Father’s Day with Daughters

Had a lovely Father’s day today with my daughters. They asked me to keep the morning open and they planned something that they knew I would like to do with them. I was very happy on Saturday night when they shared their plan with me.

We got up relatively early to go for breakfast at one of our favorite breakfast spots. We decided to go early because none of us like to wait to get a table at a restaurant and being Father’s day we figured it would get busy fast. We got to Breakfast Republic near UC Irvine and got a table right away. We got our orders in just in time because it got quite busy after we arrived. We had a very enjoyable breakfast sitting outside. I always get sucked into getting the Mexican coffee here and then the refills are just regular coffee. That coffee with cinnamon in it is just so delicious though. It was fun hanging out with the girls for breakfast. When they were younger we used to go for breakfast every weekend but we got out of that habit. I miss it a lot and this reminded me of the fun we used to have on our daddy daughter weekend breakfasts.

San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

Our next stop was to go to the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary that is nearby to UC Irvine and our breakfast stop. We got the binoculars out and walked around for a couple hours stopping to look at birds and enjoying the area. I was very impressed with the girls ability on identifying the birds and also a lot of the local plants as well. We especially enjoyed watching an avocet family in the shallows of one of the ponds. The youngsters were walking around at quite a distance from the parents but if any other birds came close the parents were right there to chase them off. It was impressive watching the parent avocets chasing off a family of ducks. Overall, we saw Crows, Killdeers, Mallard Ducks, Great Egret, Ospreys, Cooper’s Hawk, Towhees, American Avocet, Black Neck Stilt, Black Skimmer, Caspian Terns, Clarks Grebe, Cinnamon Teal, Great Blue Heron, Egyptian Geese, and a Canada Goose.

Baby avocet with mom keeping a close eye in the background.

Avocet parents keeping a close eye on the young ones and moving to scare off a family of ducks that got a bit too close.

I enjoyed seeing some flowers as well as we walked around. We saw a lot of fluffy seeds and debated what the technical term was for seed fluff. We didn’t come to a conclusion on that but the girls thought it was cool to see so much of it. We aren’t as good on our flower identifications but these ones were pretty and I liked them enough to take pictures. They were beside the trail as we walked around. There were lots of the yellow ones and a few of the pink ones. I could be totally wrong and it is a bit embarrassing but the pink one reminds me of a wild rose which is the provincial flower of Alberta.

Flower

Flower

After we wrapped up at the wildlife sanctuary we spent some time figuring out where the best boba tea would be nearby. We decided on a place on our way home and headed there. We enjoyed our boba teas and got home just before noon. I spent the rest of the day relaxing and puttering around the house. It was a great day made amazing by doing something with my two wonderful daughters.