east bay

Bollywood and Into the woods

| poppypeach

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The wonderful summer heat was here this week for a fleeting moment and then by the time Friday rolled around the fresh winds came by in time for the Bollywood dance party organised by my friends as an auction item for the school! It was such a fun night with amazing food, cocktails and dancing! It was a gift to myself for submitting my second maths assessment a video presentation on a natural maths phenomenon, which I really enjoyed doing!

 

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The ladies ready to drink
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It’s selfie time 
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Enjoying cocktails together! 

 

There was even a dress up corner where you could put on a sari and add accessories of bindis and bangles – we had so much fun! The drinks were flowing, and friends came from the school community, and we were ready to party 😀

Check out the dance floor action here in the video – I loved every minute of this.

Sunday we met our friends from Oakland at Sunol Regional Wilderness Area, and it was the perfect day for a hike with friends. The sun was out as were the butterflies and the bees! It took us a while to find the trail as we wandered along the creek for a while through poison oak until finally, we saw the up arrow!

Along the hike, we spotted so many wildflowers. I have no idea what most of these are called except for the milk thistle and the California poppies.

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The boys work on getting us on the right track after we messed up the first attempt bush bashing through the woods.

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Finally, we were rewarded with open fields of grasses and wildflowers, and my hayfever was in full swing with all the blooms and pollen flying around everywhere. We wandered up to the top of the hill to see the view of Little Yosemite with all the falls below us. Once we got down there, it felt just like Yosemite with lots and lots of people wandering down this one little goat trail to get to the falls and rock scrambling.

I don’t know if the hills on the left are being mined for rocks, but they do look strange. We wandered down many paths, to get to the falls and to check out the water and rocks. It was just beautiful though it would be lovely with not at many folks around so I opted to sit quietly under a tree in the shade for a while to just listen to the water.

The kids really liked rock scrambling around the falls that were not very deep – off went their shoes so they could get their grip on the rocks and explore the area. I enjoyed watching them on a rock as I had a camera that I don’t like to get wet or to hit against rocks, which was fine to just bask in the sunshine.

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It was so fun to get together at last with our friends from O-town and enjoy a hike together amongst the wildflowers and the woods.

A week of films and Lake Chabot

| poppypeach

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Last week was Ski Week a week off school just for fun – for everyone in the Bay Area, this is your chance to go skiing with everyone else in the Bay Area, whoo hoo! Unfortunately, it was not so exciting for us last week as I had to study for a literacy and a math exam and both the kiddos were sick, boo! So towards the end of the week, the kids had gifted me their germs, and I was down, and so were my study plans!!

Most of the week it was raining so we started the week off with the Lego Batman movie which was a lot of fun, though not as good as the Lego movie. Tuesday we saw A Dog’s Purpose which was beautiful and made me cry throughout the whole film even though I knew what was going to happen! Any film with animals being harmed or dying is difficult for me, and I knew it was going to be a hard film to watch as the trailer made me cry. And as I was feeling pretty crappy by the end of the week I went to see La La Land instead of going to yoga class Saturday morning. I really enjoyed it as it resonates with you afterwards. I enjoyed the spectacular cinematography, music and dance routines, so much of it to love and the costume design of Emma Stone’s wardrobe was stunning and so yellow – my favourite colour.

 

So with such a lazy week of attempted study and sickness and movies, we really wanted to go outside in the sunshine on Sunday. I had a long-standing date with our friends from Oakland, and we had planned a rainy day activity to the Exploratorium, but we were not too keen to spend $100 plus for a day out. Lucky for us it was a sunny Sunday, and we were busily texting and calling Sunday morning to reschedule our plans to an outside activity. As some of the roads had been closed off due to the storms our first choice, Sunol was not accessible, and in the end, we stuck with some East Bay Parks to find a central location for both of us to drive to. We really enjoyed the hike around Lake Chabot Regional Park as it was an easy drive for us and there are many rolling green hills to wander around chatting and catching up on what has been going on in our lives.

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The kids even gained some energy being outside in the sunshine and enjoying the time with their long time friend from the East Bay, they were powered by jelly beans.

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Lots of Turkey Vultures were to be found flying around the lake and look at those green hills.

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We ended up doing a 3-mile hike – not a big hike for us, but we really enjoyed being outside in the sun and soaking up some Vitamin D.

We wandered through lots of oak woodland as we hopped off the main trail to go up into the hills above the main trail. The guys led us on some random trail for a bit of excitement, but hey it actually did lead us back to the main trail! I loved the shape of the big old oak trees up on the hills with lots of amazing green grass with thanks to the rain. The rain also filled up the lake above some of the banks to see the jetty and the seats nearby underwater. Lots of fishing opportunities to be had here with some quiet little fishing piers to check out along the way.

Thank goodness for blue skies and sunny Sundays, I loved the day out and felt so much better. As you can see the kids still enjoyed a workout after our little hike at the exercise area by the lake. This is a super special place to hang out for the day, and I am so happy that we were out and about with our friends enjoying the sunshine!

Day tripping on our last few days of Summer

| poppypeach
The last couple of weekends before the Summer holidays came to a close we went day tripping with the family – I had this Groupon for Bowling for 2 hours which we all loved playing 2 games. My other half did really well on his first game of bowling and thrashed the lot of us – beginners luck! Afterwards we had worked up an appetite and we found this super Persian bakery and cafe close by that baked this amazing bread called Sangak Bread. We all had a wonderful feast and I enjoyed this delicious vegan wrap with lentils. 
If you are ever near Santana Row – go local and check out Yeganeh Bakery, the food and service is amazing!
We met out Oakland friends at the Pacific Pinball Museum at Alameda in the East Bay for a super day out by the beach (it can be a bit stinky – I recommend pinball all the way!!). You can wander in there and play for $15 / $7.5 all day unlimited and they have an amazing collection of pinball machines. I just loved it as I went back to when I was young and the days of when I had a pinball machine at my house and played it all day and night! I think Santa bought us a pinball machine for Christmas, what a score of a prezzo… 
The kids playing pinnie at a collection of the mid century machines

Day out to Lake Elizabeth in Fremont

| poppypeach
It was hiking Sunday and the weather was just fine and sunny so we decided to enjoy a day out with the family. The plan was to go to Mission Peak, Fremont and hike up there but by the time we got there it was choc a block with people everywhere and no where to park in a neighbourhood full of ugly million dollar mansions, so we blew off that idea. So we decided to take the kiddos to a park instead and found Lake Elizabeth at Central Park, Fremont. The funny thing about Lake Elizabeth is that it is named after Elizabeth it’s sister city in Australia. We have driven through Elizabeth on the way to the Barossa Valley and all I can say is that I saw a lot of p*rn and hydropnics shops. If you like that sort of thing great, but not my bag at all!

We met a few locals of the lake and this gaggle of geese were quite noisy and my son overheard someone say they bite so we left them alone.

Honk Honk!

The 2 mile walk around the lake was just lovely and it did take us ages with snack and nature breaks but it was Sunday and it is nice to relax. Seeing the first signs of spring in the blossoms I enjoyed as it was the first time I took my 25mm to 105mm lens out for a wander. I just love it!

Come on Spring do your thing!

The kids were keen to enjoy the playground with the treehouse after our walk so we spent ages over there. This playground was super cool with a redwood replica play structure and huge boulders made out of fibreglass for the kids to climb – they just loved it. Here is Missy hiding in one of the many caves.
Missy hiding in a cave

We finally left as it was way past lunch time and time to go as there was one more event to go to in the afternoon – Chuck e Cheese, be warned that place is a zoo on a Sunday afternoon. We left with the gaggle of geese saying one last farewell with their loud honks. I am sure they just want to make friends 🙂 but we weren’t willing to risk a nip of a geese’s beak.

Gidday to you guys – Lake Elizabeth is cool right?!