YouTube Summer Picnic

Time to play catch up on some of our adventures from the Summer Break... 

During the last week of the girls' Summer Break we attended the YouTube Summer Picnic which was held at Long Branch Saloon & Farm, a replica old west town near Half Moon Bay.

We spent the day playing wild west themed side show games, panning for gold, petting farm animals, eating yummy food, and playing mini golf.

There were face painters on hand and even a real barber set up at the barber shop! The girls had haircuts the day before (not that they would've wanted their hair cut there anyway) but they had fun posing in the barber chair pretending. Ava and Lola did go for the face painting though. For the first time ever Lola actually plucked up the courage to have her face painted. Usually she is too scared to have her face painted and just gets something painted on her arm instead. This time around she had a unicorn painted on her arm at first and then later decided she also needed one on her face. Ava had her face painted like a cat. Mathilde was intrigued by the face painting but was only keen to watch.

While many of the buildings at Long Branch are actually just facades, a few are actual buildings. One such building is the saloon which is decked out with a gaming parlour, a bar, pool tables, couches and lots of taxidermy wildlife. Lola enjoyed hanging out on the balcony and looking out over the picnic. Back inside she was fascinated by the stuffed animals and even more so by the gaming chips and roulette table. Mathilde thought the chips were pretty great too and she was happy to spend her time stacking and sorting them - and maybe trying to eat them!

The highlight for the kids was the petting zoo. Here they got to pat goats, rabbits, pigs, chickens, ducks, a calf, a pony and a lama. Ava's favorites were the little pigs. She's kind of obsessed with pigs for some reason. I'm sure she'd love a pet pig one day. Lola was pretty keen on the rabbits and Mathilde was happy to follow around pretty much all of the animals - referring to them all as "duck"! I discovered that my Mama & Little teething necklace (which I wear for Mathilde to chew on and play with) was pretty popular with the goats. At one point I felt what I thought was Mathilde pulling on it while I was sitting down patting a pig. Imagine my surprise when I looked up and discovered that a goat had all of the beads in its mouth and was chewing on them! Trust me, I sterilized that necklace as soon as we got home!

From the petting zoo we moved on to more sideshow games. Ava was pretty excited that she managed to knock down all of the metal milk bottles with a ball and got to chose a prize. Lola was a little upset that she didn't manage to win the same game as Ava (Ava was the only person I actually saw knock them all down) but she did win a prize later at another game so she didn't stay upset for long. Plus she was the only one out of the whole family who got a hole in one when we played mini golf. That was definitely an ego boost!

We had such a fun day out at Long Branch. It's such a unique venue for events with so much for the whole family to do and it's located in such a pretty area.

I can't wait to see what next year's picnic has in store for us. Last year's picnic was held at San Francisco Zoo but I never go around to posting about it. Oops!