On The Boardwalk

Today's adventure was the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, only a 40 minute drive from our spot in Monterey.  Oh boy were we excited.  Darrin and I couldn't remember being there since we were little kids, and there was so much new to us since then.  The kids are old enough now to ride most rides, but unfortunately the Giant Dipper was still off limits for both Ben and Lia.  Other than two other rides that required riders to be over 52", Ben was able to ride everything.  Lia was under 48" and had to sit out on some of them.  Shame, really, because that girl is our daredevil. 

Ben is totally game to ride anything once . .  except the log ride.  There were some crazy rides he loved, and others that he hated.  No rhyme or reason to them.  Lia, well she loved all the crazy spinning, roller coaster, thrill rides.  But she HATED the haunted house rides. 

We had brought our lunch but didn't think to store it in a locker rather than the trunk of our rental car, so we had lunch in the parking lot instead of the beach.  It was hard to ignore the funnel cakes, corn dogs, kettle corn, snow cones, ice cream and other tasty treats along the boardwalk, but we figured we saved money and calories by sticking with our all-natural, homemade lunch.  And it tasted good, too!

We stayed at the boardwalk until the rides closed at 6:15pm, and then hit the beach for a while.  But then it got really cold outside and we called it a day.  Had the rides been open longer, I think the kids would have wanted to stay forever - regardless of the cold sinking in.

Tonight we decided to try and eat dinner at a restaurant.  I used Yelp and tried to find something local that boasted all natural, locally grown organic ingredients.  We found a pizza place, locally owned, that had such advertising and a four star rating.  Unfortunately, the kid behind the counter wasn't very helpful in determining which ingredients were actually natural.  I'm sure he was more than a little irritated at all the questions I asked, and we almost gave up with his unhelpful answers of "I don't know".  But luckily one of the other employees overheard and started helping us out.  In the end, we ordered the kids a (hopefully) all natural pizza, which they completely devoured, and a not all natural salami, pepperoni, mushroom, black olive and jalapeno pizza for us.  We like to do spicy so the kids aren't tempted to eat our pizza with it's crappy (but delicious) lunch meat. 

I'm probably jinxing myself, but Ben seemed reaction free from dinner - so our chosen ingredients on his pizza must have been okay.  I told myself long ago to not be embarrassed or feel uncomfortable asking questions about our food at a restaurant.  If Ben's issue was a life threatening allergy, I would have no problem asking questions, nor would they be casual about responding.  So that is how I approach our issues as well.  We don't eat out often, but we are starting to figure out what works, what is safe, and what should be avoided.  It's all a process and it does get easier every time.