Day 4 - Discovery Museum and San Jose State

Even with another early wake up from the boys, we still planned to go to the Children's Discovery Museum.  The plan had also been to squeeze in the Tech Museum since we were already in Downtown, but that was destined to failure with the boys lack of sleeping in.

It's been tradition for a bunch of years that we ride the Light Rail to get to the Children's Museum.  It feels like the boys look forward to it; although, it's not something they jump up and down and get excited about.  I think today might have been the first time that Boris rode the Light Rail with us.  I think most other years, it's just been me and the boys.

Leka met us at the museum and the boys had a bunch of fun playing.  Grady still loves the water area.  Peter was a little iffy about stuff.  He looked a little bored for a while.  Even the craft projects were not very inspiring for him.  He made a rocket that floats, but he was very serious and thoughtful about it.

Both of the boys had some fun in the bubble area and they checked out the Curious George exhibit too.  Peter brought his camera along to take some pictures.  It feels like he's starting to back away from the "kiddie" activities and gravitate more towards the sit-back-and-watch things.  Like deciding to mostly take pictures instead of actually trying out activities.

Don't get me wrong, he still did a lot of the stuff.  He tried Curious George's crazy golfing and had fun with some of the activities, but it didn't seem to hold his attention for that long.

Grady could have spent another hour or so at the museum, but we were all hungry.  And Grady was getting cranky.  The lack of sleep was really starting to catch up with him (and maybe he was hungry too).  He was getting less able to take turns.  He wandered off a bunch of time and we had to go looking for him (and give him a lecture about telling us where he's going and/or wait for us to come too).

We managed another Light Rail ride up a couple stops to Togo's, grabbed some gelato afterwards and then wandered through San Jose State.  It ended up being some sort of Freshman Orientation day, so there were lots of groups of people walking around.  We made it over to the Engineering building and showed the boys where we went to school.

They were so impressed, Peter couldn't believe how smooth the walls were.  Yeah, he really said that.  That was about the highlight for him.  They really didn't care and were just tired of walking.  We walked through all of the second floor and even asked at the secretary's desk, but none of the professors we knew were there.  It looked like no one we knew had summer hours.

We were able to walk through the chapel where we got married.  Overall, it was all pretty underwhelming for me too.  It was so long ago.  It didn't really feel real to be back there.  I only went there for 2-1/2 years and it was now almost 12 years ago.  Everything felt rather small and unimpressive.  Very sterile and serious.  We didn't see any classes going on, no people walking through the halls of the building.  It was all 

But on our walk back to the Light Rail, the boys were somewhat excited to look at some of the big trees and leafs.  And we saw a hummingbird.  Peter was excited to get some pictures of it.  Leka also got some pictures.  The hummingbird wasn't very scared, so we were all able to stand really close to it.

Over the course of the day, I tried so hard to get a couple shots of Peter, Leka and Boris all taking pictures of the same thing.  I never managed it though.  They were always done by the time I pulled out my phone.  I also tried for a picture of Leka taking a picture of Peter taking a picture.  But I missed that one too.