Road Trip to Our Mini Pismo Beach Vacation

In April I started a new job, which means that this summer we had to do mini vacations versus full blown vacations. Our trip to Calgary was just five days (including travel on the fourth of July). And we took another long four day weekend right before the kids started school.

Well planned a long weekend mini vacation can be wonderful. The key is to keep travel at a minimum ... no more than four hours door to door. Calgary was a two hour flight away, and Banff a short ninety minute drive from Calgary. Pismo Beach located near San Luis Obispo (SLO) is three to four hours from San Jose (depends on whether you take scenic route 1 or boring 101).

We've spent enough time in SLO, either passing through or stay for a day to have a favorite destination restaurant in mind, the Big Sky Cafe, and we had booked a hotel for three nights. Otherwise, we were completely unplanned.

This time around we chose to do the scenic route there. An opportunity to detox a bit if you like roadtrips. And Jonathan and I like roadtrips. Route 1 has a lot of awesome sites along the way, from the Bixby Creek Bridge to Hearst Castle and ... of course elephant seals.

Stopping by the elephant seal rookery is a must when traveling on Route 1. I think I've been telling Jonathan about my Sophomore biology trip to see the elephant seals at Año Nuevo since we first met, but I didn't know that just 45 minutes north of Pismo was an overlook where you can watch these amazingly large sea creatures and their pups basking in the sun from a safe distance.

When we were driving we spotted a crowd of people looking over a lookout onto a beach with massive grey things and decided to pull over. And there was Piedras Bancas State Park. It was the highlight of the days festivities.

When we got to Pismo Beach the boys hit the hotel pool, which was heated. This was a good thing since it was about 60 degrees and foggy. But the disadvantage of road trips is the need to run the kids afterward. Cooped up for four hours in car is long time for a five and seven year old.

They happily swam, and they weren't alone in the pool. Jonathan took out a wonderful pasta dinner in from Guiseppe's Fine Italian Restaurant, and we watched the closing ceremonies for the Olympics.
 

Quest for Legos - The Journey Home

Lego is a Danish invention, and Denmark was indeed the theme of our road trip home from just North of San Diego to San Jose.

When we woke up on Wednesday morning it was raining. We headed out after breakfast, and while we didn't have a lot of traffic, visibility was poor until just North of Los Angeles.

We opted to take Highway 101 versus Interstate 5 for good reason. The "grapevine" often closes in bad weather, and if anything, the trip over the mountain could be plagued with slow traffic. Our GPS hated our decision, and kept asking us to take a detour back to I5 until we reached Santa Barbara. Two days later people had to sleep in their cars because I5 was closed.

On our way to Legoland we couldn't help noticing the Andersen's Pea Soup sign. It is located in Buellton just outside the Danish village of Solvang. So we planned a late lunch there, and a needed rest stop.

We loved Andersen's Pea Soup ... the food was great (not surprisingly the pea soup was excellent). The boys loved the novelty shop that is part of the restaurant, and we had the added benefit that we finally completed our potty training for our four year old. Yes, he like 20 percent of boys under the age of 4 and half struggled with the last bastion of potty training angst -- the No. 2.

After lunch we headed to Olsen's Danish Village Bakery in Solvang for Danish delights. The boys got to pick out their own cookie, and then we all shared the selections in the car on the way home. We arrived at 6:30 pm, ready for dinner and an early bed. All together a pleasant roadtrip.

Quest for Legos - Part 1

A year ago Caleb asked us if we could go to England. Why we asked (a little excited that our three-year old already had the travel bug)? He told us that his friend Louis went to Legoland in England and he would like to go to Legoland in England too. Although we would have enjoyed a trip to England, there is a Legoland just north of San Diego in Carlsbad and it is much easier to get to.

From Caleb's request it did take us a year to plan the trip to Legoland (and by plan, I mean secure a kennel for our dog ... we actually booked our hotels the morning we left). During that time we saw favor for Thomas trains start to wain (although they still get played with) and  a passion for Lego start to rise-- particularly our youngest Caleb. Xander my five and half year old, decided he liked Legos on Christmas day ... before then there wasn't much interest.

On Sunday morning we packed and left the house at noon for points South. We needed a late start after all of the activities on Christmas day,  so we only drove to Carpinteria, south of Santa Barbara. The next morning we booked it to Carlsbad to enjoy our first day at Legoland.

Interestingly, Jonathan and I thought that the Holidays would be a slower time at amusement parks like Legoland -- the water park wasn't even opened. However, Legoland was packed, and we found out that Disneyland had to stop admitting visitors two days in a row (Monday and Tuesday this week) due to overcrowding. We figured the statewide rainy spell limited the number of days people could go to theme parks. It was rainy on Sunday, and again on Wednesday ... and Thursday and Friday we had a huge temperature drop with rain expected for Saturday. Our first trip to Legoland was really crowded ... Still the boys had a wonderful time. Next blog I'll right about our two days there.

Technology for the Preschool Roadtripper

If your car stereo does have an auxiliary option where you can plug in your iPhone or other smartphone device, you don’t need to invest in or carry a large CD collection to keep your young travelers entertained. Several audio entertainment services such as Pandora and Rhapsody offer on-the-go options. With audio download services such as Audible, you can download books and stories in advance and take them with you on your portable MP3 music device or your smartphone. Here we’ll look at three leading services – Pandora, Rhapsody, and Audible.

Pandora is a service that allows you to enter an artist, song, or album that you like and it will then play a recording from that artist if it has the rights to do so. Then, Pandora will play recordings that fit the same profile as the artist, song, or album you’ve initially selected. This capability enabled by Pandora’s powerful Music Genome database, in which Pandora listeners, volunteers, and employees contribute input that helps to define artist and song profile matches.

The great news about Pandora is that it’s absolutely free. You’ll just want to make sure that you have an unlimited data plan with your smartphone service provider. Pandora also has access to a wide selection of children’s music and children’s stories. It’s really wonderful if you want to sample from a wide variety of stories and music and perhaps you will find something that you hadn’t heard of before that you really like. This is the the beauty of Pandora’s music genome database.

The downside of Pandora is that you don’t have complete control over what you can hear next (though, you can skip over a certain number of songs/stories to get to the selection that Pandora serves up next). You can also give a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” to any selection. Pandora will remember this and will influence what gets played for you later on.

Rhapsody allows you to listen to any recording available in its music library - over 1,000,000 albums. Its on-the-go service is now available for several different smartphones, including the iPhone. The cost is $14.99/month. The key benefit to Rhapsody is that you have complete control over what you listen to (again, as long as your selections are available in Rhapsody’s library).

Just as is the case with Pandora, it’s nice that you can listen to something without the commitment of paying for a CD in advance. If you listen to a story, song, or album and don’t like it, you haven’t spent any incremental money (besides your flat subscription fee) to hear it. If you do like it, you can add it to a playlist within Rhapsody to easily access it again. The downside to the Rhapsody service that you should consider in advance, is that if you ever decide to cancel your subscription, your access to all of the music and stories you’ve been listening to completely disappears. The reality is that you don’t own any of the music and stories, you’re just borrowing them.

Audible is a very different service from the first two in that you are using the service to purchase audio stories and books that you then own. It’s essentially the iTunes equivalent for books and stories. Audible has several different service options, including an option where you receive one “credit” per month for $14.95. The credit is good for just about any audio book or set of stories in its catalogs.

It’s not a bad pricing model, but the challenge is that the price point for children’s stories is typically on the lower end of the scale, so you are not getting a significant savings when you consider the price point for buying the children’s story CD individually without the Audible subscription. However, with your subscription, you also do receive discounts on other books and story sets should you purchase more than one per month (since you would use your “credit” for your first selection). So, it actually does work out such that if you are purchasing several books and story sets, you can build a significant savings vs. purchasing each book on CD individually.

Audiobooks also does have an entire line of Children’s books and stories, called Audible Kids. So there is plenty to choose from and the quality of the download is very good.

Roadtrip to Snow Redux

It took a month, but we finally revisited our trip to the Sierras to go sledding. We caravaned with our friends and their preschoolers to the Sierras. We found a lovely slope East of Mi-Wuk Village on Highway 108. Everyone had a wonderful time ... the big difference between this time and last time was preparation.

This time we shopped the winter clothing sales and got the boys mittens and snow pants. I got their snow pants a little on the big side, so that the boys can wear them next year too. We bought sleds from Mel Cotton's for $15. We also got an early start.

At first we were a little concerned that we wouldn't get great weather. The forecast called for scattered snow/rain showers until noon. When we arrived at the sledding hill at 10:45 am it was sunny and warm. There was so much more snow then last month too. Enough to build big snowmen, snow forts and lovely snow angels.

It turns out that Caleb doesn't really love sledding. He went twice, but found it a little scary. Xander loved it, but he was a little under the weather, and was a bit spacey. It made it a little more challenging. He had Jonathan worried a couple of times when he played kamakaze down the hill.

We packed lunches, and at 1 pm the kids were ready to head home. We even managed to swing by the Railtown 1897 State Park before heading home to watch the Super Bowl. Overall we had a wonderful time. We're off to Florida next weekend, but I think we'll be back soon before the snow season ends.

The Booster Seat Dilemma

I weighed both the boys tonight. Caleb is now 41 lbs, and Xander is 43 lbs. This means that Caleb has outgrown his car seat (the weight limit is 40 lbs). Xander also appears to be too tall for his car seat (even though the weight limit is 60 lbs). 

With both boys over 40 lbs, we also can no longer use the latch systems in our cars. Most latch systems aren't recommended for children over 40 lbs to 47 lbs depending on the car seat.

My babies are growing up!

So... the booster seat dilemma. It is time to move the boys to booster seats, but I like millions of other parents watched the tragic YouTube video "The Importance of Five-Point Harnesses" I was convinced, so over the last couple of weeks I now have to negotiate the confusing and expensive land of booster seats, and find one with a five point harness.

But honestly, the price point on five point harness booster seats is unbelievable. The Britax Frontier is $270. We need to eventually buy four ($1,040 plus tax).

Thankfully, Target is having a sale, and I got 25% off. Online the reviews were mixed, but it got higher rankings than comparable car seats (and honestly, none of the others specifications met our requirements).

I ordered two to start. Caleb will be moving to Xander's car seat for awhile. Tonight the first of our Britax Frontiers arrived. The things is heavy, much heavier than I expected. With Xander's help I was able to configure it. Tomorrow I'm going to install it in Jonathan's car.

If all goes well, and the weather cooperates, we'll take our first roadtrip with the new booster seat. Hopefully everything goes well.

Books on Tape for the Preschool Roadtripper

As much as I enjoy introducing my kids to punk rock at an early age (ok, so maybe not just punk rock or even The Beatles....Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture is still Xander's favorite composition), sometimes the kids are not interested in listening to just music. When traveling and trying to keep the boys entertained, we know we need to mix things up.

We are lucky that both Xander and Caleb both enjoy and appreciate books. Xander, in particular, really enjoys story time. Sometimes we'll tell them one of their favorites - Hansel and Gretel or The Three Little Pigs. Or, we'll just make up a story and then Xander, who is 4, will as well.

But recently we've discovered that the concept of books on tape, or in this case stories on tape works great for kids on road trips. They're actually much more fun than I would have imagined. Often times, just as is the case with books on tape, famous actors or the authors themselves, if they are interesting, will narrate. For example, Shel Silverstein narrates his own poems, and "Where the Sidewalk Ends" is quickly becoming a preschooler books on tape favorite. Perhaps when the boys get just a wee bit older we'll expose them to his less kid friendly works, but for now we'll skip over "Is She On Qualudes?" from the rotation.

On the Winnie the Pooh stories, Dame Judi Dench as the narrator! I never would have put M and Pooh together, but she does a great job as one would expect.

But, by far the boys' favorite story right now is "The Story of Peter Rabbit". Meryl Streep narrates this one, but the boys like it for the mix of story and music. For me, the music is a bit odd and dated. It starts with an acid jazz intro reminiscent of the music they used to play as you entered the United terminal at O'Hare (ok, really odd reference but the similarity is striking). Then it goes into a series George Shearing influenced piano interludes. But in the story, whenever Peter gets into trouble and gets chased by Mr. McGregor, the music gets faster and the boys begin to laugh hysterically. Now, they even start to laugh ahead of time in anticipation, since they've heard the story so many times.

I've downloaded a few other of these stories as well. One of them is "Pecos Bill", featuring Robin Williams and music by Ry Cooder. I'm entertained by it, so I'm hoping this one will be a hit with the boys as well. That is, if they'd ever let us put something else on besides Peter Rabbit.

Music for the Preschool Roadtripper

As anyone who ever put together a list of CDs, Tapes or MP3 for a roadtrip knows, listening to great music during a roadtrip heightens the experience. It reinforces the notion that “getting there is half the fun”.
With kids, having something great to listen to in the car (or train or plane) serves two purposes. First, it creates a memorable experience for both you and your kids. Additionally, it helps distract the kids from asking, “Are we there yet?”.
We are lucky enough to have a car that has an auxiliary option for plugging in an iPhone. This already turned out to be remarkably handy. It’s a small feature in the full scope of everything you look for in a car. But moving forward I won’t buy a car if this feature for high fidelity, troublefree connectivity to a smartphone or MP3 player isn’t included.
With so many good smartphone applications available these days, there are really several great options for planning what you are going to listen to with your kids.
This blog entry will focus on music that you bring with you. Future blog entries in this series will address music on the go applications such as Rhapsody and Pandora for your smartphone as well as listening to stories and books while traveling.
When I am listening to music with my kids, my preference is to listen to music by artists I like, that also happen to be kid-friendly. When it comes to adult-kid crossover music, perhaps the original and still the best artist is The Beatles. I hand pick the songs to play for the kids, and they love it.

Plus, let's be honest...The Beatles really are an entry point into the world of all kinds of good rock music. Everyone was influenced by them - even Black Sabbath (think "She's So Heavy"). When my kids are a little older, I want them to easily discover Led Zeppelin, The Clash, and The Who.

When The Beatles remastered CDs came out last year, it gave me a good excuse to re-discover the albums (I had owned a few tapes and LPs). I’ve put together a mix for the kids that include the following songs:

• Yellow Submarine (from Revolver)
• Eleanor Rigby (from Revolver)
• Good Day, Sunshine (from Revolver)
• Got to Get You Into My Life (from Revolver)
• Octopus’ Garden (from Abbey Road)
• Here Comes the Sun (from Abbey Road)
• For the Benefit of Mr. Kite (from Sgt. Pepper)
• With a Little Help from My Friends (from Sgt. Pepper)
• Ob-la-di Ob-la-da (from White Album)
• Blackbird (from White Album)

Yellow Submarine and Octopus’ Garden are not surprisingly the biggest hits. Often times, when we get in the car, Caleb will ask to hear “the Submarine song”.
Another artist that the kids really enjoy is the The Shins. The Shins make good, likeable easy to listen to music, with just the right amount of pop sensibility. Some of their music, especially from their Oh Inverted World and Wincing the Night Away albums, are very relaxing. We often put on these albums when we are driving and hoping that the kids will nap. It’s nearly been foolproof so far.
Several other artists we like have also made some very entertaining and enjoyable children’s albums. Included within this category are:

• The Barenaked Ladies – Snacktime
• They Might be Giants – Here Come the 123s (our favorite). They also have Here come the ABCs and a new album, Here Comes Science.
• Ziggy Marley - Family Time
• Johnny Cash – The Johnny Cash Children’s Album

As mentioned previously, this is just one way in which we’ve made roadtrips more fun and easier. Additional ideas will be shared in future entries.