Fun at the Mendocino Botanical Gardens with the Boys

Seems like an oxymoron, fun at a botanical gardens with boys. But the Mendocino Botanical Gardens with our boys was fun. Oh yes there is a plethora of flora and fauna (just deer), lovely landscaping and educational labeling, a large collection of rhododendron ... but my two tykes who had been cooped up for two days were also able to simply run wild for a few hours, which is exactly what they needed.

The Mendocino Botanical Gardens was recommended by my husband's co-worker who had grown up in the area. So as we made our way through the fussy gift shop (far too many glass shelves filled with glass knick knacks for any comfort considering my clumsy six year old) and forked over $38 for our family of four we almost said... ah we'll pass.

But a recommendation is a recommendation. And the sun was finally out and the boys need a good dose of mother nature. The Mendocino Botanical Gardens were a pleasant surprise.

You enter into the formal garden and exit through a gate on a coastal trail. The trail takes you to the Parrish Farm. David Parrish worked with Santa Rosa's own Luther Burbank before he moved his ten kids to Fort Bragg to raise potatoes and peas on the coast.  Now, if you didn't grow up in Sonoma County you are probably only mildly familiar with Luther Burbank. He was a botanist, horticulturalist and pioneer in agricultural science. His home in Santa Rosa was a staple on the field trip circuit and as I remember, he invented hundreds of varieties of daisies, as well as apples and potatoes.

The farm is very sweet, and definitely fun for the kids. Following a Big Blue Meanie sign the Gardens have created an adventure trail near the farm for kids that includes forts, giant eggs and other hands-on surprises. This was the boys favorite part. A good part of my childhood was spent playing in the woods behind our house with my neighborhood friends. And I do wish my boys had more opportunities to build forts and experience the woods the way I did as a kid. The adventure trail harkened back to a time when kids had easier access to nature, and although they couldn't build a fort, they could play in one, and they loved it.

It is funny, but when our boys are cooped up for any time they get a little silly and crazy. It makes for challenging travel in restaurants, lobbies, hotel rooms and stores -- anywhere you need a semblance of decorum. The Mendocino Botanical Gardens offered a needed outlet where the boys could just play.  It will stay on our shortlist of things to do in Mendocino with the boys.

Aboard the Skunk Train

This winter I finally packed up and moved the massive Thomas the Tank Engine collection to the basement. The boys only occasionally played with their trains, and they didn't even miss them... I did. It is an end of an era, my little boys weren't preschoolers anymore, and were no longer interested in preschool toys. Alas in the age of Beyblades and Lego Ninjago, trains are for babies.

On the first full day on the Mendocino coast it was supposed to rain. With miserable weather ahead we thought, how fun it would be to ride the Skunk Train. And don't get me wrong, it was fun. The Skunk Train runs through the redwoods from Fort Bragg toward Willits. During the summer you can ride a classic steam engine. In the Winter/Spring your engine is a good old fashioned diesel train.

The train has been following the Redwood Route since 1885. Originally to reach logging encampments, the modern version is for tourists.

But, for our boys the magic is gone. The wonder and amazement and pure joy of all things trains is gone. In its place mild enjoyment and curiosity.

The Skunk Train is quite a time investment. Our train left at 10 am and returned four hours later.  The first half of the ride the boys were great. They listened to the conductor's stories, lead Jonathan to the outside train to view the 1,000 year old redwood trees, and happily looked outside the window.

We then had lunch as the train was turned around to be sent back to Fort Bragg. After lunch the boys were no longer interested in the train. Caleb managed to make friends with other kids who were a little bored of the train ride too. They looked out the window, told jokes and shared secrets.

Xander didn't have as much success, so he played video games on Jonathan's phone. I asked the boys if they liked the Skunk Train, and the answer was a resounding "yes, but..." But for them, once is plenty for the foreseeable future. I don't think we would have had the same response from three and four year old Xander and Caleb. I guess Jonathan and I will let our membership at the California Railroad Museum elapse. Sigh...

Spring Break on the Mendocino Coast

I don't remember getting this much time off when I was a kid. In February we have ski week around the President's Day holiday, and in April we have Spring Break. Ski week for us is in Florida visiting the grandparents ... and Spring Break always puts us at a loss for what to do, since we can only take about two days off work, the kids are in Y Camp for the other three days. It needs to be a compact Holiday with minimal travel time (under four hours) and maximum fun. Last year we spent a few days in Monterey, and this year we headed to the Mendocino coast.

April is still considered off season on the beautiful coast. With the boys we opted to stay in Fort Bragg, more pedestrian than upscale Mendocino. Fort Bragg also is where you can catch the Skunk train, and close to a bunch of coastal parks.

If we could do it over again, we would have selected a different hotel. The rooms at the Holiday Inn Express are small, and it doesn't have balconies. So on our rainy first day (actually thunder, lightening, torrential rains and hale) we felt cooped up. With four of us, we should have sprung for a low end suite at a property with balconies. We'll keep that in mind on our next visit.

In fact after the boys acted up at dinner on our first night -- they were more uncontrollably silly than anything else, 5 year old Caleb turns to me and says in a very grown up voice, "Mom, of course we are acting silly. We haven't had any kid time, and we need an outlet."

Hmmm ... I wonder where he heard that before? Keeping that in mind we found plenty of free play activities for the boys. And the weather was fantastic the rest of the long weekend. Our itinerary included:

Friday - 10 am - 2 pm ride the Skunk Train; 2:30 pm visit the Botanical Gardens (there is an adventure trail for the kids which includes a fort), 4 pm visited a Light House -- did I mention we were feeling cooped up after Thursday's storms.
Saturday - Tide pools (we went to two separate beaches, at the first the tide pools were closed because of the baby seals) and Mendocino Headlands
Sunday - Travel home with a stop for a hike in the Redwoods.

The trip was amazing. The boys can't wait to go back! They loved it. Over the next few weeks I'll blog about our specific excursions. The Mendocino coast is definitely a great destination for both adults and children.

The pianist - The first piano recital

One of life's big regrets is that I never mastered a musical instrument. Growing up as a military brat, we moved around a lot. In the pivotal learning to play the flute year, we moved mid-school year from New York to California.  My new class in California was much further along than my previous school, and although I sat in for the rest of the school year,  I never caught up. And as it is with many kids, I moved on and lost interest during that year.

In my 20s I studied guitar, but it wasn't the same. So with regret breeds ... piano lessons for my kids. I have heard the horror stories of kids (especially who grew up in the 40s and 50s ...) being forced into piano lessons. Understanding that is really not a good thing, in January Xander started piano lessons with no coersion.

Proud Mamma bragging time -- Xander was born with two inherent loves. One is water. From his first bath he has been in love with being wet, splashing around and water, and the other is music. As a baby we hummed Tchaikovsy to him to calm him down, his first concert was an opera, and his first favorite toy as a toddler was his rainbow piano. He also has great focus and beautiful long fingers, and a ear for music. He was born to play piano.

In January Xander started piano lessons. At the behest of his piano teacher we waited until he was six and half, but we knew that he would love it. Every Friday Jonathan takes Xander to his lesson, and he practices piano 10 to 30 minutes a night -- no pressure.

So after a whopping four months of lessons on Sunday Xander had his first recital. It was great. His teacher likes to do recitals because it is a forcing function to help her students rise to the occasion. It is always good to have a goal. Xander did great playing both Yankee Doodle and Mary Had a Little Lamb. Remember Billy Joel and Beethovan were once beginners. Still I'm not sure he is bound for Julliard yet. But I think we are fostering a love of music that will serve him well in life, no regrets.

A date with dolphins in the Florida Keys

When I was a kid I loved to watch the 1964 show Flipper in syndication. It is the one and only mental picture I have of the Florida Keys. So, when it came to planning our trip to the Florida Keys I wanted to make sure the boys had an up close with marine life experience, especially an opportunity to meet dolphins.

While swimming with the dolphins is romantic, and there are plenty of options in the Keys, it is also pricey at $100 or more per person for an encounter. With early swimmers, scuba and snorkeling are also out of the question. Other activities for small kids can also be at a shortage in the Keys -- other than beaches and swimming pools. And to be honest we had that in Hollywood, Fla.

Don't get me wrong. The Florida Keys are lovely, and well worth a visit. Yet may be more geared toward grown-ups -- snorkeling, followed by fruity cocktails, fresh fish and a live band ... fun.

I'm so glad that we discovered Theater of the Sea in Islamorada. I found it on Yelp (searching for "kid friendly activities" in the Florida Keys).  To be honest, other than glass bottom boats, snorkeling and scuba trips it was the only thing that came up. At first I was concerned by its 3.5 star rating. But the negative Nancys had issues with it being geared toward small children -- Hooray for us!

I actually think that they were wrong. It is not geared toward small children. But it is a throw-back, a nostalgic nod to a simpler time when little boys named Sandy and Bud could live on a marine refuge in Southern Florida.

Founded in 1942, Theater of the Sea is the second oldest marine wildlife show in the North America.  It does promote the "swimming with the dolphin experience." But I'd suggest bypassing the "programs" (what they call the swimming with the dolphin, sting ray or sea lion) line, and just buy tickets to the shows. They are so worth it. We got there early at 10 am with the intention to sit up front for each show -- which we did.

We started with the parrot show, followed by the dolphin show and concluding with the sea lion show. The parrot show, was probably the least exciting. Yet, I also think it was Xander's favorite. He loved the parrot tricks and he got to hold a parrot, and he still talks about that.
 
Jonathan and my mother in law headed to the dolphin show to secure seats upfront while the boys and I waited in line to hold a parrot. The dolphin show was a blast, and Xander got picked for the audience participation part. He got to pet a dolphin... which is pretty awesome.

Next was the sea lion show, which was really cute. There is something amazing about watching a sea lion balance a ball on its nose. We also sat up front for this show, and Caleb got chosen to play sea lion ring toss.

After we made the rounds of the shows, we went on a nature walk, took the short bottomless boat ride (where we got a short dolphin show in the center of the boat). And then headed to the beach, where you can feed large tropical blue fish. All in all we spent five hours at Theater of the Sea, and we had an amazing time. Seriously if you are looking for something fun to do with small children in the Florida Keys, Theater of the Sea is it.

RIP Sweet Border Collie

Yesterday we put down our beloved border collie Geddy. Her kidneys had failed and she had stopped eating. As much as I wanted her to die at home, the vet told us that she was in a lot of pain, felt so nauseous she couldn't eat anymore and that bringing her home would be more for us than for her.

Geddy came into our life nearly 15 years ago. She was six months old at the time, and as is the case with many rambunctious, high energy border collies we were her fifth home. Her mother walked into the street when she was five weeks old and was hit and killed by a car. Shortly afterword she left her first home to live with the breeder's son's girlfriend in an apartment with a makeshift yard (a kid's swimming pool filled with dirt). When Geddy became too much for the girlfriend, she dropped her off with the breeder's son, now her ex-boyfriend. Geddy spent the next couple of months in a pen with her litter mate. Finally, the breeder's son returned her to his parent's house where we adopted her.

All of the puppy trauma made for a submissive little dog. She suffered from such great separation anxiety that she used to fill our bedroom with mother nature -- wood chips, leaves, dirt. She destroyed our shoes, baseball caps, ripped apart a couch -- she was a little terror. Yet we had to rebuild her confidence with encouragement -- which was pretty hard to do when you are trying to reassemble your couch and hide the foam before company arrives. But each day she became a better dog.

When she was 18 months old we rescued a golden retriever named Barney as a companion for Geddy and some much needed adult dog supervision. The two dogs were best friends until Barney's death four years later (at age 14 of kidney failure).

In her prime she was an amazing athlete. A natural frisbee dog. She would lay down in an open field, and from a crouch position, run, jump up in the air, catch a frisbee and then leave it at our feet. Impressive.

She was our constant companion. We took her everywhere with us, to Burning Man, Santa Barbara, on camping trips, hiking, the beach... When we lived in the city she was in a play group with other herding dogs. She was a very happy dog.

But when we had kids her life quickly changed. We left San Francisco for San Jose and a big yard. Geddy was displaced by the boys. All of the time we once spent with Geddy we now committed to our boys. She adapted. She became an elder statesdog. She tolerated  the boys, she kept them in order, herded them, and sometimes corrected them ... And she also left them alone, and pursued other interests, like barking at the mailman and chasing squirrels. Her new favorite place to sleep was under Xander's crib, and then later under his bed. And I think in her own way, she loved the boys and has been very content these last seven years.

We are so sad to say good-bye to Geddy. She was our baby girl. She taught us patience and optimism -- to see her for her potential, and not her puppy trauma. She was loud and rambunctious, smart and sweet. We love you Geddy girl. Rest in peace little border collie.

Alligator Wrangling in the Everglades

One of my favorite books when I was a kid was the Great Escape or the Sewer Story. It was about Silas the alligator, taken as a baby to New York from the Everglades by a vacationing family, who eventually flushed him down the toilet when he got too big. He ended up in the New York sewer with other alligators that staged a great escape back to the Everglades. The book is alas, out of print.

So, on this trip to Florida when we decided we were going to visit the Everglades, I wanted to see alligators. But, Caleb and Xander were adamant that there was to be no alligator wrestling. Instead we headed out on a alligator wrangling adventure.

After reviewing options on Yelp, we opted for the Everglades Safari Tours for our alligator seeking air boat ride and wild life show. I was most impressed that they made a point to tell us that there was no alligator wrestling.

It was an amazing trip. The 45 minute ride through the Everglades was fun. Strangely enough I didn't really know what the Everglades were before the trip. I thought they were a swamp. But our tour operator corrected us that the Everglades are not a swamp, but in fact  a slow moving river of rainwater running through high grasses. But seriously, what really is the difference?

During the ride we saw plenty of alligators, birds, haddocks and mangroves. After the air boat ride the adventure really began. The wildlife show was fun, seeing a bunch of large sleepy alligators responding to their names, as a brave trainer presented in the alligator cage.

Afterward we walked around the park. On one side were captive alligators behind a fence, and on the other side was sun bathing "wild" alligators. As we posed for pictures in front the fantastic "wild" reptilians, I kept thinking of the family photos before tragedy strikes. As people hoist their child in front of a lion, or bear or ... alligator for that great photo. I kept the boys on the sidewalk, and stayed a reasonably safe distance away. But the wild ones did have significantly more appeal from a photo perspective.

For three dollars each, the boys were also able to hold a baby alligator too. For Caleb and Xander this was one of the highlights of our Florida trip. The baby alligator was little and cute. Cute enough to take back to San Jose, but what we do with him when he got too big?