Family fun in Los Altos

I am a frugal kind of gal. I love having fun times with my family that costs little to nothing. Well, that's just what we did on Saturday. And get this, it was right here in Los Altos.
After breakfast at Coco's in Sunnyvale (cost about $15 for all 4 of us!) we went to Los Altos. I love the Los Altos Library and wanted to show it to Rick. So we went over there and found they had a FREE museum about the beginnings of Los Altos. It was fascinating how a whole town sprung up from nothing but a trail station and some old farms. Upstairs in this museum is an interactive section. The kids played with the model train set up to look like Los Altos in 1932. They climbed the horse saddle and played with toy apricots like they were in the packing house. There was a house set up with music playing as if we were in a house in 1932 in Los Altos, California. It was amazing. Now I know what you're thinking. It's free, you couldn't have spent too much time there. You're wrong. We were there for almost an hour before Rick and I made the kids leave. As we were leaving Katie asked when she gets to come back. SCORE!
After that we went to the library. Katie loves to pick out books and borrow them. She got 3 that day. We lost Rick for about 20 minutes as he lost himself in the rows and rows of books. Our friend Jack took Eli to "run" him since he was getting tired and grumpy.
Then we went to the car. Rick and I thought it was a successful day and were ready to go home when the kids spotted the play ground. So off we went to play for about another 45 minutes. All in all we spent over two and a half hours at the Los Altos Public Library complex. Family Fun indeed.
Oh, but that's not all. As we were driving out of the parking lot Rick decided to just explore Downtown Los Altos a bit. When the kids saw the Jamba Juice they begged. So we parked and walked the main street of old Los Altos. We explored a teacher supply/toy store. We saw lots of restaurants we have on our "date night" list. And had an enjoyable time.
It's amazing how you can find fun things to do and stay on a budget if you try. What amazing things does your city have to do?

Our Snow Day

Katie has been bugging us about going to the snow for about 2 years. Every year we've said the same thing..."Elisha's too little". Well, Elisha isn't so little anymore. So since there was no cast on the boy (thank the Lord that's over with) we went to North Star in Tahoe.

It was beautiful. There was a few feet of snow. The sun was shinning. It was great. So off we go looking for a place to play that wouldn't put us right in the line of the snowboarders when I look at Katie and see tears on her cheeks. She was sick. She wanted to stop and lay down and possibly vomit. So much for Katie's fun in the snow day. We took her to the fire pit and had her sit for a while thinking she's just cold and needs to rest some.

Meanwhile, Elisha sees the kids ski school and begins to yell "I do that". I took him up to some deep "playing" snow and he saw snowboarders to which he yells "I do that, Mama. Diego snowboard. I snowboard". (In case you don't know "Go Diego" from Nickelodeon is Elisha's favorite show right now). But I just finished with a cast on my 2 year old, I was not about to go for a 3rd break in 18 months. Too bad buddy, you'll have to wait.

Katie thought she was better and went for a walk with Rick. But after about 5 minutes she had full tears down her cheeks; she really was sick. We went to the car, gave her Dramamine and she slept the whole ride back to Mango and Papo's (my parents) house.

Thus ended our adventure to the snow. We learned a few things though. Katie HATES to be cold! Elisha wants to snowboard. I think it would be fun to try skiing or snowboarding. Rick wants to do the Telemark and snowshoeing thing (it's an Indiana Jones meats national treasure meets weekend warrior thing). So in about 2 years we will attempt it again!