An ENTIRE DAY at Golden Gate Park

We are doing so much and having so much fun with Uncle Gage! To save myself from the longest post ever (I get a headache just thinking about all the pictures we've taken. How am I going to decide which ones to post?) about his visit, I thought I'd break it up a little. Since today has been our best day yet (I was in charge of planning), I thought I'd share. After taking our time getting up and eating some yummy breakfast, we headed over to Golden Gate Park to show Gage the first playground of its kind in the United States, and especially the big cement slide. Max must have known what was in store because when he brought Gage clothes to put on him, Max brought his old holey jeans instead of his new ones to spare me the worrying. (Okay, that sentence was confusing...Max's holey jeans, not Gage's.) At first Gage was a little hesitant, just helping Max up the steep steps. He didn't want to get a hole in his pants!

Gage diverted Max to the other areas of the playground and the boys played and played and played until it was time for lunch!

Then, I don't know what happened after lunch--either Max was pretty persuasive or Gage found the perfect piece of cardboard, but the next thing I knew, Gage was going down the big cement slide. And by the look on his face, I think he liked it.
After the playground we headed over to the Conservatory of Flowers. And if the sheer beauty of the building wasn't enough, they are currently having a fabulous butterfly exhibit. The butterflies are a perfect addition to the conservatory since the rest of the plants don't keep our family interested. I guess we are not plant people, which is evident by the dying plants in our house. And not only do they not keep us interested, we are not allowed to touch them, which is even worse for certain 2-year-old members of our family. So, straight to the butterflies we went. The butterflies loved Blake and Gage. Those beautiful things were crawling all over them. And Jack was the major winner from this. He was fearless, reaching out and trying to grab their wings. But even though Jack was fearless, I think the butterflies were starting to get a little scared.
On the other hand, you would have thought we were asking Max to touch a shark. Silly Max. He was much more content opening and closing the doors.
After the conservatory we stopped by the buffalos (Gage got out and read the sign, then educated the rest of us) and the windmill. A perfect Golden Gate Park day, and there was still so much we could have done. The Japanese Tea Gardens, paddle boats, equestrian fields, Asian Art Museum, AIDS Memorial Grove, archery fields, and much, much more. Plus, we can't wait for the new Academy of Science to open in the park this fall. Yea for Golden Gate Park!