Five Tips for enjoying the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival

Free weekends are a rare and precious thing for our family. We're constantly carting our kids to soccer games, dance rehearsals, band performances, birthday parties, and Girl Scout campouts. When the stars align and we no events scheduled, more often than not we end up crashing on the couch, grateful to rest and watch TV and do nothing.

We're enjoying one of those free weekends right now -- but we're not staying home! Tomorrow we're making our annual pilgrimage to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival. The festival is so popular, it brings huge crowds every year, which can be stressful and exhausting. We hate crowds, but we've found ways to manage the crowds and have the time of our lives. Here are five tips to help everyone make the most of the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival:

A letter to the parents of the losing soccer team

To the parents of the opposing team,

My sons' soccer team played your sons' soccer team today. It's a game that you might not want to remember, because the score was 12-0.  The gap would have been wider, but our team's coach instructed our players to stop scoring. Possession was 90%-10% in our favor, and 90% of the match was played in your half of the pitch. To put it bluntly, it was a thrashing.

Easy black bean salad

I'm so thankful that my kids love salads. We got them started on Caesar's salad pretty early on, and since then they've learned to love practically every combination of fresh veggies and dressing. On busy weekday nights, having a salad dinner is an easy way to feed the family in minutes.

One of our favorite salads also happens to be one of the easiest to prepare -- just toss tomatoes, sweet corn, black beans, lime, olive oil, cilantro, crumbled gorgonzola cheese and seasonings into a bowl.  Sometimes I give the salad a bit of a kick by using a more peppery oil. Sometimes we'll substitute goat cheese or feta cheese, depending on what's in the fridge.

This salad goes great with a quesadilla and mashed avocado; you can also toss in some lettuce and have it with a wedge of buttered bread. The cheese and black beans are so filling, you might not need a main course!

What's your family's favorite salad?

13 Reasons you'll love Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort

Fall is here, and it's once again Halloween Time at the Disneyland Resort! This really is my favorite time of the year to visit. I've already written about why I love fall at Disneyland so much.  This year, I'm just going to bombard you with gorgeous photos of the resort, because a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are 13 reasons (all photographic!) that you should go:

Three Perfect Days in Seattle: The first-timer's version

We've just returned from a whirlwind 3-day trip to Seattle! The kids had never been to Seattle before, and the only other time I had visited was a half-day stop, 20 years ago, so it was essentially everyone's first time. As with all our trips, we left the city wanting to spend more time there, but for a first visit I feel like we hit everything Must-Do list (well, the top half, at least!)-- namely Pike Place Market, the Space Needle, Puget Sound, and Chittenden Locks.

I'll be writing separate posts about some of the attractions we visited, but for now I wanted to list down what we saw and did (with a few suggestions for alternatives, aka the stuff on our list that we didn't have time for). Here's what our perfect 3-day Intro-To-Seattle itinerary looked like:

Art that's educational and fun: Art In Island 3D Museum

Art can do many things for many different people. It can inspire. It can educate. It can spur people to action. It can calm them down. It can do all of those things, but art doesn't have to do any of them to justify its existence. Sometimes all art has to do is entertain!

Entertainment, not education, was foremost on our minds when we visited Art in Island, a 3D art museum in Quezon City. Unlike most art museums, visitors are encouraged to touch and explore -- in fact, that's where all the fun comes from! But we also managed to learn a thing or two about optical illusions and how your brain works.

Levi's Stadium: The good, the bad, the ugly.

This weekend Alfie is watching Manchester United play FC Barcelona in the International Champions Cup. I'm green with envy! These are two of the biggest football clubs in the world, and even if only a portion of their first team plays, it's going to be an amazing match. Hopefully he'll get to see the (un)holy trinity of strikers -- Messi, Suarez, and Neymar -- match skills against Van Persie, Rooney, Mata, and more. What's more, they'll be playing in one of the best new stadiums around: Levi's Stadium.

Palo Alto's Magical Bridge Playground: a place for everyone

One of the reasons I love living in Palo Alto is that we're living in a place that values innovation and change. Traffic lights and potholes and internet access (hello, city council, when are we getting city-wide free wifi?) notwithstanding, Palo Alto and Silicon Valley is always on the cutting edge. And we're not just talking hi-tech: check out Palo Alto's newest playground, the Magical Bridge Playground. It's the only playground in the Bay Area designed to accommodate kids of all abilities, and one of the few playgrounds in the country that is 100% wheelchair accessible.

I've already published write-ups on the playground on Silicon Valley Mamas, Red Tricycle (the article even got picked up by SF Gate!), and Mommynearest, but I had a few more photos of this wonderful playground that I wanted to share.

What to do in Bodega Bay

Bodega Bay is one of those places that people know because of the movies -- it was the setting for Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds. Don't worry, unlike the movie, Bodega Bay isn't a creepy place at all! It's a great place for Bay Area families to spend the day.

Practice makes Perfect: Introducing the Skills Bros Jr

Ball control is one of the most basic soccer skills, and my boys have been practicing keepy-ups (kicking the ball up with one or both feet without letting the ball touch the ground) since they were in first grade.  I remember when doing 5 keepy-ups was a challenge. They were so frustrated and impatient to do more, but Alfie and I reminded them of their experiences with the Shred Sled -- that they would only improve with practice.

So they practiced.