense would be putting it under the window right outside the shower, but I hate the thought of covering up that pretty glass tile. I was thinking of maybe putting a train rack style bar over le toilette, like you often see in hotels. What to do?
As promised, here are a few pictures from yesterday. Seems I was too busy enjoying Christmas to really take very many pictures. Somehow I took 700+ pictures in December but not too many of the big celebrations, oops.Patrick was quite pleased that Santa managed to bring him Aquadots. Santa attached a lovely note explaining that there were no actual dots in this package, and he promised to mail some safe dots as soon as they became available. That Santa is quite a guy ;)
Once again this year, we took Patrick to the dollar store to buy Christmas gifts for everyone. Some of the choices made a lot of sense, like this sippy cup for Molly. 
Auntie Crista and Uncle Dave sent Patrick the Polar Express book, he likes it very, very much!
Patrick made Tom his very own painted mug for use at the office. Daddy was impressed with the generous use of paint and color combinations.
Other dollar store gift choices didn't make as much sense. Witness Uncle Nick's new hair fall.
Nana and Papa got Patrick a wonderful wooden firehouse, Patrick was over the moon thrilled with it.
And Nana very carefully crocheted lots of cupcakes and ice cream cones for Molly. Once Molly got over her initial disappointment that they were not real food she decided that they make excellent play toys.
Tom is off work until the 2nd, so hopefully we'll be out on some adventures this week. I'm trying to avoid dealing with the issue of the Christmas mess that seems to have struck our home. For such little people, Patrick and Molly sure do take up a lot of space!
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Festivus and all that jazz! The whilrwind two days of Christmas are finally over in this house, the little ones are snug in their beds with visions of toy laptops (Patrick) and ice cream cones (Molly) in their sweet little heads. Too tired to download pictures right now, but there are a few from yesterday on Flickr, and I will post lots of pictures tomorrow.Hope Santa was nice to all of you :)
It's less than a week until Christmas and we're as busy as the elves! Last week Patrick had his preschool holiday concert. He's really been enjoying singing Christmas carols so we were looking forward to the show. Of course he was the one kid in the back row making faces, picking his nose and singing at the top of his lungs. Lovely. 
On Sunday Danielle had her gingerbread party, Patrick and I both made houses. When he shows them to people he points out his his is the "crazy" one, hee hee.
We finally got our tree this weekend. You may notice that the top third of the tree looks a little crammed, all of my Christopher Radko ornaments are safely tucked up there and out of reach of little hands. We also got a small second tree, I've always wanted to do a smaller tree for my collection of moon and star ornaments. This year we finally got around to doing it and I love it.
And last night we had a surprise visitor! There was a knock at the door and lo and behold, Santa was there! Patrick promptly ran and hid under the coffee table until Santa announced that he had brought presents, Patrick scrambled out as quickly as he had hidden and happily posed for pictures. He's really learning how this Santa thing works! 
Patrick has been very concerned about how exactly Santa will get down the chimney since he recently saw for himself that our chimney has a cap on the roof. Daddy had promised that he will unscrew it on Christmas Eve so Santa can make his way down easily ;)Still on the to do list this week... wrap a zillion presents, make some cookies for Santa, decide on a menu for Christmas morning breakfast, go to the grocery store and finish a little Christmas shopping, all with a 3 1/2 year old and a baby. I'm full of the holiday spririt, oh yes I am. HA!
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