On our way home from the Long Beach Harbor tour, we decided to stop in Garden Grove, near by my childhood home, to a newish restaurant called Kerostena Mediterranean Grill.  Yes, we had a BOGO coupon from the Entertainment Book.    The kids are never excited when we tell them tat we are going to eat Mediterranean food.  However, once they taste it, they inevitably like it!  This was no exception.

The restaurant is not too large.  It was actually really crowded because there was a family birthday party that took up most of the tables.  It was funny to watch the grandpa hand out twenty dollar bills to all of his grandkids.  I don’t think this was an ideal place to have a large party, but the food was good and reasonably priced, so I guess I can understand why they chose this place. 

You order at the counter and the food is brought to the table.  We ordered a chicken shawerma plate and a gyro plate. 

The chicken was remarkably tender.  It was a little lacking in flavor, but if you spread a little of the pungent garlicky white sauce (similar to Zankou chicken), it adds all the flavor you need.

The gyro meat was n’s favorite.  When you add the hummus and pickled vegetables, there are a lot of different flavors that play well together. 

We really enjoyed this authentic, family-run restaurant.  I can see why it has such high reviews on Yelp!

Thankfully, the rain started to come down on Halloween night after we were all safe and sound at home.  The next day there was a beautiful rainbow over our community.

We went on a Long Beach Harbor boat tour that morning.  It was free, but you have to be ready to the minute on the day they release tickets, since they go in a few minutes!

We a grabbed a seat inside the cabin right away.  We knew from experiencing the whale-watching tour that it would be freezing on the deck.

We departed from the dock right behind Parker’s Lighthouse restaurant.

We passed the Queen Mary.  Look at those ominous clouds.

You are free to bring food on board.  There were even free drinks!  Coffee for D, hot chocolate for the kids, and Sprite for me.  (I thought I might get seasick, but I did not).

The tour was narrated by a very knowledgeable tour guide.  He started out above board, but ended up inside due to a sudden downpour (along with everyone else on the boat).  At the end, he asked some trivia questions.  D won a Long Beach Harbor beach towel!

It is amazing to think about how much container ships can hold and transport!

This ship launches satellites into space!

Returning to shore.

I would highly recommend this interesting tour.  We went on the last one of the year, but I believe they will start again next year.  Thanks to my sister for letting us know about this unique family outing. 

Halloween now seems like ages ago, but I don’t want to forget about it.  k and n had the day off of school, so their Halloween festivities took place the day before.  On Halloween itself, my parents took the kids to the Irvine Park pumpkin patch, for which I won tickets.  In the afternoon, I took the kids to The District, and they trick-or-treated at the various stores that had an orange sticker in the window.  For dinner, we went to a pizza party at our community pool, sponsored by our generous neighborhood realtor.  After that, we trick-or-treated throughout our neighborhood, which I think is the perfect size for trick-or-treating.

k and her besties during the school parade.

Walking to the pizza party.

Since we were all out trick-or-treating, we left a basket of candy on our porch.  There was still a good amount left when we returned—glad to have honest neighbors.

One of our neighbors goes all out with the inflatables.  Love the Snoopy/Charlie Brown pirate ship!

Dividing the loot!

Lately, I have been noticing n’s creativity really flourishing.  When I give him a new craft material, he comes up with an idea and executes it.  Sure, this often means little bits of paper all over the floor, and empty tape dispensers.  I just have to remind myself to “get over it” and appreciate the mess that creativity often breeds.

n found some kraft paper, so he made an In N Out combo consisting of a hamburger, fries and a drink.

A couple of weeks ago, D ran another half marathon sponsored by Mazda.  This time it was in Los Angeles.  We all accompanied him the day before so he could pick up his bib, t-shirt, etc. 

The Expo was at the Convention Center, where they were charging $15 for parking.  However, we found a $5 lot that required a bit of walking.

We walked past Staples Center.

Afterward we drove to Little Tokyo.  I had grand plans to participate in the Hello Kitty Hungry Hunt, in order to obtain some cute HK-food related pins.  However, the first place that I visited said they were not giving the pins out until noon, so I gave up.  We did pick up some food to go at Marukai, though.

My sister told me about a night hike led by rangers from the OC Parks system being held at Peters Canyon, so we signed up.  There were refreshments (cookies and hot chocolate), and a short presentation of various animals that can be found at Peters Canyon.  The hike started a little late because we had to wait for everyone to use the restroom (a necessity after all that hot chocolate), and there were only two working stalls. 

We also told some friends from our small group and met them there.

There were two options—a longer hike and a shorter hike.  We opted for the shorter hike since we had to go somewhere afterward.  We were on the hunt for pack rats and tarantulas, but no such luck.  We did, however, come across these creatures:

Pretty freaky, huh?

No, they were not alive, but they were “real”.  Haha. 

Last week went by in a blur.  We had a health scare with n.  He started shifting/rolling his eyes to the right.  I took him to multiple doctor appointments and he had an MRI.  I was so thankful that n was able to be awake during the MRI and stay still for about 45 minutes, so he did not have to go under.  He was able to watch “Happy Feet” with special goggles.  Fortunately, everything seems to be “normal”, so we will just have to monitor him.  The problem seems to come and go, and may be a “tic”, which is more common in boys.

Due to my lack of blogging, I have a backlog of posts.  We will start with the story that having an edible garden continues to be an unfulfilled dream of mine.  However, one day we noticed some vines growing over our fence from one of our neighbors.

We were too lazy to cut them right away, and then we noticed fruit growing on the vines.  It turned out to be passion fruit!

There is not much inside, but the aroma of the pulp is quite fragrant.  We like to add it to our juicing creations.

I’m realizing that I am not a summer crafter.  It is just too hot.  When the weather starts to cool, my itch to create reignites.  I am actually not that into Halloween, but it is more fun now that the kids are older. 

These were the snacks I brought for k’s Girl Scout meeting.

We made m&m oatmeal cookies and “boo’d” our neighbors.  The kids had so much fun with this—ringing doorbells, leaving the cookies and RUNNING!  They were caught by our neighbors across the street, mainly because they had to watch out for cars before running back to our house. 

I actually sewed these trick or treat totes for the kids last year, but this is the first year they can use them.  We forgot them when we were driving to the Great Park.  Luckily, I remembered them not too far from our house, and I *insisted* that D turn back so we could bring them!

I was able to use up some scraps to sew this mini fabric basket using this tutorial.

I also added a touch of fall to our front door.  Can you tell that fall is my favorite season??

On Saturday we continued another fall tradition—going to the Great Park to trick or treat and pick out pumpkins.  This year was a little different because you had to RSVP for tickets and the event is going on every Saturday in October.  I like how this event motivates me to get the kids’ costumes done early.  In case you cannot tell, n is a shark, and k is a hula girl.

Here’s a shot of n’s “fin”.  A lot of the girl volunteers were exclaiming about n’s costume being homemade.  It made me happy that they appreciated my effort.

One tip is to arrive early if you want a large pumpkin, since there is a limited supply. 

The prizes for the carnival games were not as good this year, since there was a punch card which you redeem for a small prize at the end.  In previous years, the kids picked prizes at every game.  The trick or treating was also not as good—less candy, including gross marshmallow pops made in China.  One plus was that parking was free (previously $10), and the kids each had to donate five cans of food to a local food bank, which is a good cause in my book. 

We ventured into the new gallery space and came upon a hidden kids craft corner called “Trash for Learning”.  The idea is that the kids are supposed to come up with their own art projects using the neatly organized bins of recycled materials.  This was a little too unstructured for my liking, but the kids had fun.  They ended up taking some supplies home and it definitely kept them entertained for a while. 

In continuing our quest for free shaved snow, we went to the grand opening of Fluff Ice in Irvine after the fire station.  We arrived before the opening, but there was a small crowd already starting to form.  Service was pretty slow, partly because they did not have a menu visible to the people in line in the beginning.  k and D ordered mango with mango, n ordered strawberry snow with mango topping and I ordered green tea snow with egg pudding topping.  The mango was a little under ripe and my snow seemed a little too melty, but it was free, so I should not complain!

And they have a cute cups, always a plus in my book!

On another note, we celebrated National Sausage Pizza Day for dinner (from Costco).