Nothing Beats a Trip Down the Rabbit Hole!

I have fond childhood memories of Oakland's Children's Fairyland—the magical storybook theme park that spurred inspiration for Walt Disney's Disneyland—so, when I was wracking my brain to figure out what to do with my boys during this last week of summer, I decided it was time that we paid it a visit. 

It's a funny little theme park inhabited by squirrels, farm animals, and a bunch of whimsically painted statuary storybook characters. With it's lush landscape of flowering trees and miniature streams, my children imagined themselves chasing the White Rabbit down the hole, stuck high in a web spun by Anansi the Spider, and off to Sea with the Owl and the Pussy Cat.

They got caught up in a puppet performance of The Adventures of Peer Gynt, attempted to leap into the Miller's Pond, and a took a few spins in a rickety green caged ferris wheel. The boys spent most of the day running from toad stool to flowering lotus, enjoying the open spaces, and fanciful imagery. 

At one point, Tizzy terrified us with a shriek, "STUCK!!!"

Establishing that both of his feet and his hands were, in fact, free as they should be, I determined correctly that he was, hanging by his knees, suspended precariously between the narrow gapped spindles of a porch railing. I couldn't help but envision the fire department arriving to saw my child free, leaving me responsible for replacing the porch of the Jolly Train Station.

Zip then had a meltdown when the Merry-GO-Round attendant told him he was one-half-inch too short to board a horse.  But, he pulled himself together after a PB&J, and we managed to close the place at four o'clock, leaving, en mass, with all the other little wood nymphs and fairies, returning home for them to resume their otherwise ordinary existence as regular human children.