In February, we all drove down to Berkeley and then Santa Cruz to visit with family. We spent the night at Dana's house and the cousins had a lot of fun playing together. We walked to a nearby school park where the girls played, here weaving in and out of the bike racks.
We also went to the Oakland Zoo with Dana and Uncle Marty, our first time there. It was a great zoo with lots of animals and a fun new children's area. Daddy was found to be carrying around one of the monkeys on his shoulders. Cora's favorite seemed to be the meerkats, there was even a special kid sized tunnel she crawled into that gave a good view into the meerkat area. There was an area with rides just outside the zoo. All the girls rode on the carousel and went on the little train ride. Cora went on her first roller coaster ride with Daddy; a tiger coaster on which they rode in the last car, by the tiger's tail. Cora thought this was pretty exciting and kept saying that it had been really scary!
After the trip to the zoo, we continued on to Santa Cruz. There were excursions to the beach, a fun park with neat slides, duck feeding at the pond near Grandma's house, and interesting flower & dirt stews brewed while we were there. We saw lots of family: Grandma Julie, Grandpa George, Aunt CC, Uncle Dave, Uncle Marty, Aunt Ingrid, Dana, Uncle Jeremy, and Uncle Jay. The weather was really beautiful while we were there. And we all got to see Uncle Jeremy & Uncle Jay off on their road trip to Florida.
After returning back home, we spent some nice days at home before the weather started get rainy and cold again. We took the girls to see Curious George at the theater, it was Olivia's first time at the movies, Cora's third. It was a very fun kid movie and they both really enjoyed it!
Kindergarten update: Cora has gotten into our second choice school, Hooker Oak Open Structure Program. She is currently 14th on the waiting list on our first choice school, Chico Country Day School. Both are public schools here in Chico, but are alternative programs/charter schools within the district so they choose students by lottery. We're still hopeful that she'll get into Chico Country Day, we'll just have to wait and see.
