Sarah to be honored!

Sarah got selected as Leopard of the Month for her class at school. On January 30th, she will be presented her award certificate at the assembly in front of the school. I will make sure and post pictures! It's funny, she never received this award at all until 2nd grade, but now she's received it each year since. She's a good kid, so it did surprise me when she didn't receive it at least in 1st grade. I think with the old principal, sometimes your kid only got the award if you asked for it, which is kind of ridiculous. By the time she went through 3/4 of a year in 2nd grade, I was wondering if it wasn't true, about having to ASK for it. I almost commented on it to the teacher and the principal. With all the glowing notes home, good grades, etc, she should have received the award at least one in 3 years, right? Well, apparently patience worked, because she has gotten the award once each year since.

Sarah also often gets the top reader award at the monthly assemblies. That's kind of a hard one to get, if you log your reading honestly, which I expect of Sarah. It's always a pleasant surprise when she does get the award, because so many kids record pages that they have not read. She got that award at the last assembly, and I'm always most proud of that one, because I know that she honestly logs the exact number of pages read. I can't exactly tell you which parent she gets her fondness for reading from, but I think I would be her biggest influence because she sees me reading more often. In any case, both of her parents were big readers as kids, so take your pick!

San Diego Wild Animal Park

On December 30th and January 2nd, we spent some time at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal park just outside of Escondido. We saw these pretty blue birds on our way to the safari ride. Not sure what they are, but they sure are pretty!


I believe these were some type of deer. It was really quite amazing to watch these guys running around!

This was a white Rhino, either southern or northern. Whatever the case, the other type of white rhino was also at the park, but it was one of eight left in the world. The Wild Animal Park had two of them.


This was a young giraffe, not at its full height yet. They are born pretty tall to start with, otherwise they cannot feed properly. You have probably seen how tall an adult giraffe is, so in order to reach its mom's milk, the giraffe has to be born fairly tall!


They had a good number of ostrich around. I always find it amusing to watch them. They are just such BIG birds. I don't quite understand how they get around!


The next picture isn't very clear, but I just wanted to share it to demonstrate that most of the animal in this area live as in nature, not in separate areas. The one exception was the zebras. They were aggressive and pretty mean to the other creatures, so they got put in their own little area. In case you can't tell, this is a giraffe and a couple of rhinos.


I had never seen a California Condor up close. They are not very pretty, but still great to look at! It was tricky getting a good and in focus shot with a point and shoot camera, but I finally got one. It wanted to focus on the fencing around the bird.


Hanging around the condors was this beauty of a ram. They had lots of rocks for them to climb around on. I bet they were quite happy!


They had a petting area. The Zoo had goats and the Wild Animal Park had Kraal. They seem kind of deer-like.



I will post about the Zoo itself on another day. I have more blog-worthy photos from the zoo. I think my favorite part of the Wild Animal Park was seeing all the rhinos. You don't often get to see them!

Happy Birthday to my Big Baby Girl!

Julia turned 4 today. It seems like she was just born yesterday. Now instead of a helpless newborn, she's a big girl of 4 that can do many things by herself. My parents came to visit for the weekend and she was so excited. She really latched on to Grandpa Bob. I am convinced it's because they both are big hand-holders. In any case, she has found the way to his heart. Yesterday, we all took the girls to the American Girl Place to the cafe there for tea time. The girls could take a doll and they even had little clip on chairs for the dolls to sit at the table with us. They provided tiny cups and saucers as well. I'm ashamed to say that my camera got left behind, but we did take lots of pictures with my mom's camera. I forgot to copy them off of her memory before she left, so I'll have to see if she can put them on a cd for me and mail it.

Today, on her actual birthday, we took her for donuts for breakfast, chuck e cheese for lunch (where we ran into her former daycare provider and family), and then Daddy picked the girls up happy meals for dinner. Her favorite gifts included a new princess bike, play doh and sidewalk chalk, as well as Bitty Baby Twins, one was a blond girl and the other a brunette girl. I think she said that one of them was named Garby and the other Bitty. That will be subject to change, of course.

There's something that's just so BIG about turning 4, because they really get it, and they've been looking forward to that birthday for so long. 3, they get excited, but 4, they've obsessed about and planned for for MONTHS! We'll have another big birthday this year. Sarah hits the double digits in May...


P.S. I know I've promised a blog entry on the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park, and I haven't forgotten. I've just been super busy. I know it'll be graphic intensive, so I'm dragging my feet...

Sea World on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day

Last week we went to San Diego to have some fun with the family. I'll break this up into two posts, this first being on Sea World and then the second will be on The San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park.

Wednesday morning we got up and got showered/dressed and ready for a day of fun. We went down to the hotel restaurant for their buffet before going to Sea World, then grabbed our backpacks, jackets, the kids and loaded up into the car to go to Sea World. It was 8 miles from our hotel, but we found it easily courtesy of Verizon Navigator (tm). Our wait to get into the parking lot was a bit longer than it should have been. We noticed that our line was going slower than ALL the other lines. I think we got the "slow" employee. We finally got parked and went to handle our tickets. James had purchased them online so we just had to go to the computerized kiosk and scan our printout and we were ready to go. First we went to see the Arctic Encounter which was pretty neat. We saw some arctic birds, polar bears (unfortunately I didn't get very clear pictures of the polar bears) and the beautiful Beluga whales.


Next, we had some time to kill before an arranged encounter, so we went to see the Penguin exhibit. Lots of different varieties of penguins, including breeds that lived in cold and warm weather. I think penguins are great fun! Cold loving penguins:




Here are some of the warm weather loving penguins:




After that, it was time for the girls and I to do a dolphin encounter. In retrospect, we should have just left Julia with James because she was scared, but James had signed up for this online so I had little choice but to take her. We got to learn more about dolphins, instructed them to do tricks, as well as touching them and feeding them dead fish. They also like to eat ice.



I'm pretty sure that by this time, it was time for lunch, and then the dolphin show. This one is always a pretty good one. We made sure not to sit in the splash zone, because you have a 99% chance of getting soaking wet!



Above is Dolly, the highest jumping Dolphin at Sea World-San Diego!

I believe after this we went back to the hotel to rest for the night shows, then went back to see the sea lions and Shamu shows- both holiday specials. It was difficult to get good pictures at these night shows, but I have one of the sea lions, one of the Shamu show and another of Shamu splashing. :)




The next day we had a scheduled breakfast with Shamu. We got there a little early and spent some time at the viewing area watching a couple of the killer whales swimming around. They are so beautiful to watch! Then we got to have breakfast with Shamu with a small private showing and some of the tricks that don't get you soaked. Although Dolphins are big showoffs, these whales like to show off too, and they do have minds of their own. They don't always do what their trainers instruct them to do! This is about as close as you can get to the killer whales because they don't do encounters with them like they do some of the other critters.





After that, we went to see the sea lions "regular" show, let the girls get their faces painted and saw the Shamu "regular" show, prior to leaving and heading over to the San Diego Zoo. I will leave the post about the zoo and wild animal park for another day, because this one has worn me out! Hope the few readers I have enjoy the pictures!

Still alive--- what a week!

Sorry that I've been lax in updating lately. It's been busy! Since Tuesday, we've been out of town. We decided to go to San Diego to the zoo, wild animal park and Sea World. The plan was to go back home Friday after we finished up at the wild animal park right outside of Escondido (north of San Diego). James asked me to drive, and we were on the highway at a stop light. I was taking a sip of diet coke and BAM!!!! Got rear-ended. For those of you that know, back in October I was involved in a car accident and our truck was totaled. We've had the car about a month, and now it's rear-ended. At first look, it just appeared that the bumper was scratched up, cracked in a spot, and dented in another, and that was it. BUT, when I tried to pull away, it was obvious something else wrong. The rear bumper on the passenger side was where it was hit, and they also got the exhaust/muffler, and it was rubbing against the tire. We were able to get it away from the tire, but decided to go check in to a motel overnight and get it looked at to make sure it was safe to go home. So, right now I'm waiting for James to come back from whatever repair shop he's gone to. I feel kind of bad for the Lexus that hit us. The front bumper is messed up, the grill, the radiator, the hood, probably part of the front quarter panel and the air bags deployed. I figure hers will be totaled. For us, a new bumper, new muffler and they might find something else wrong with it. Oh, Julia's 2 month old car seat will have to be replaced. I told her I'd order her one with some pink on it. LOL The only comfort is in knowing that it is definitely not my fault! BTW, it took over half an hour for anyone to come to the accident site, and then it was a single CHP officer.

So, enough on the accident. When we get back home, I'll work on a nice post about our trip, complete with some pictures!

A Christmas Story

Tonight started the 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TBS, and I decided it was time to introduce Sarah to the movie. Yep, she loved it! You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

What is that in the distance?

One of the few advantages (other than the weather) of living in Southern California, is that we are treated to breathtaking views from time to time. Last week there was a winter storm and here is the result:




Yes, there is snow on top of the mountains. These pictures were taking in Thousand Oaks on the Amgen campus, atop one of the taller buildings, 5 stories including basement. I only wish my camera had more zoom, and that the day had been more clear...