Last Day of Summer Vacation

We decided to have a proper summer send off this year.  The day before school started I decided I wanted to make it a day to remember.  I told Natalie it was her special day.  She ate that right up.  I told her we'd make it a tradition...the day before school starts every year we'd try to have a super fun day.  She was all for it!  I also told her that when Audrey starts school, should this tradition stick, that it would become "their" special day.  She totally ignored me. 

Her one request was that we didn't spend any minutes at all of her special day at a store of any kind. Agreed.

It started with a breakfast of blueberry waffles, a short road trip to spend the morning at the cutest little amusement park for little kids in Oakland called Children's Fairyland, continued with apple pie making while Audrey napped and concluded with her very favorite dinner (roast chicken, if you can believe that) and the eating of the apple pie she had helped make.  Such a fun day.  Throw in a push-up ice cream popsicle at Fairyland, a sucker on the way home and a big girl errand next door to ask the neighbor for a sprig of rosemary from their flowerbed for our chicken and it was one awesome, gold star kind of kindergarten-eve day.

It was such a great summer...it deserved a great send off.

 Fairyland is ADORABLE. 

Perfect for our kids' ages.  Just a charming little park filled with famous characters (just the 1950s version of them), sweet little rides, trains, slides, tunnels, gardens, a park, a petting zoo, hourly puppet shows, etc.  The girls totally loved it and so did I.  Fairyland opened in 1950 and I really doubt much has changed since then (including the paint). 

It was supposedly the inspiration behind Disneyland!

 Alice's Reading Room was just this darling little house filled with books and chairs.  You can see how interested Audrey was in sitting down to read a book while we were there!

 Quite possibly the cutest bathrooms EVER.

 The Crooked Little Man's crooked little house.

 Look closely to see Audrey scaling the crooked little fence.

 Captain Hook's pirate ship

 Audrey posing with a Snow White that's more the size of one of the seven dwarfs.

 Our own Glenda the Good Witch

 And a sweet little Scarecrow

 Super cool sculpture

 This was the Miller's Mill.

Just another super cute little house the kids could go in, play around, etc.

 This whale had a name but I'd never heard of him. 

But he ate both my kids over and over again.

 It's hard to see in this picture but this is the littlest and sweetest ferris wheel

you ever did see.  Audrey agreed to go in it with Natalie and I was shocked because this is the kind of thing that tends to freak her out.  She wouldn't think twice about climbing it...but going inside a little carriage was something I didn't think she'd be interested in.  I was wrong.  She did it and she loved it!

I think she'd agree that her special day was a success.