on our way to grandma's house, we saw...

california was calling our name and we answered with a trip out there. and you gotta know that ANY trip is gonna be good when you start off getting what we dubbed "the green dinosaur" as a rental car!

i can't believe we didn't get our own picture of it! but imagine it more like this:

we started off our weekend with a day in san francisco where we rode trolleys,

took q-baby on her first tuk tuk ride,

and even got foot massages in china town.

turns out the boy has incredibly ticklish feet. i thought he was going to kick the foot massage guy (do they get the title of "masseur"?) right in the face. our guys kept talking in chinese to each other and i'm pretty sure they were saying, "man - this guy's a wimp with baby feet! i bet his own baby's not even so ticklish!" ...and it's true.

quincy's perfected the art of flirting and she pulled out all the stops for the foot massage guys. i think she thought it'd get us a discount or something. it didn't

she's crazy about opening her mouth all wide like that these days and i couldn't figure out what that's all about... then i looked through our pictures and the proof was in the pudding (how great and underused is that phrase??)

like parents like daughter??

our green dinosaur then took us to visit my grandparents (q baby's GREAT grandparents) and the boy's cousins and uncle/aunt. quincy knew she was surrounded by her peeps and hammed it up good for everyone (i think everyone hammed it up good for her too...) ushy gushy love oozed around the entire weekend. it was great.

next, we went to the maker faire, which is a giant geek fest where people make random gizmos and gadgets then show them off... think life-size mouse-trap games, giant cupcake cars, a mechanical tongue that licks a lollipop down to the stick...aka, complete entertainment.

and what's a trip to california without a stop at in & out burger with aunt wendi and uncle karl. mmmmm milkshake

day of the animals

i thought seeing this poster would hands down be the best part of my day:

on the one hand, i'm really hopeful that simba the pirate cat finds his way home safely because he's a brave warrior. but on the other hand, i'm a little worried about him because he's also a lover boy and could easily fall victim to a good ear scratch he can't walk away from.

but just when i thought the day couldn't get any better, we wound up at a local coffee house listening to a jazz band, which featured a laptop rolling the audio of a talking (cackling? squealing? howling?) monkey throughout the entire set... this is what was going on in my (and i'm sure every other patron's) head:

"wow, lots of good beatnicks here tonight...what is that sound? hmm... maybe i want a steamed milk or somethi...what in the world is that sound? this band is pretty decent, except the drummer plays with his mouth constantly opening and closing like a fish. meh, that's musicians for you... what in the world? where is that monkey sound coming from? wait... are you serious? the monkey is part of the band? wow."

and that's when we left because we don't condone monkeys mixing with jazz.

q baby laughs her guts out