Trip to San Diego

David and I decided (well, David asked and I agreed) to take Will to the San Diego Zoo (world-renowned) to see the animals. Will loves the zoo here in Phoenix, but of course, it being so hot, we hadn't been in awhile. Plus, San Diego has some animals we don't (namely the gorilla, polar bear, panda, koala, and hippo -- these animals would be our "quest" while we were at the zoo).

David talked up the trip for a month. I swear, I was sick of the zoo before we even got there. Probably because David goes to work all day and I get to hear Will talk for 10 hours about the aforementioned animals. It got a little old.

David wanted to fly, but everyone I talked to here said it's a pretty easy drive, so we did. We left on the Friday afternoon (weekend before Labor Day) and planned to return on Monday. I deliberately withheld Will's nap thinking he would sleep in the car. Note to self: he's not a car sleeper. After about 6 1/2 hours (1 of which was spent in an Applebee's in Yuma), lots of desolate landscape (or darkness), and 2 or 3 border crossing checkpoints later, we arrived at our hotel in Carlsbad (Will screamed for pretty much the whole last hour. David was driving, there were some nasty cross-winds in the mountains outside San Diego, and we were all tired...it was a long day).

The hotel was great -- right across the street from the beach. They gave Will a little stuffed sting ray and that went a long way towards soothing his raw nerves. He slept great in his little inflatable toddler bed and we set off the next morning for the zoo.

I won't go into a lot of detail on all the animals, but it was a GREAT experience and I can't wait to go back! What astounded us both was how close you can get to the animals, and how natural their environments are. There's lots of glass, not bars, so you can get good, unobstructed views of the animals in their environments. The most impressive to David and I was the male gorilla. He exuded dominance and scared the crap out of us when he came out of his "home."

I told David I wouldn't want to run into this guy in the wild. Not only does he look mean, he's just plain HUGE. I mean, at least 1/3 larger than the females. Until he came out into view, we thought the females were big! HA!

All of the animals were wonderful. For some, Will had a very long attention span (namely the koalas)...for others, like the panda, it was, "Okay, seen it, now I want to see the gorilla!" I mean, literally, it was a 3-second "saw it" then off to the next animal.

A surprise David and I got was that Will wanted to ride the Sky Tram. Will typically isn't that adventurous, but we must have ridden that thing 5 times in two days. Usually, we would do a round trip, but a couple times we took the stroller onto the tram with us all folded up (and very crowded). We liked that Will liked it and we could see some animals. I think he just liked the novelty of it all. No doubt when we go back, we'll be riding it again.

We stayed at the zoo until just after lunch on Saturday and Sunday, then headed back to the hotel so Will (and the rest of us) could nap. After naptime, we spent one afternoon on the beach (suffice to say Will didn't like it), and the other day walking around downtown Carlsbad, eating dinner, and playing in a park.

I got to spend some time with my old high school friend, Gladys, as well, who lives in Carlsbad with her family. She was kind enough to come over to the hotel one afternoon while Will was napping so we could catch up and spend some time talking (she stayed at our house in July when she was going through AZ on the way to TX, but with 6 kids between the two of us, there wasn't much time for talking).

The return trip was much better and we got to see some wonderful landscape that we missed on our getting-there trip (because it was dark). David has a conference in SD in April and I think we're going to take Sean this time. He will be 2 by then and old enough to either listen to what I'm telling him (if he's going to walk the whole thing) or be patient enough to sit in the stroller.

I posted some pics of our trip on Facebook. You can follow this link to view them (no membership required).

9 months later...

...I could have been pregnant and had a baby in the time it's taken me to get back to this blog! The hard thing is finding time to do it, and then what interesting things do I want to say about our family? I don't want to BORE people...after all, I do put stuff on FB, too.

I will say that the weather is finally cooling down, not so much during the day, but definitely in the evenings, and with dark happening sooner, it's getting cooler sooner, so the kids can be outside playing after dinner. They LOVE it. If I say, "Let's go outside!" there's this mad charge for the back door -- no shoes necessary -- and a run for the sandbox out back. Sean has been pretty good about not eating sand, although a couple diapers ago, I did notice some "roughness" in what I was cleaning off his bottom. It was like he was getting an exfoliation treatment on his rear end!

Will loves to play in the back kicking the ball around, swinging (major fun for him), or climbing the swing set and going down the slide. David and I thought our swing set would be a bit over the top when we completed it last year, but it's a HUGE hit with both boys and they both like to climb up the slide (easier with no shoes), play on the platform, send their cars or balls down the slide, or swing. Sean still sometimes gets drowsy in the swing, so we have to watch him, but it's a grand time for everyone.

Sean has fun in the sandbox, mostly. He just pushes and throws the sand around. When we are able to be out there when the sun is up, we have an umbrella in the sand (like you would at the beach) to help keep them cool. Sometimes I fill a bucket with water and let them play with that. Invariably, if they're full of sand, they get a complete hose-down before they are allowed back in the house. (Sidenote: a couple days ago, we were shocked to find A TON of sand in Will's bed. I think he played outside with his grandparents that day while David and I went on a date, and I told Patsy the boys didn't need to take a bath, but I don't think I told her they needed their feet hosed off. Lesson learned!)

David is working very hard. He's a part of a new committee (see National Action Alliance Leadership press release for more info) that has some pretty high-up-in-the-federal-gov't folks participating. It's a real honor for David to be selected and we're very proud of him. He will be required to go to DC a couple times a year to participate in this committee. David has been doing a lot of research on suicide (by himself and with partners) and is well respected in the behavioral health community for his work. He's kicking butt and taking names at Magellan, too. We're very proud of everything he's doing.

As for me, I've finally gotten off my butt and have joined some mommy groups here in Chandler. Tomorrow is the first meeting of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers). It's more of a faith-based group, but then so was Mary Kay and I survived that, so I guess I will survive this. I'm looking forward to meeting some new moms. A lot of the moms at this group live close to me and they do playgroups and other activities outside the two-times-a-month group meetings, so I'm looking forward to it. The other group I'm joining is MOMS Club. I was in MOMS Club when I was in Smyrna, and when I first moved here, but didn't make a good effort to get involved when I moved here. This chapter is different from the one I was a part of (and my neighbor across the street is a member), so I'm hoping to start off a little better with this one than I did previously.

Time to wrap it up...details about our San Diego trip from a few weeks ago in a different post!

Starting Out

Well, as if I didn't have enough time to do things, now I've started a blog. Ha...we'll see how many people read it!