On Saturday k attended a birthday party at the Michael’s store in Brea.  As part of the gift, I sewed up tote bags for the twin birthday girls.

We don’t find ourselves in that part of Orange County very much so we decided to take the opportunity to explore downtown Brea a little after the party.  It is a nice little upscale-ish area.  For dinner we ate at Flame Broiler with a BOGO coupon. 

We saw a line of people along the main street and wondered what it was for.  It turned out to be Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour, so we decided to see what the fuss was all about.  Ninety minutes later (yes, 1.5 hours!) we were finally seated.  The only other time when we have waited that long for a restaurant was when D and I were in Chicago and decided to go to Rick Bayless’ restaurant without a reservation.  I wanted to give up at around 45 minutes, but by then, you feel like you’ve already invested so much time, you might as well stick it out.  That concept from Econ 101 of “sunk cost” just never made sense to me. 

It was kind of fun to watch the sundaes being made.  This one had 30 scoops of ice cream!

What was maddening was to see a lot of empty tables.  The turnover seemed to be really slow.

D had grabbed a menu while we were in line so we knew exactly what we wanted: Ice Cream Nachos.    

“Think crispy tortilla dish, except we use waffle cone pieces for dipping into mint chip, chocolate malted crunch and vanilla ice cream.  All topped with hot fudge, caramel, blue berries, whip cream, almonds and a cherry. Olé! $8.99”

We told the waitress to hold the almonds, and she asked if it was just a preference or allergies.  When we said allergies, she said she would make a note of it, which I really appreciated.  (We have had an incident with a contaminated ice cream scoop before). 

It was good, but how difficult is it to scoop ice cream on top of waffle cone pieces?  I think the main appeal is the party atmosphere and friendly service.  Everyone just seemed so happy, wearing balloon hats, singing, etc.  I really liked the chocolate malted crunch ice cream, though.  And n REALLY enjoyed the whole thing.  On the way home, he said, “That ice cream was SO GOOD.  This was the best day of my whole entire life.”  That comment right there made the whole experience worth it.     

D took a half day off work on Friday so we went to Knott’s again. 

We’ve become pretty familiar with all of the rides in Camp Snoopy.  The kids can ride the Timberline Twister, a mini roller coaster, by themselves.  There is actually a height maximum of 5 feet 9 inches, which I’ve never come across before.  I’ve been on the ride a couple of times, but I guess D is not supposed to.

k is just tall enough to go on some of the scarier rides such as the giant swing and the dragon swing.  Meanwhile n is stuck going on the carousel, but he does not seem to mind too much. 

One new ride we tried this time was the train.  I was reluctant to before because I remember being traumatized by the real actor-fake hold-up part when I was little.  I prepared the kids, reminding them that it was all pretend.  However, they seem to have tamed it down a lot in the past thirty years.  D says that maybe I was just more impressionable back then, but I’m pretty sure it used to be more “real”. 

It was neat that the train actually originated in the nineteenth century.  Makes me want to take a train trip someday.  D’s dream is to take one across Canada. 

D and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early this year by going out to dinner at the newly opened Kickin’ Crab in Diamond Jamboree.  We enjoyed our two pounds of shrimp, but I personally liked Boilin’ Crab a little better. 

When I had the kids get dressed this morning I didn’t realize they were twins!

I remember l used to love Valentine’s Day in elementary school.  k’s teacher bought bakery boxes for the kids to take all 30(!) of their valentines home in. 

I had fun looking at all of the valentine cards/treats.  Some parents were quite creative.

That’s k’s valentine on the top.  It has a chocolate milk straw with a printable from here.  My sister gave the kids flavored milk straws for Christmas and they were quite the hit, so I thought this idea was perfect. 

For dinner at home I made chicken parmesan with spaghetti.  For dessert we had a berry chocolate cheesecake.

Although I have never been a fan of long-stemmed roses and teddy bears, I do like celebrating this day dedicated to love.

I think that D definitely passed down his silliness to both k and n.  Here is some evidence:

D ran the Surf City Marathon last Sunday.  He was looking through his medals this morning and found his gaudy Disneyland 1/2 Marathon medals.  The kids had fun playing with the bling.

Sunday was the official start of Girl Scout cookie season.  I was not sure how enthusiastic k would be about the whole thing.  Turns out that n is a natural born salesperson!  He actually enjoys asking people if they would like to buy Girl Scout cookies.  k is still working on her sales pitch, but she loves handling the money, giving the boxes to people, and re-stocking inventory.  The play cash register that my parents gave to k for her birthday is perfect for the little store that we have been setting up on our driveway.  D has also done his part in hawking boxes at work.  It truly is a family effort and actually kind of fun!

L and I have been trying to plan out our future vacations with our children in mind. It is crazy to think that we probably only have about 10 big vacations left before k heads off to college. To generate ideas, I started out reading “Frommer’s California with Kids,” a book we had been given. Then L mentioned that there was a “Frommer’s 500 Places to Take you Kids Before They Grow Up”. A book with a list always piques my interest. Then I decided to consult New York Times Best Seller Patricia Schultz. She wrote the book “1,000 Places to Visit Before you Die.” L had this book in her library, so I started flipping through it and my mind raced. Oh the list possibilities! During my research I found out that Patricia had a “1,000 Places to See in the United States and Canada Before you Die” book. I thought, “Oh, no you didn’t!” L was kind enough to borrow it from the library. So I decided to use both of Patricia’s books to help me with my travel list. My travel list not only shows the places I have visited, but also lists the places that I would like to take the kids (highlighted in red). The list helped me figure out great places to visit that are close by, and also increased my wanderlust. D’s 1,000 Places to Visit

Last week, seemingly out of the blue, k asked, “Did you know that before I was born, life was unfair?”  Puzzled, I asked her what she meant.  She said that in school she learned that some kids could not go to the schools that they wanted to go to.  I put two and two together, and asked if she also learned about certain people having to sit in the back of the bus and using separate drinking fountains.  She said “yes”, so I guess Kindergarten is when lessons about social injustice are first introduced.  I don’t think we had really talked about it as a family before, so it was a good jumping off point.  I chose not to go into how, in many ways, life still is not fair.  She will learn soon enough, I am sure.  On Monday, D showed k the “I have a dream” speech on the internet.  How nice to have such resources at our fingertips.

On Saturday k went to a Girl Scout Cookie Rally at UCI.  (She will officially begin selling cookies on Sunday.  We are supposed to sell 135 boxes!)  On Sunday we went to Huntington State beach after church.  We made a picnic out of food we picked up from a Super Mex Groupon.  The fish tacos were surprisingly good—a nice sized piece of grilled fish.  D thought they were better than Wahoo’s.

These seagulls were exceptionally smart.  They, along with a huge flock of friends, waited patiently while we ate and followed D to the trashcan.

Both D and k had Monday off so we went to Knott’s or “KBF” as we have started calling it. It was crowded and a tad too warm, so we weren’t able to go on too many rides. 

We stood in a long line for the stage coach.  Unfortunately, we were assigned the inside of the coach, so a lot of the “thrill” was lost.  One of our fellow passengers, a young girl, spent 90% of the time looking at her dad’s iphone, which I thought was sad. 

It is hard to believe this was a major mode of transportation back in the day.  I guess we take our cars for granted.