Bunnies

At the Valentine's Party there were some bunny rabbits that Braedyn had a lot of fun playing with. The pre-school he'll be starting at also has a couple of bunnies, and he's already mentioned getting one at home on a few ocasions. We'll have to see about that...

 
 

Valentine's Party

Braedyn was invited to a Valentine's party and had a blast. There were a lot of kids there and all kinds of games to play, but the thing that he remembered the most was decorating his own cookie and then eating it.

 
 

Bike Riding

For Christmas, Braedyn got a new Scoot Bike. This is a bike without pedals that is supposed to help kids learn balance on a bike before having to worry about pedalling as well. He's been having a lot of fun riding it around the loop by our house and is starting to get hte hang of it a little bit. He does like it the most when daddy pushes him so he can go "really fast"!

 
 

More Garden

THe last of our botanical garden excursion pictures... This place was really a blast, we ended the day with a picnic lunch in the gardens by the visitor center after a long stop at the little stream to rock hop, throw rocks in and just explore.

Botanical Garden

Some more pictures from our day at the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens.

Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens

We headed out to the Botanical Garden in Santa Barbara recently. It was a great place with all kinds of neat, natural areas with a ton of amazing plants growing around. Braedyn had a ton of fun there and I think we will certainly go back. The Gardens themselves are broken into different climate regions (desert, Redwood forest, island, etc) so there is a lot of interesting things to see. It also overlooks the ocean off in the distance while butting up to the mountains.

Overlook

We found a nice little overlook at the bluffs near our house to take a picture. This also turned out to be about the time that our car was getting broken into back at the parking lot which kind of ruined our plans for the rest of the day...

 

Short Legs

Elisabeth lost her legs and Rincon beach and so we had to build her some new ones out of sand.

 

Starfish

With low tide comes tidepool and that means lots of critters like crabs, snails and starfish. Lots of fun for kids!

 
 
 
 

Beaches

Some more pictures while Elisabeth was here visiting with Mema and Papa.

Evening Beach Walks

It's staying light longer again! This affords time to get down to the beach after naptime in time to have some fun and then watch the sunset over the Pacific. The tides have even been cooperating a bit lately with low tide coming later in the afternoon so that we can check out the tidepools a bit and see some fun sea life. Elisabeth had a lot of fun on her visit here at the beach and seemed to really like checking out the tide pools as well.

 
 
 

6 person bike?

One of the touristy things to do in Santa Barbara, 10 minutes up the coast from Carp, is to rent one of these overly large, family bikes and take it for a spin down the beach bike path near downtown. We hadn't had the opportunity present itself to make it worth doing this until Mema and Papa's visit with Elisabeth. We were just hanging out downtown near the beach and couldn't pass it up. Although there are pedals for 4 people to work together on the propulsion of this beast, Michael was doomed to do all of the work on this day as everyone else relaxed in their seats and enjoyed the sunshine.... (just kidding...., it was a little overcast) :-)

 
 
 

Trees

There are some interesting trees around here for climbing.

 
 

World's best playground

Snata Barbara has a great playground at a downtown park. We've blogged about it on a few occassions already, but we headed there again with Mema, Papa and Elisabeth when they were out for their recent visit. We spent a while there as well as the tutrle ponds across the street. Of course a visit to this park isn't complete without a stop at Crushcakes Cupcakery for a fresh made, extra sugary cupcake to finish off a hard day of playing....

 
 
 
 

Elisabeth

Mema and Papa were here for a visit and brought Elisabeth with them this time. Braedyn absolutely loved having her come as he had a constant playmate. On this day we headed up to the zoo. The rainy weather ensured that there were no crowds, but it was nice enough to hang out in anyhow.