Memorial Day

We decided to just take it easy this Memorial Day.  Here are some of the things we did:

On Saturday, it was a perfect day! It wasn’t hot, and there was a slight breeze that when you were in the shade, was even a little cool!  We went to the park to have a picnic. I’m not sure what Marissa is looking at in this pic:

Jacob and Marissa played some catch with the football…

Jacob and Hannah played on the play set…..

 

Jacob and Hannah had the whole skate park to themselves. Jacob rode his scooter and Hannah just ran after him.  They had fun!

And the rest of us? We took naps! It was so relaxing!

 

Sunday was a nice resting and sleeping in day.  Monday we were going to just do something local, but Doug was feeling good so we decided to try to go to the Bay and to a museum that we hadn’t been to in a few years. The kids loved it last time we went, and since we get in free, why not?

We headed down to the University of Berkeley to go to the Lawrence Hall of Science. 

We played games….

 

We made “spin stories”

Made tracks for ping pong balls to roll down – (this is a very fun and time consuming little game..so simple yet so fun to experiment with!)

We got lost in a pretty good maze!  We were surprised at how good it was!  There were mirrors in the middle of it, and I took a photo of me in the mirror getting lost. Do I look lost?

Here is  photo of the top of the maze – just a series of poles and plastic dividers.

Meghan and Mama are building creations…

Then we went to the “Main Exhibit” called Grossology, where we learned about all things GROSS!

For example:

Do you know what SPLAY is?  (if the pic is too small to read, just click on it to make it bigger)

Did you know that CaCa comes in all shapes and sizes? They had a game where you had to match the size and shapes of caca to the correct animal!  It was LOADS of fun! (get it? LOADS? ha ha!)

Here is  a yummy recipe for you to try for Edible Dookie Cookies!

We saw what tape worms look like and learned they can get up to 60 FEET inside you! YUCK!

We played “Roll the Dung Up the Hill” game with Dung Beetles….

Learned all about flys….Look at the “Factoid” right behind his wing:

“Flies pee every 4.5 minutes wherever they land”.  How much fly pee do you have in your house?

We played a slime game to find out which animal is the slimiest….

We “pumped up” ticks, slugs and mosquitos full of “blood” to see how fat they can get….

We learned what happens when you go poo poo on the toilet….

We learned how male frogs “eat” frog eggs and helps them hatch…

We learned what happens when a cow eats…..where the food goes, gets digested, and then comes out the other end…

We played more gross games….

We learned why dogs smell each other’s butts:

We saw skeletons of gross dino heads….

Jacob got to hold a bird…Nothing gross here, and the bird didn’t even poo on Jacob’s hand!  (No, that kid with the glasses is NOT Harry Potter!)

Outside, it was a nice day, but very foggy and we couldn’t even see San Fran over the bay.

We played on life size whales and bigger than life size DNA:

After the museum, we went about 10 miles away and were in a completely different world… You would never know the big city was just a few miles away!  Up in the Berkeley hills, above the Oakland Temple, is a Volcano Park that not too many people know about.  (There was a geo cache here, so that’s how we found it)

We learned how the Oakland and Berkeley hills (some of the highest peaks in the Bay Area) were formed millions and millions of years ago by four main volcano's.

Here is some of the left over lava rocks….

Here we all are sitting on a main lava flow that is visible poking out of the mountain….

Here is a better view of it:

And here we are hiking the mountainy & foresty terrain.

On the way home, we snapped some pics of the World War 1 ships that still sit in the bay near Benecia rusting away.  Doug can remember always seeing these ships when he went to visit Grandpa and Grandma Petersen when they lived in Benecia. 

And then we came home!

All in all, a good fun day!