San Diego! Part 1

I couldn't believe I had actually talked my husband into letting us go to San Diego. I was so excited to go to California for the first time and to spend time with his aunt, uncle and cousins. It was a long drive, about 13-14 hours. Surprisingly, the kids did great and we only had to make about 3 stops. The first thing we did when we got there, after putting away our luggage, was go for a walk to a park so the kids could play. I really needed to stretch my legs!

 

 San Diego is probably the largest city I have ever been in, and I was just amazed at how it kept going on and on and on...

 and on and on and on...

 Bonnie was a little nervous about going down the slide-

 -but she was okay afterwards!

 The kids were so happy to be out of the car!

 

The next day we went to Sea World. It was ridiculously expensive, but we had a great time.

 You can barely see them, but the kids were so excited to see "Dory" in this giant tank.

 The Riptide Ride was closed, but that didn't stop Jordyn from driving her own little boat.

 Animals, animals everywhere!

 The shark tank was cool but slightly disappointing. I guess I was expecting a great white shark or something, but I guess they aren't safe or something...

 We waited outside the Mission Bay theater to see Madagascar, Live! The kids were really excited about it, and I was really excited about it...

 ...but it mostly ended up being like watching The Fresh Beat Band on the Disney Channel.

 The kids plugged their ears the whole time until the end, when a thousand bubbles came floating down from the ceiling. They liked the bubbles.

 The Orca show was great. We didn't sit in the splash zone because the kids didn't like getting splashed by the dolphins, and I'm glad we made that choice because the whales get you REALLY wet!

 They sure were fantastic to watch...

 I was SUPER disappointed with the penguin display. I was looking forward to seeing them in full glory and watching them swim and walk around, but their cage was completely dark, almost like they were simulating winter time in the Arctic, and you could hardly see them. I was sad.

 The puffins were cute though.

 I had to stop in the penguin shop. Love my penguins!

 We climbed through a polar bear cave. Jordyn almost went in until a bear growled loudly over a speaker and then she ran away.

 It was fun to watch the beluga whales swim around. They had so much fat on their bodies that jiggled when they swam. That's probably what I would look like if I swam naked...

 

 

 

My absolute most favorite thing was petting the Bat Rays. I was too afraid to touch them at first, but after I got used to it I could have sat there with them all day. They were so soft and squishy, and they would come right up to you at the top of the water like puppy dogs and want you to rub their backs. I loved it!

The sea lions were fun to feed, but there were birds that would attack you if you didn't throw the fish fast enough. Mean birds!

The dolphin show was great, although I didn't get any pictures of dolphins, just some funny looking black whale. I can't remember what it was called.

 Jordyn wanted to see the dolphin princess, but when we got to take our picture with them Jordyn became shy.

 

On Friday we went to the Mormon Battalion Museum. It was very educational and inspirational, and while we were there I felt the spirit tell me that the talk I had to give in church the following Sunday needed to be about the Mormon Battalion.

 These pictures looked really cool, and I could tell that they were digital, but I didn't expect them to start talking and moving around like they did when our tour started.

 The first leg of the Mormon Battalion trail.

 Jordyn volunteered to be a soldier. She was so excited.

 Watch out!

 One tough solider!

 The Captain and a boy talking outside our window.

 After you go through the museum, you can have a family picture taken. I love this picture. After we got our picture taken, we went outside and panned for gold and washed clothes on a scrub board and made adobe bricks, where I dropped and broke my camera and wasn't able to take more pictures. So I took some more pictures with Jared's camera, which is now broken and being sent in to get fixed. Later that day, I had to go buy a new camera... 

Uriah Party 5

Uriah Party doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "Mario Party", but that's what Uriah wanted for his 5th birthday. A few weeks before his birthday we drove to Idaho Falls to get decorations and party stuff at Zurchers. We got Mario plates and cups and napkins, and I also bought him a Mario chess set that I used on top of his cake, and some Mario wall stickers for his bedroom. I was hoping they were going to have a Mario piñata but I didn't see one, so I had to go to Party Palace the day before the party and thankfully they had one. I'm not sure it was a real piñata because we had to cut a hole in it to put the candy in, but it worked out well. Uriah got a lot of great presents and had a lot of family and friends over to support him. I was a little worried at first because there weren't very many people, but we had a good crowd by the end of it.

 Everyone asked me what Uriah needed and I said "socks", so he got some socks. He was very excited about these Angry Birds socks.

 A Team Umizoomi game for his DS.

 He had been begging me to get PVZ for his DS for a long time, and he was very surprised and happy to see it.

 Super Mario Brothers!

 He loved this card because it had pop-up monkeys in it.

 Cool new shorts

 My super happy boy!

 Getting ready to blow out the candle. He loved his cake.

 I tried to make Uriah's birthday cake this year and it didn't turn out the way I wanted the first time, so I used the botched cake for a game. I hid a small Toad character in the cake and had the kids dig through it to find him.

 I bought this cake at the store and put the chess pieces on top. I thought it looked awesome, and Uriah loved it.

 More Angry Birds!

 

I had seen Uriah's daycare teacher reading Captain Underpants to his class one day, and all Uriah could do was tell me how funny it was and how much he liked Captain Underpants. I thought the book would be a good present for him, even though he can't read yet, but I didn't know how he was going to react to it. I was very excited when he started giggling and laughing just looking at the book. It warmed my heart!

Bad, Bad Blogger

Okay, so my last post was in March. I have no idea how so much time got away from me so quickly. I feel like almost every day is the same for me...work, go home, sleep - work, go home, sleep. The Spring semester is always crazy at work, and then I think I just fell out of the habit of blogging after missing two (or three) months. So I will try to play a quick game of catch-up and see what I can remember.

March
Jared was in school and I was working full tilt getting things ready for our program interviews and such.

April
Jared's littlest sister got married and now his parents are empty nesters. They were sealed in the Twin Falls temple. It was a stormy and cold day, but any day we can go to the temple is a great day.

 

Because I had been working on becoming healthier for some time, a friend of mine on Facebook approached me at the end of the month to tell me about a challenge group that he had been a part of and invited me to join. I was really wanting to make a serious commitment to changing my lifestyle and my body, so I joined in.

 



May

The semester ended and summer school started up. I decided that I wanted to work towards getting a Massage Therapy certification, so I signed up for 3 summer classes: Medical Terminology, Medical Law and Ethics and Intro to the Massage Therapy career. Both of us did well in our courses.

 

June

Our sweet, sweet Uriah had his 5th birthday. I can't believe that he is already 5 and will be starting kindergarten soon. He wanted to have a "Mario Party" so he got all kinds of fun stuff. I will have to make a separate post just for his birthday. We also had our complex's annual garage sale and I made about $60. It felt so good to get rid of some stuff and organize the garage so we could walk through it. The first challenge group I joined ended and I had lost about 6 lbs and several inches.

 

July

Of course, we had a 4th of July get-together and my parents' house and then me, my dad, Uriah and Jordyn went  to watch the fireworks. They were delayed for an hour because of wind, but it was still enjoyable to watch. The week after the 4th of July, the second challenge group started and I joined. My brother also started doing a Boot Camp class in Blackfoot that I have been going to. During this time, I hit the 25 pound loss mark and I am feeling great. I convinced my husband to take me to San Diego, California where his aunt and uncle live because I had never been to California before, and amazingly, he agreed. So at 4am on the 16th we headed to San Diego and were there for a week. It was an amazing vacation, and I will have to make a separate post for that as well. The 22nd was our 8th wedding anniversary, and we were on the freeway heading back to Idaho, so while it wasn't exactly the best anniversary day, the trip to San Diego was the perfect way to celebrate it.

 

Sorry, this is a pretty lame post after being absent for so long, but I will have some better stuff on the way soon.