A weekend in Oakland

or how I found myself with wet pants three days in a row.

Thursday I left work an hour early and arrived home at 3:30pm. I took Anzac to the Vet's/Boarding Kennel, and then we were off to Oakland for the Memorial Day weekend. For those not familiar with US geography Oakland is about 10 miles from the city of San Francisco, and about 385 miles from our house. That's about the same as driving from Melbourne (in Victoria, Australia) to Canberra (the ACT), or from London to Edinburgh. We managed to get away a little after 4pm and with a couple of stops for food and gas we arrived in Oakland shortly before midnight. Not a bad run, really.

Friday we slept in, sort of, then joined Liz's cousin Emma at her parents' flat before heading on to the San Francisco Zoo. Somehow we piled Liz's cousin, her hubby Steve, and their two little ones into our Highlander with the four of us. Lucky we have a collapsible third row in which to stuff three of the kids. We finished the day by celebrating Emma's parents' 50th Wedding Anniversary at a local Chinese Restaurant. We'd originally booked a private room but when we realized there was no way the 20+ people who were coming would sit comfortably around the large table (and it was a pretty big table), we moved out into the restaurant's public dining area and secured two large tables for everyone. While in the private room I'd had my daughter sitting on my lap, and when we got up to move I discovered the leg of my jeans was almost soaked through...right where A. had been sitting. Yup. In sort of toilet training her we've become a little lax on the diaper changes, and A's diaper had reached its absorption capacity.

After dinner Steve and his FIL took the BART home while the rest of us somehow piled in to our SUV. We were fortunate that the local Garbologists were doing their rounds at that moment, because they blocked the lane beside us allowing us to stand in that lane while we packed everyone in to our SUV. Liz, myself, our two little ones, Emma, her two little ones, her mom, and an old friend from Shanghai. That's 9 people (5 adults and 4 kiddies six & under) ...in a 7-seater SUV. I don't know how we did it either. Or why we did it. But we did, and we got everyone home safe & sound.

Saturday found us visiting the SF 6 Flags, a roller coaster amusement park...which also includes a mini zoo and aquarium, so it was actually an appropriate place to take the kids even if we never rode the roller coasters. Afterwards we went for dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and right at the end of the meal, as we were packing up our left-over food, Steve knocked over one of the glasses of water Californian waiters feel compelled to bring for everyone and ice-water ran across the table, missed their daughter (who was asleep in her stroller) and ran off the table beside her, right in my lap. I looked down at my left hip and made the observation that I'd just finished two days in a row with wet pants, but at least tonight it was just water.

Sunday we decided to take it easy and we all kicked back at Emma's parents' flat. Lucky her parents had flown off somewhere that morning so we only had 8 people in a 1 bedroom flat. Then it was decided we'd take the kids to a nearby park, it wasn't until I was standing at the elevator that I realized the "we" was Steve and myself. Liz and Emma were staying back in the flat.

The "park" Steve had picked out turned out to be a wilderness park, for hiking, fishing, swimming, etc, but not a decent place for four kids 6 & under to spend the afternoon. Lucky the Ranger directed us back down the road to a park with a playground where we spent the next couple of hours playing, swinging, watching the kids and eating ice cream when the Ice Cream Truck drove by.

When the wind began to pick up and the temperature began to drop, we called it a day, loaded the kids into our car and headed back to the flat to find lots of yummy food in various states of preparedness. The girls had taken care of the bbq ribs, but a kindly old neighbor had also prepared a lot of yummy, traditional Shanghainese-style food. I made myself a cocktail with a lime/tequila drink mixed with Sierra Mist (it was actually quite good) and kicked back on the sofa while the four kids fought all around me. Then Emma's son (the younger of her two) climbed onto the sofa and launched himself at me like he'd been doing most of the weekend. My drink splashed up in the air and came down right in my lap...on my left hip to be precise, in exactly the same place as the water from the night before and the diaper runoff from the night before that. Lucky it wasn't too much of a mess so we got everyone dried up, I poured myself another drink, settled back down on the sofa...and Emma's youngest launched himself at me once more with identical results. This time his older sister was standing right next to me so most of my second drink ended up in her hair. Phew! Emma didn't seem to amused by this though...not sure why.

Dinner, once we finally all settled down, was an uneventful affair, and before too long we were saying our goodbyes and heading back to our hotel. We were planning to get away early so this was our last visit with Emma, Steve and their little ones, this time around at least. After a leisurely Burger King (Hungry Jack's) breakfast JE and I made several trips to the car and finally we were off on our way back home. The trip back went fairly smoothly and we did the run in less than 7 hours. No wonder we almost always need vacation to recover from our vacations, even the short, 4-day ones.