Oh my goodness, this is the longest I had ever gone without seeing my bro! Twas since our Hawaii trip of last year. Well, it was high time to check in on Jake, Joanne, and Nate within the company of the GParents Donuts. So we went to San Diego! I can't believe this was just 6-weeks ago.
We begin with a no-limit hold-um to the death round of mini golf. I think mom just hole in 1'ed it!
Alice boops around.
Brock hole'sin1's it!
Stuff happening. And a woman lives in a shoe yonder.
Later we head down to Balboa Park to visit the model train museum for Nate, a budding engineer.
The next morning Matt and I make a quick trip to the place where we are ordering our master bathroom counter-tops from to make sure we likey. Their studio was a 20 minute drive from our Airbnb. We went with one of those side samples (with a tiny edit), hopefully it is the one you are thinking you like (if you liked any of them). And yes, the octopus tile is a given that we were matching. Tee hee!!!
No trip to San Diego is complete without the beach. We had lovely 60ish degree weather and perfect skies for a visit to the sand and tide pools.
Mom and dad are sitting up there on that bench. Maybe you can see dad's jeans way up there on the sand hill by the blue watch tower. A fantastic perch to take in the scene.
Jake has a frolic in the dip.
The boys and Joanne make fun in the sand and surf.
Alice is enamored of the rocks and their endless stacking and re-stacking potential.
Feel it. I am one with the stacky rocks.
Don't touch my rocks. We stay. We stay with rocks.
rocks
What a difference a perspective can make.
We take in a fancy meal after the lovely coast. Here we are cooking ahi over a hot rock.
Alice goes over the plan with GpaD.
And then a round of candle hat. Unlit? I think so.
The next day Alice takes a nap. And it is cute.
Then, we are off to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. This place is just so cool and has safari trips by cart so all the ages can play together. Apparently Jake and I went there when we were kids. I didn't remember it being so tiring or beer tasting so good.
We get caught in the playground for waaaaay more than our allotted 10 minutes.
Brock likely telling Nate what they will be playing.
Our adventurer enters the wild creature's den and sees a fierce specimen digging in the earth.
She cautiously approaches.
Run! Run! Abort mission! There are two! RUN.
I like cats.
We didn't give ourselves nearly enough time at the park, for it is already time to jump on board our scheduled safari to the wilds of Africa.
Some very realistic lawn ornaments.
On the Safari we really do learn a lot. Including the reproductive miracles of making a baby Northern White Rhino. This species is functionally extinct as there are no males left in the world and only two females. Sperm was collected and frozen from dead Northern White rhino males (let's not even go there people) and successfully fertilized in vitro eggs from one of the two remaining females. These embryos are currently frozen, and hopefully one of the Southern White rhinos at the Safari Park will serve as a surrogate this year. Brain exploding.
Matt and I have been wanting to check out the original Stone Brewery ever since we saw an episode of Brew Dogs that profiled it. Jake and Joanne are in and mom and dad will go anywhere as long as we don't sit outside (Cali nights in February are only paradise to Matt and maybe Brock). And Alice is awesomely asleep! Here I take a picture with Stone's signature gargoyle wings and our new platypus friend (did I mention that the Safari Park is the only zoo out of Australia with a platypus habitat? Adorable).
Their beer is grand, the company fantastic and the beer garden is more like a beer jungle with a river, live band and random spurting fire.
Alice thinks GpaD is very silly.
He is!!!
Brock and Nate get in some quality cousin time before we take off. No really though, they had a great time and most of it was spent at the Snickerdoodle Construction site (a place where many forts get built) and in the pool. Brock is reading this right now and clarifying that the forts were not built in the pool, in case that wasn't clear to you dear readers.
Alice on a down town train.
and in a favorite nook.
I know I briefly mentioned the pool, but that just doesn't give it the credit it deserves. The back yard pool is heated and still pretty pleasant when we go swimming in the morning when it was 55 degrees. Alice is in love with pools now. When we got home and were unpacking, she brought Matt her floaties and said, "poo?" "poo?". We speak Alice and "poo" doesn't mean what you think it does.
Our last quick stop is just to a local playground to kill 30 minutes before we hop on a plane. We lost the others as there were other playgrounds in the area and our maps lead us to different places. Our map apparently lead us to a seagull poop sanctuary featuring a beer can. A unsuitable finale to an AWESOME trip with our dear dear family. Cooped up in quarantine, I am even more grateful that we got to squeeze in this trip before the chaos that is. Let's do it again SOONER. Now. Help me.
Ah, the pomp and circumstance of a Kindergarten graduation. The wonderful Principle Korth at the podium... The event began with the graduates singing a song to their teacher: And then the main event! Then we adjourned to the playground for cake and popsicles. Alice with one of her closer friend, Chloe. And her AMAZING teacher who we will miss so much, Ms. Heintzelman! It has been a really good year! Alice has bloomed in reading and math and particularly in her interest and understanding of sociology and science. She even made a few friends! I can say I learned more from than even Brock's first year of public school. I began volunteering on Friday mornings in December after her school received 100 new refugee students from Venezuela (her school went from 200 to 300 in a day!). I did not want to volunteer in the classroom, but instead wanted to help out with admin, but that was not where humans were needed, so I ended up in the neighborhood third grade class. This was way outside
Uh. When the going gets rough, the rough roughs it! And off we head to Michigan for our annual camping and disc golfing extravaganza. We are last minute campers and it worked to our advantage this year. As everything else was booked, we ended up at a little "secret" campsite we know of in western MI called Timberview. The nice old man that runs it got sick of loud campers, so he pulled all listings off of the internet. It's not on google maps. We were lucky enough to drive by one year and just stop in. And now that we have a kid, he set us up in the nicest secluded campsite, of which we took two pictures (we're bad at this sometimes.) There was wonderful hiking, an assortment of mushrooms to discover, and a giant hill of majestic old-growth pines that Brock aptly named "pine tree heaven." It's also quite refreshing to be in a site where you are actually allowed to gather your own firewood, and it's low-traffic enough that there is plenty. We s
Brock was given the assignment of memorizing the poem "If", by Sir Rudyard Kipling. It is a wonderful poem, here was his submission to his teacher. They were also called on at random times through out the year to recite various verses impromptu in class. So deep.
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