Our Moana Family Halloween

October means a visit to the pumpkin patch and all of the festivities that lead up to Halloween. As usual, we headed to Half Moon Bay to pick out our pumpkins. Bob's Pumpkin Patch has been our favorite over the years. You just can't beat the sprawling fields of pumpkins overlooking the ocean. 

With three missing front teeth I was like a jack o' lantern myself this year!

I was gifted a Moana costume for my birthday this year, so that made it easy to decide what to dress up as for Halloween. Once my costume was decided, Mommy had to figure out Colin's costume. Did you know that Disney had to pull all the Maui costumes from the shelves? Something about the skin color of the costume not being appropriate... Anyway, that meant Mommy had to get creative. She bought a plain muscle costume off Amazon and started drawing all the tattoos by hand with a Sharpie. Yes it took many many hours but she loves doing this kinda stuff! 

Colin got to show off his costume at his preschool's Halloween parade. Even though Mommy put together his grass skirt and necklace, he really didn't like wearing it and kept trying to take it off. She also should have found some flesh colored leggings or something but oh well. 

This was actually the first year our whole family dressed up as a theme! Daddy was Heihei (the rooster in Moana) and Mommy put together a very last minute Pua (the pig) costume. The weekend before Halloween, we went trick or treating down Burlingame Ave.

We also carved our jack o'lanterns. Daddy was very proud of his Death Star jack o'lantern this year.

On Halloween night we met up at my friend Astrid's house a few blocks from ours. It was nice to trick or treat somewhere different this year, and it turns out her neighborhood is super popular. We were very satisfied with all the candy we got and called this year's Halloween a great success!

Mommy put together a better Pua costume for herself...except she looked more like a cow than a pig!

The Rest of our Summer

Between Daddy's time off and all of our trips, the rest of our nine-week summer vacation went by so quickly, which made Mommy happy. Here are the last of her photos from summer!

First things first - as soon as we came back from Hawaii Colin had one week to get potty trained before he started preschool summer camp. It was fairly easy - only took a few days and a couple of accidents. It helped that he loved wearing his new Captain Underpants undies, complete with a cape!

Sporting a fierce tan from our Hawaii trip.

A trip to the Livermore outlets in 90 degree heat called for a strawberry rose petal gelato cone!

I only did two summer camps this year. The first was a week-long dance camp and the theme was "Rock Stars and Pop Stars." At the end of the week we performed two dances for our families. Here is our dance for Make Some Noise - check out my toe touch at around the 0:30 mark!

The other was Camp SOAR in Belmont. It was an all-day camp and I got to hang out with Alyssa and Wylie all week. We did lots of fun activities including arts and crafts, games, and water play. Highlights of the week included the field trip to Happy Hollow and this mini hike through the park that the counselors took us on. I insisted on showing Mommy and Colin when they picked me up one day. We walked along a creek to some old brick structure covered with graffiti. Very random but it made for some cool photos, we guess.

Colin enjoyed three whole weeks of Camp Treehouse at Village Park. It was just like going to preschool and he loved it. Everyday after camp he had a picnic lunch with his friends and they played even longer. I joined them the last two weeks and we spent lots of long afternoons there.

That one afternoon a bunch of my classmates all randomly showed up along with their little siblings. It was like one giant play date!

There were some random weekend outings:

Pancake breakfast at the fire station.

More time at Village Park.

Great America - where else?

A trip to Half Moon Bay with the Yamadas and Bermans. It was one of the coldest days there even though it was in the middle of August!

As a last hurrah before school started, Mommy took me and Colin to Happy Hollow. Colin is tall enough to go on all the rides now so we were able to go on everything together. In fact, he may have even outgrown most of the rides there, since they're geared more toward toddlers.

Mommy had to capture him eating pizza while wearing a pizza shirt.

And finally, the Burlingame Family Campout at Washington Park. This was our second year attending and it was fun because a lot of my school friends were there as well. It coincided with movie night so we all watched The Secret Life of Pets on the giant inflatable outdoor screen before going back to our tents for the night. It was fun night and a nice way to wrap up the summer!

Daddy's Summer Vacation

Since Daddy got a new job, his last day at BlackRock happened to be the same as my last day of school. He had a whole month before he started his new job, which meant he got to spend it at home with us! We took full advantage of his time off and spent lots of quality family time together. In addition to our trips to Calistoga and Hawaii, we also went on some local outings.

Golden Gate Park:
Although its not that far, we rarely visit Golden Gate Park, mostly because parking is such a pain. We finally checked it out on a weekday and went to Stow Lake. We even rented a rowboat! Daddy did all the work while we got a kick out of seeing all the ducks and turtles nearby.

The whole thing made Mommy think of that scene in "The Notebook" where Ryan Gosling takes Rachel McAdams for a romantic boat ride with geese swimming all around them. It was kinda like that, but not quite.

Half Moon Bay:

Another day we went to Fitzgerald Marine Preserve in Half Moon Bay to explore the tidepools. We arrived mid-morning when it was supposed to be low tide. Only to discover that Mommy had read the wrong tide tables and low tide wasn't until afternoon! It was also much colder that we had anticipated. We ended up spending the next few hours driving up and down Hwy 1, stopping for lunch, and shopping at some gift shops for an overpriced sweatshirt so that I could stay warm. At least it's one of my favorite sweatshirts now.

When we returned at low tide, we had totally lost interest in actually exploring the tidepools and just played in the sand instead.

Great America:
We got season passes again this summer so of course we had to make a few visits there.

It was a fun few weeks are we are glad Daddy got to spend so much time with us!

Maui!

Yup, another vacation in Maui. It was less than a year since our last trip, but Mommy and Daddy received a special promotion from Starwood for their newest resort, the Westin Nanea Ocean Villas. It was such a great deal they couldn't turn it down. We're glad we went! Since half the resort wasn't yet complete we got upgraded to a two bedroom ocean-view villa. Colin and I got our own room with a king sized bed and bathroom, and our own TV! Hopefully we don't come to expect these amenities every time we travel.

Our first stop after arriving in Maui: Ululani's shaved ice. Our second stop: Target(!) to pick up some toiletries and provisions for the week.

View from our room.

I took this picture of Mommy and Daddy in our living room.

Since we saved so much on airfare and lodging, we splurged and upgraded our rental car to a Jeep!

This was inside the sales office where they try to sucker us in to buying a timeshare. Fortunately, we were able to get out of attending one of their presentations.

The resort was definitely built with families in mind. There was a huge swimming pool connected to all these smaller pool areas - kids splash pads, wading pools, a zero entry beach pool, water slide, hot tubs - something for everyone! We spent hours down there everyday, and probably spent more time at the pool than at the beach.

Mommy's favorite part of the pool: hanging out on the warm "beach" and watching us entertain ourselves.

I tried snorkeling a few times but didn't seem to enjoy it as much as last time. I couldn't stand the taste of the salt water every time I put my face in.

We even walked to the other Westin resort next door to use their pirate ship pool. Colin had a blast!

Since we had visited Maui not too long ago, there was no pressure to try to do everything and check things off our list. We took it easy, hung out at the pools, and went on outings when we felt like it. 

Shaved ice everywhere we went.

Cooling off at Whaler's Village. I had been wearing regular clothes but then got soaked in the fountain. Conveniently, we were in a shopping center with plenty of stores that sold overpriced kids clothing so I ended up with a new rashguard set that I immediately changed into. Colin got a new pair of shorts too.

We also went on a submarine ride! We had looked into going last time but Colin wasn't tall enough yet. It was a neat experience and definitely worth doing once.

To get to the submarine we also had to take a short boat ride. This by itself was already fun for us!

View of the island from our boat.

Approaching the submarine.

The submarine took us 100 ft down, through a coral reef, and to a shipwreck. We saw lots of different fishies and some bigger ones even came right up to our porthole. It was very cool!

It was nice to take it easy on this trip and also try something new. If we could get a fantastic deal on the Westin Nanea again, we would go in a heartbeat!