Weekend with Rachel II

Most of my posts are about 1-2 weeks after the actual event, but at least I'm consistent.

My friend from high school happened to be in the bay area again so we invited her to stay with us another weekend. This time I scheduled garage sale shopping, a train ride in a beautiful park, and some beach time at Half Moon Bay.

Will's current obsession is trains. Specifically, Thomas and friends. I think Thomas, Percy, Gordon, or Emily make it into every other phrase he spits out. Thanks to this TV show, he can say things like, "shunting trucks" and "engine shed". He also picked up "cheeky" and "bother" which is really cute to hear.
So I've been looking for trains in the area he can ride. I found a small train ride in Los Gatos (30 min drive for us) at Vasona Park. The best part is it's only $2 per ride! (I found another train in the Santa Cruz mountains that was more like $22 per ride.) They also have a carousel for $2.

We had a beautiful walk through the park after the train and carousel shut down.
There were baby geese! I can't help squealing with joy when I'm around baby geese/ducks. They're just so adorable I could watch them for hours.
We stopped at a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Los Gatos called Las Esquina (The Corner). We watched a cute Mexican grandma make our tortillas from scratch...yummm! It was so fresh.

Once again, I didn't take ANY pictures so I'm completely relying on Rachel's pictures and she, understandably, hardly takes pictures of herself. Here's some from our trip to Half Moon Bay.
The flowers below are called Ice Plants! I never would have guessed, but I love seeing these flowers. I learned the name of many plants while Rachel was here. I really admire her passion for gardening and nature. She even planted some flowers in my patio when I wasn't looking! I'm trying to make sure Will doesn't destroy them.
The highlight for Will was running after the many dogs and horses on the beach.
It was a beautiful, fun weekend, and well photographed thanks to Rachel.

Rachel's Visit

I love it when old friends come to visit! It's like part of me has been forgotten, and then suddenly comes back to life while they're around. Rachel and I have been friends since middle school. We used to tell people we were the same but different. I'm still not really sure what that means but I think we were trying to tell people we were happy to have a friend we shared so much with, but we also had differences and that was OK. I'm lucky that she has business trips in this area because I never seem to make it over to Boston.
Rachel almost always has her camera out so I hardly ever take pictures while she's visiting. So I'm using all her pictures for this post. She took a LOT of pictures and I can't help but share a LOT of them with you.







We did other stuff besides playing with Will. In fact, I think I planned so much stuff we were all exhausted by the time Rachel left for her conference.
First I took her for a quick walk up to "the dish". We just walked up the first hill of this nearby trail to get an amazing view across the bay, the Santa Clara valley, and the small mountain range between us and the ocean.
I can't believe how green everything is right now. It was a wonderful way to start the day.

Later we met up with another friend of mine and went out for Crepes. Yumm! We went to Crepes Cafe in Menlo Park and I still dream about the caramelized apple crepe. The apples were swimming in butter and I think Julia Childs would have approved.We also went to the Stanford Cantor Arts Center.

My favorite was the Asian art section. Will can say Buddha now. Ashley and Rachel held Will a lot during our trip which was so nice for me. My arms are getting a little too buff lately.
And Rachel came to church with us on Sunday and graciously helped entertain and comfort the little kids in nursery. I think Will really appreciated having someone he knew in there.
We had tons of fun in a short amount of time, and she just told me she might be out here again in April. I'll try to make any future visits more low-key, I promise.