Mal's Happiest Place on Earth

Check out the cool knee scrape

I spent much of my childhood in San Jose, but I would bet I went to Happy Hollow maybe once as a kid.  I was probably a little too old for it by the time we lived here.  When Jacob and Ruth were little, we went there with them.  It was run down and a little bit sad, but you can tell that at one point it used to be a lot of fun.  I remember a lot of the rides were broken down and the sound system for the puppet show was almost unbearable.  A little over a year ago, Happy Hollow re-opened after a major renovation.  It was perfect timing for our then soon to be 2 year old.  HH has pint sized rides, a petting zoo, a mini zoo, play structures and general little kid fun.  It is Mal's happy place for sure...and we can get there in minutes, so we go pretty often.  Our season pass gets a lot of use.

Audrey, JJ and Mal on the swing

This Friday we went with a group of kids from our neighborhood.  Mal has been in a playgroup since he was about 9 months old and he has a lot of great friends as a result.  The downside is that most of his friends are a car ride away.  Despite having tons of kids in our neighborhood, it is only recently that we have been having neighborhood meet ups.  Our new little group of 2-3 year olds met up on Friday at Happy Hollow.  We normally go solo, and both Jake and I let Mal run loose like a mad man.  He sets the pace and decides what we are going to do there.  Our group was trying to stay somewhat together (although we knew we were not going to be able to do everything as a group).  I was curious to see how he would do not calling all the shots on what to do for the day.

Getting ready slide

Heading down the slide

weeeee.  That was fun.

Resting on the frog - apparently he
then followed us home

Mal did wonderfully.  Seeing him work out what to do with his buddies was really neat.  He is becoming such a little boy.  We hung out with most of the group for about 1.5 hours before people started branching out to other areas or heading home for naps.  When we were solo, he did some climbing and sliding on the playground and then we wrapped up the morning with lunch and a puppet show before heading home for a nice long nap.

With Jake off work in a few weeks, I have a feeling Mal is going to start thinking of Happy Hollow as his second home.