City Center

Parker had a minimum day today which is slightly silly considering his full day is only 2 hours and 45 minutes. So after our leotard adventure (see below), we went back to get him at 11am. With some time to kill before naps, I decided a really ambitious outing would be a good idea. So we drove to Bart and headed off to City Center (a outdoor mall in the financial district of Oakland) to see the SPCA cats and dogs. (When I worked at the SPCA, this was one of the first cool things I did there. They had a storefront donated for one week at Christmas and one week at Easter and I got it donated the whole year round so people can adopt animals down town. It's a highly successful program and all the working stiffs at City Center go down to pet the cats on their lunch breaks.) After the SPCA thing in SF, I knew Miranda would go ape shit for it, and I was right. She couldn't get enough of the kitties jumping around. She saw a black one and said, "ZEKE!". Parker liked the little kitties, but didn't care too much about the rest of it and started singing Ring of Fire in a strange voice in the store. I chatted with my ex-employee who said all the obligatory things (it's not the same without you, we miss you, your kids are cute, etc, etc), hung out for a bit, even letting the girls hold a small black kitten, and then left for the train. We didn't get seats on the train on the way there (you try to ride BART with three little kids with no place to sit), but we did on the way back.

The kids behaved great the whole time and I even got several compliments from strangers about that. And, as usual, many people stopped to tell me how beautiful my kids are. They are usually looking at Parker when they say it, but luckily the girls don't notice yet.

We got back just in time for late naps and everyone was asleep within minutes.

Fun. Fun. Fun.