San Jose Vacation - Part 3

One of the things that Ross really wanted to do while we were in San Jose was to find some forested area with some Redwood trees and do a little hiking. So Lesley did some asking around and found a great little State Park that we could go to. It was only about 45 minutes from their house, but the road to get there had a lot of twists and turns. So poor Hannah was pretty car sick by the time we got there. 

The weather that day was beautiful! And walking in the shade of the trees felt so good. 

Here's a picture of Leah drawing a map in the dirt. This girl loves maps so much.

The kids (well mostly Leah) loved climbing up into the crevasse of this big tree and checking out the "cave" at the bottom of it.

Leah's sass and attitude in these pictures should have been a major indicator of what was in store for this hike. More about that later...

It was amazing just how BIG these trees were!

Here's a picture of the four kids together.

I took this picture looking up at the tops of some trees. Isn't it beautiful?!

Hannah spotted a deer not too far from the path we were walking on.

I just couldn't get over how huge these trees were!

At this point it became very evident to us that Leah had had a long, busy week full of too much excitement and not enough sleep. She kept getting herself into trouble and was having a very hard time listening and obeying Ross and me. I finally got so fed up with her behavior that I put her in a time out to get her to settle back down. Instead of settling down, this put her into a full on meltdown!

She cried uncontrollably about EVERYTHING. She wanted someone to carry her and refused walk. However, I was not about to carry her the rest of the hike. I told her she had to walk or get in the stroller if her legs were tired. Before long she was screaming at the top of her lungs and was just making a huge scene. I'm sure most of the people hiking in that area could hear just how upset she was.

Finally I made her get into the stroller and then took off towards the car with her. That way the rest of our group could enjoy the hike in peace and Leah wouldn't be bothered by the other kids (since that was the newest complaint). Once we got away from everyone and it was quiet, it didn't take her long to fall asleep. After she was asleep, I could go back to the group and enjoy the rest of the hike with them.

This picture doesn't even give any justice to just how dirty Leah was. She had played in the dirt so much on the hike that she was just filthy!

With Leah asleep, it was much easier to enjoy some time checking out the information center.

Here's a far away and close up picture of my two boys in front of one of the giant trees.

I'm so glad we decided to go hiking. Even with Leah's major meltdown, it was a nice hike and being out in nature and being able to bask in the awe of these enormous trees was awesome!

After we got back from the State Park, we got the kids cleaned up and got ready to go to a San Jose Giants baseball game. My kids are used to going to games, but I usually have a bag of things for them to do as well as some snacks for them to eat. But since we were away from home and I didn't know what kinds of things this stadium allowed, I didn't bring anything for them. Before long the kids were getting restless and Corbin kept trying to go after someone's popcorn and would scream whenever we'd bring him back to us. So I gave in and bought a bunch of over-priced popcorn. But it was worth it to keep the kids entertained for so long while they ate it. Corbin couldn't get enough popcorn!

Another fun thing about being in California is that Ross's brother, Kyle, was doing an internship at Fresno State, which is only about 2-3 hours from San Jose. So he came out to join us for the weekend. This was especially fun for Ross since he and Kyle have always been really close.

Leah and Hannah got restless towards the end of the game. So I got out my camera and took some pictures of them to keep them entertained. These two were such good friends, it is so cute to see them together.

Then Lesley let them play with the camera on her phone. They probably took about a hundred pictures between the two of them. Here they are trying to figure out how to take "selfies."

The kids had fun playing with the popcorn tubs after we had eaten all the popcorn.

Up until this point of our trip, it seemed that either Lesley or I were always the ones taking the pictures. So we didn't have any pictures of the two of us together. So we finally got a few after the game was over and we were waiting for the fireworks to start.

All and all, it was a very long, but very fun day!