While in Irvine, we also participated in a couple of home school park days with a local home school group, which rotated parks on a weekly basis. We met some welcoming and friendly homeschoolers, and Vale dressed up as a pirate for the Halloween-themed park day. Everest attended as well, though most of the kids were quite a bit older than her. While we thought this would be a great opportunity for Vale to make some friends on the road, she wasn’t particularly interested in socializing. We attended two or three of these, and she even made a friend, but overall was not terribly enthusiastic about it.
We returned to the Spectrum and celebrated Po Po’s birthday one month early at Cucina Enoteca, but to be frank, this was not one of the best examples of reasonable behavior by our children at a restaurant. There was a lot of complaining and noise by both, after I thought we’d just started working these kinks out. To say it was not a relaxing meal is an understatement. Kids know how to keep you guessing, that’s for sure.
One Friday, we hit up a brewery with some nice open spaces. The beer was kind of bland and forgettable, so I won’t name names, but we arrived ready for Halloween weekend, had some snacks, played some games, and had a good afternoon.
We also went to Adventure Playground with friends. This place has a really good supply of mega life-sized building blocks, sand toys, unique play structures, and a mud pit. So far, we’ve made three visits here and there’s still been very little interest in getting dirty in the mud pit, but there’s always next time.
We considered staying in Irvine for Halloween, but my mom’s neighborhood seems to have aged, i.e. the kids from my era were grown and gone, while their parents stayed, so very few young children remained, and it was not very festive. We also knew Vale would want to be with friends, so we went back to San Diego for Halloween.
Thus far, Vale was happy playing and learning in Irvine. She had a couple of little Chinese lessons with Po Po, practiced piano on a beautiful baby grand, and started online Chinese lessons. Everest was happy too – eating everything in sight. Or throwing it on the ground and creating a smorgasbord on the new floors.
We also visited Pretend City, a children’s museum, which the kids enjoyed, though to be quite honest it ranked low on the list of all of the kids’ museums we had visited thus far, being smaller, less well-maintained, and more expensive than the ones in San Diego, Capitola, San Jose, and SLC.
Jenn and Kyle Fun Times 