Today’s family outing was at the Cypress Police Department’s Open House. We were lured by the free hotdogs, chips and soda, but there was some other cool stuff too.

There was a K-9 demo with a dog that speaks Czech. One of the other officers pretended to be a bad guy and this officer pulled him over and had the dog attack him. Too bad I couldn’t get a picture of the attack.

Jr. Firefighter

Sampling a blue icee

D was able to test-ride a Segway.

We saw Commander Chuck Street of KIIS FM fame with his Diet Pepsi helicopter.

Finally, we took a tour of the police station. I guess we should’ve asked how long it was beforehand. I thought it would be a ten-minute walk through, but it ended up being a fairly detailed 45 minute rundown of everything from the records office to the shooting range and jail cells. Although it was pretty interesting, k was definitely getting restless.

Santa Ana Zoo has a program for children on Saturday mornings where they feed you breakfast (pastries, fruit, cereal, coffee, juice, & chocolate milk (to D’s delight)) and then you feed the farm animals before the zoo opens to the public. We went with another family and then met up with my sister and brother-in-law once the zoo opened.

As soon as the kids finished eating, one of the zookeepers brought out a frog and a rooster. The frog was supposed to demonstrate how he eats worms, but he seemed sleepy. Then, the kids were told to hide live worms in corn meal so the rooster could look for them and eat them. Ew. k wisely refused to do this. I don’t blame her.

Then we fed some ducks some lettuce. Apparently it is better for them than bread.

k had the most fun feeding the goats.

The zookeeper who led the program was the same one we saw at the Wayzgoose festival. I think D has a better memory for faces because he instantly recognized her. This actually happens quite often.

D just realized that he likes jacaranda trees.

For the most part, k seemed a little scared of the animals, although she did pet a pig. We weren’t too impressed with the range of animals, aside from the monkeys. However, I do think it was interesting for k to see live examples of all the animals that she has heretofore only seen in picture books. We’ll have to go to LA and SD zoos so she can see the bigger animals, like lions, tigers and bears! 🙂

Afterward we went to Jerry’s Woodfired Dogs. We each got a dog and split two sides among the four of us.

You can have as many toppings on as you want put on, so D and I went all out, as can be seen. I guess the picture makes it look like we had a salad instead of hot dogs. They were quite good, and we all enjoyed the potato chips, which actually tasted kind of like fries, right out of the fryer. Yum.

Today k and I went with our moms’ group to Tanaka Farms. It’s hard to believe that when we went last year, k couldn’t even eat strawberries. Well, k was able to enjoy herself a lot more this time around!

The tour takes place in a tractor-pulled wagon. They give you lots of produce to sample, so I was smart enough to bring plastic bags this time for the leftovers. Another mom came even more prepared, with a container of ranch dressing! (Good for dipping the carrots, lettuce, etc.)

Our Tourguide

Trying an onion

Hey, it’s a scarecrow

Have you ever seen carrots like this?

Then, the best part. They let you off the tractor and give you fifteen minutes to pick and eat all of the strawberries you want. (No saving any for later).

k certainly ate her money’s worth. She must have had at least 15!

Our family outing for the day was the Wayzgoose Festival at UCI. It is the campus open house held every year, with food, games, car show, and music.

Side note: During the week, D has a lot on his mind. Usually about Wed. or Thurs. I start mentioning the activities we have planned for the weekend, which he doesn’t really pay attention to. I had mentioned we were going to Wayzgoose a few times, but I guess he didn’t fully process it. When we arrived at the parking lot he told the attendant that we were there to attend the Goose Festival. The attendant kind of smiled and said, you mean the Wayzgoose? Um, yeah, that’s it.

Anyways, I thought it was cool how the students were very involved in running it. (Unlike Berkeley’s Cal Day, at least when we were there). Reflecting the diverse student body, the food booths had some interesting options. I think Korean BBQ was a bit overrepresented, however. There was a lone Japanese booth, serving spam musubi. D wanted to support the Latino booth, but we ended up going the Asian route…Vietnamese pork sandwich with black milk tea, Filipino chicken skewers and lumpia (everything on the menu was a $1!) and a Korean BBQ skewer plate, complete with kimchi.

k enjoyed the chicken skewers.

There were a lot of booths! It was much better than the other Irvine festival we went to a couple of weeks ago.

There was a presentation by the Santa Ana Zoo. That will be one of our next family outings.

This morning we met up with two of D’s co-workers and their families at the Great Balloon. Currently the rides are free, but starting in 2008, tickets will cost $20 (so go now). There was a fair number of people already there when we arrived, around 10:15. You have to sign a waiver and get a number. Our wait was a little over half hour, but we heard the wait can grow to two hours at peak times.

D + k waiting in line.

A view from the underside. According to the operator, we only went up around 275 feet (the max is 500 feet). The allowed height varies with the wind conditions and the number of people riding. D’s co-worker W asked a question that was probably on all of our minds: what happens if the tethering cable breaks? The operator reassured us that we would remain afloat as if in a regular hot air balloon, and that he could maneuver the balloon to a safe landing. That was good to hear, especially for a particular someone in our party who is afraid of heights!

View from the top. Can you find the Mazda building? I don’t think k had any awareness that we were up high.

The rest of our group exiting the balloon.

k and her new friend, M, who is only around one month younger.

All in all it was a fun outing. It was certainly worth the cost of admission (haha). I guess we need to be on the lookout for some other cheap, child-friendly activities around the area. Suggestions are welcome!

My favorite types of music are Christian and Country. For Christian music my favorite bands are Third Day and Newsboys; for Country it’s Brooks & Dunn and Rascal Flatts. So I was excited to hear last week that Newsboys were playing at the Harvest Crusade at Angels Stadium. L & I went and were having a difficult time finding a seat, but luckily ran into “T” (From Wintersburg) and friends at the Crusade, who had two open seats. It was a beautiful day and we got to sit in the shade on the upper deck. It was pretty packed except the “outfield” area since the stage was on second base facing toward home plate. MercyMe and Newsboys played. L liked MercyMe better, however I liked Newsboys better. I was pleasantly surprised by both bands.

Angel Stadium View

Mercy Me

Newsboys

Newsboys’ Lead Singer

On Saturday, D and I trekked out to Little Tokyo to check out Nisei Week and the Tofu Festival. I thought I could park at my work, but my garage wasn’t open, so we had to find public parking, which is never a fun thing in L.A. Our first stop was Marukai, where D picked up some CA rolls and I had a mini chicken karage bento. Then we wandered around a bit, stopping at the Kinokuniya bookstore and Weller Court.

I told D we had to try the frozen yogurt at the newly opened Fiore.

We ordered a small green tea frozen yogurt with raspberries. Normally, I would feel bad paying over $4 for frozen yogurt, but I’ve heard so many people rave about Pinkberry, that I had see what all of the fuss was about. Who knew that Koreans had a thing for frozen yogurt?? It was definitely tangy…more like actual yogurt rather than soft serve, which most frozen yogurts seem to taste like these days. D wasn’t too impressed–probably tasted too healthy for him.

There really weren’t too many Nisei Week activities going on that day. I think most of the festivities are next week. We briefly looked at exhibits of Japanese dolls, calligraphy, swords and ceramics. I liked the ikebana arrangements. Here is an example:

This was our third tofu festival, and I think that it is getting better. Look for the free admission coupons that come in the grocery coupons on the Sunday before the festival–$8 value! There seemed to be more free samples, and more tastings in the $2-3 range, rather than the $4-$5 range. We had a Thai chicken skewer, green tea boba, mini tofu turkey meatball sandwich and D’s favorite, chile garlic tofu (from the Lee Kum Kee booth). I think I will try to make it at home:

We also watched a cooking demonstration by Ann Gentry of Real Food Daily. She made grilled tofu sandwiches and caesar salad with tofu dressing. She was touting the wonders of “vegannaise”.

There was also a performance by the UCLA taiko team.

Finally, D bought me an early birthday present 🙂 This tote by Spicy Brown!

So cute!

Today D and I were also able to check off another one our “Freedom Summer” activities–the OC Fair. My sister won two pairs of tickets so we met up with her and our bro-in-law in the afternoon.

Even though it was little cooler in Costa Mesa than in Irvine, it was still HOT and HUMID. Our Orange Juliuses were practically liquid in a couple of minutes!

First, we watched the crazy Peking acrobats. Their flexibility and balance are quite amazing.

Then, we watched the Alaskan Racing Pigs (and received a coupon for free Ralph’s bacon–how gross is that?)

Next, we walked around the various barns to look at the animals. Here we are standing in front of the Maternity Barn, which I thought was quite appropo 🙂

Here is a funny sign that my sister told me to take a picture of:

D and I shared a gyro that was pretty good. Also, what is a fair without fried food? All four of us shared this plate of “Colossal Onion Rings” and we could barely finish it:

We ended our day by walking around the arts and craft displays, laughed at some of the not-so-special collections of random things, and visited the agriculture displays.

Wow, my stomach looks bigger than I thought!

I guess it doesn’t measure up to the state fair (which D used to go to growing up in Sacto), but it was still fun!

Last weekend D and I crossed one item off of our summer to do list: visit Koreatown. We parked at the Koreatown Galleria (3 hours free). It was good that we got there relatively early (11:15 a.m.) because it was packed by the time we left. There’s a fairly big grocery store on the bottom. Check out their kim chee selection:

There is also a bakery called Cake House. I picked up a couple of red bean donuts (one for my mom), which I had read about in a recent LA Times article. There was too much red bean and not enough dough for my taste. D spotted these cute desserts in their display case:

We were planning to leave the mall to eat bim bim bap but once we started walking down Olympic we realized it was too far/hot, so we backtracked to the mall and ate at the food court. They had a nice big screen and everyone was watching soccer. D had short ribs, but the portion size was kind of small. I wasn’t too hungry so I just ordered kim bap (Korean sushi) and had some of D’s side of cold noodles. There aren’t too many stores but we did purchase a pleasant smelling citrus thingy for D’s car (Korean store, Japanese brand, made in China).

Then we walked a couple of blocks to the older Koreatown Plaza. We went to Nicole’s, a cute coffee shop, and shared a bing su:

I ordered it with green tea ice cream, but they gave us coffee ice cream instead. D didn’t care too much for the red beans, but he managed to eat around them 🙂 There weren’t really any interesting stores here, either. I guess if I was Korean and lived close by I could see coming here, but since I’m not and I don’t, it will probably be a while before we return.

After church today, D and I headed out to Laguna Beach. The problem with Laguna is that there are no big parking lots. We did find a metered space but put in some nickels and dimes before realizing the machine only took quarters, and it didn’t even return our change! Oh well…I guess we should’ve paid better attention. We ate lunch at the Laguna Beach Brewing Co. (Thanks, Entertainment Book). It was on the second story, (just like Hurricanes), but this had an ocean view:

Afterward, we walked along the shoreline. We noticed how there wasn’t much space between the water and the sidewalk, so it was much more crowded than HB (kind of like Waikiki). Also, there were TONS of kids running around. It was a nice day to walk, though.

I was hoping the guy in the yellow shirt had something on underneath–I think he was European, so I guess he had some sort of excuse.