We have reached the end of the first 3 months of our stay here in the Bay area. Tomorrow we head to the airport @ 6am and will fly from SFO to New York, and then change planes and head to Manchester overnight, arriving in Manchester @ 8am on Saturday morning.

Elliot is mega excited- so much that we think he thinks he is going back and not coming back out here – today he asked when the ship was coming to get his toys…. 🙁 Oh dear, we are gonna have some fun in three weeks or so….

We have bought an 8ft by 5ft map of the world and put it on the wall in the kids play area in the house.  We have begun showing Elliot where the white house is, where Grandmas live and where Mia lives.  He is actually picking it up quickly and has only tonight been asking where the plane goes tomorrow when we head back home 🙂

Simon has moved all of his gear out of the office in Palo Alto since we have now moved (or will have when he gets back) into a new place in San Jose.  The great news is that this office is just 12 miles from home – the Palo Alto place was / is 24 miles.  NICE 🙂

We are now just 24days or so until our break in Hawaii – typically a travel agent that we walked in to see in Los Gatos got back to us (3 days later than she promised and hence 2 days after we booked the holiday) and the price that she had to offer was very impressive – so much so that maybe we will make use of her for our next trip….

It has taken a lot of to’ing and fro’ing, but we have finally decided to go to Waikiki Beach for our August vacation.  We have just 10 minutes ago booked 7 nights at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort and Spa that sits right on the edge of Waikiki beach.

We were debating (early on) San Diego or Las Vegas, but decided that Vegas would be too hot in August and San Diego would require a car and hence need us to drive around a lot.  SO, it ultimately came down to Waikiki OR Maui, and Maui gave us the impression of car requirements also.

So we shot for Waikiki – there were some good offers on with the Hilton, and so even though it is a MUCH bigger hotel than we would normally go for, we were able to upgrade the rooms significantly before it came to a cost near an alternative in the same area 🙂

We hope to get to Vegas in November, so we won’t be losing out 🙂

Poor mummy has been tres ill today, so we didn’t get out to Gilroy Gardens as we had planned unfortunately 🙁  Hopefully she will be feeling better tomorrow as daddy is heading out to New York tomorrow night.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Our baby is growing up – he looks more like a little boy every day.

Today was the first time that all 3 of the Rust boys had a hair cut together 🙂

We are now just 7 days from heading back to Ossett – the excitement is definitely building although the flights home does not particularly excite us at all….Elly will be OK – he will sit and watch the iPad for the entire journey where he is not sleeping.  Olly on the other hand……

Hoping to get to Gilroy Gardens tomorrow – family fun park.

We decided that our first US based independence day should be spent at a carnival and watching fireworks in San Francisco, so we head up there on Sunday after lunch, so that we could play in the Golden Gate Park, and then make our ay to Pier 39 (near Fisherman’s Wharf for the celebrations.

The first signal of a mistake was that we left Los Gatos in glorious sunshine and 31C temperature.  When we arrived at the park, it was down to 19C and cloudy 🙁 The park was fun in all fairness and both boys (plus daddy) enjoyed tootling around the adventure play park that was there.

So, at 4pm we set out to Pier 39 – Simon reckoned on this being a 6 to 8 mile journey.  When he got to roughly where he thought it was, the decision was made to have the sat nav finish the job off – this was possibly a major mistake that could well be the reason for such a resounding failed day.  The car took us 6 miles in the wrong direction.  It turned out that we were less than 400 yards from where we actually needed to be…..

So, given the sheet volume of traffic making it’s way to the event, we then spend then next 1 hour and 30 minutes trying to get back to the place that we were already at …. 🙁

To top it all off, because we were now quite late, parking was a problem – so we ended up in a parking garage near Fisherman’s Wharf where the trolley bus trams terminate.  It cost $50 to park, yes that’s right 35 UK pounds.  We stayed 3 hours – 45 minutes of which was spend queuing for a toilet….. Grrr..

The place was packed with people, and if it wasn’t for the fact that it was now only 14C, it would have been a tremendous experience we think.  There were all sorts of entertainers in the street from magicians to stilt walkers to comedians.

Because we were late, finding a location for our evening meal proved unlikely – there was a queue outside In and Out Burger that stretched 50 yards down the street – Simon laughed.  He was laughing on the other side of his face when they got to the other restaurants – that 50 yards was a leisurely walk in the park in comparison to the other queues…..  The bys were getting cross and Olly was telling us every 5 minutes that his stomach was eating him from the inside and that he needed some quality food very soon.

So, we headed back to the car, leaving the great spot for the fireworks behind, in search of food. IHOP here we come…. 🙂 We had a great meal @ IHOP for a reasonable cost – Olly ate a bit of everyone’s meal and then we parked up near the marina by Golden Gate bridge.

The fireworks began at 9:30pm, and because of the cloudy sky, we were unable to see much, so we decided enough was enough, and it was time to head home.

That was Sunday, so as a treat we decided to head to the beach @ Santa Cruz today.  It had been that cold yesterday, we thought, let’s go have some fun on the beach and burn up in the sun.

OK, so that was the thought…… we left Los Gatos in 29C and as we got through the mountains, we found the clouds were building and when we got to the car park in SC, we were experiencing 15C….. ARSE.

The sun didn’t come out all day in SC, but we did have fun on the beach, and we were amazed at just how busy it was.  The beach was absolutely packed….. It seems that many folks had the same idea, only to be disappointed with the lack of sun.

When we got back to LG tonight, the temperature was at 30C and there was not a cloud in the sky…..

Next year, we will trust the location and stay in LG !!! 🙂

We have been debating for the last 24 hours whether we go to Vega for 7 days OR Hawaii for 7 days when grandma and granddad come out for two weeks in August.

Hawaii is a place none of us have been to, so we don’t have a clue what to expect, but Vegas – Vicky, Simon and Elliot have been before so we have an idea where to go etc.

Suspect that Hawaii may just win out even though it is more expensive.  It is also 5 hours longer to get there on the plane 🙁

We found a shop last night that sells British chocolate so we nipped in and bought ourselves a few bars.  A bar of Cadbury Caramel that would have cost no more than £1.50 cost us $6.99 + tax ….. Guess it worth the extra cost – v nice to have a few chunks of it after tea last night 🙂

We also bought a magic bullet blender in Costco so we are V likely to be having frozen cocktails tonight when the boys go to bed 🙂