Flashback Friday - Vacation!

Last June, the girls and I took a road trip to San Francisco and Santa Cruz. (Okay, so I'm not flashing back too far here, but I'm looking forward to our Disneyland trip this June.)

The car ride went astonishingly well. Thank goodness they're old enough to have some bladder control, and being L.A. girls...they're kind of used to spending quality time with our car! Braced with car ride activity books (and about 40 CDs), we were off.

I booked the trip through AAA (which I highly recommend), and we went to pick up our City Passes, which gained us access to many of San Francisco's attractions. We managed to visit two aquariums, take a tour of a sourdough bakery, frequented the Farmer's Market, Ghirardelli Square (of course), and took the San Francisco Bay cruise.



We also happened to be there the same weekend as the Gay Pride Parade. Yes, it is family-friendly. There was face-painting, crafts, and a playground so the girls had fun, too. But my most favorite hours of the San Francisco trip were probably those we spent just watching the sea lions. Our last night there, we had dinner at a restaurant that overlooked their home on Pier 39.



We then spent a day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which was the highlight of the trip. I had so much fun introducing the girls to what had been my "Disneyland" as a child.



And what was really fun was how many compliments I received at pretty much every restaurant we frequented about how well-behaved my girls were. They did me proud. They always do.

One funny moment (not ha ha, more of the hmm kind). One day, we had breakfast at the counter at IHOP - which, btw, is really dreadful; was it always this dreadful? - and we were seated next to a man with his son. Well, at the end of the meal, I wasn't getting a check. I noticed the waitress had given the man his check, and was sort of annoyed that I wasn't handed mine at the same time. And then I looked at his face. I asked him about it, and my suspicions were confirmed. The waitress had assumed that we were all together, and had charged him for the 3 of us as well. She was embarrassed by the mistake, and corrected it, of course. In some ways, I can see how she made that assumption, but also...the man and I had never talked to each other while we were there! The girls and I spoke, and he of course talked to his son. Did she really think a married couple wouldn't talk to each other at all?!?

The other funny thing was when we were at the Farmer's Market, we were meeting their uncle, who lives in SF (and was a very gracious tour guide to us). The girls ran up to hug him when he arrived and a passerby said to her companion, "oh, look; they're with their daddy!" Again, a rather easy assumption to make, and it made me think of how many times I've probably been guilty of the same thing.

It probably sticks in my mind more than it should because of the fact that it sort of takes away from what I was - no am - doing all by myself. I don't want them to miss out on these sort of childhood memories because they're growing up without a father. They deserve family vacations. They deserve the smiles in these pictures. I stretch my credit cards way too thin to give it to them, but hey - who doesn't, really?

I acknowledge that the point is fairly insignificant, but at the same time, I do want to break the stereotypes of what being a single parent looks like, and I don't want the fact of me being a single parent to stop them from anything.

Okay, I better stop this post before I start crying again. (I've decided to live in denial about the whole condo thing for the rest of the month to give myself an emotional break.) And I'm straying from my original intent anyway. Which is to say, I love vacationing with my girls!