I cant believe I have posted nothing since May 12th!!! Well its not like I have a whole lot of great things to write about u know. The biggest thing of course was our almost 2 week trip that took us to San Diego. Im just gonna come out and say it, "I dont like San Diego!", ok there I said it and I said it as nice as I could. Im not a California girl, but I tried I really did. Actually let me re phrase that, Im not a desert girl. Is that how you spell desert as in dry and brown? I always get that word mixed up with dessert, u know the kind of thing we all like to over indulge in. Nancy, I really wanted to like it because you love it and I thought hmmm maybe we could be like kindred spirits who like the same things and so on and so on... But unlike you Im Uncreative (if thats a word), Unmotivated, and I hate San Diego. So basically after hanging out with me for more than a few days you would probably hate me! Hopefully not:) Well Im not totally un motivated just when it comes to birthday parties, decorating for holidays, making anything that requires time and stuff like that:) Im just kidding about all the kindred spirit stuff, I forget that not everybody understands my humor and may just think Im weird. Im starting to ramble so I better get on with our trip...
So the plane comes in to San Diego and my immediate thoughts were " wow this place is brown and ugly", and then, "Oh my gosh a terrorist has high jacked the plane and we are going straight towards the downtown buildings". The plane I swear was inches away from those tall skyscraper things! So now I have officially landed and am off to figure out how Im going to get to my rental car, the signs were horrible once I got outside and I had no clue what I was doing. I finally saw a Dollar rent a car shuttle bus that I could take. For the record I hate 99% of all shuttle drivers!! I also hate how those shuttle buses dont have seat belts. The guy was CRAZY, the worst one I have ever EVER EVER had to deal with. It was only the girls and I on the bus and he pulls up to a Thrifty bus and starts asking the guy if hes got any good tips and tells him he hopes the tips start picking up. Talk about awkward and annoying! I hate tipping nice people let alone complete jerks. I cant even express to you enough how horrible this guy was driving. I was in tears, I told him he was scaring me, I thought this is it we are going to die. He told me he could do nothing different, this is the same guy who was hoping tips would start picking up. I have never had to say anything to a shuttle driver, I always grin and bear it. So this was bad. I complained to the guygirl who was checking me in. I say guygirl because I am not certain what it was. Of course nothing came of it as I found out later when I returned the car and the really nice shuttle manager who was driving me heard nothing of it. He was the 1% of shuttle drivers I like:) He actually took all my info and assured me that the guy who drove me previously would not get away with what he did as he has had past reported problems. Anyways Im jumping ahead, after I had got into my car and the girls were settled in the back I began to cry for 30 min. I did not even want to drive as i was not sure if all San Diego drivers were this way. I actually wanted to go ahead and fly back home at that point, but Paul calmed me down enough to attempt to find my hotel. After getting on the road and going to my hotel I was relieved to find that nobody else drove that way.
The nice part about San Diego was seeing my old pastor and his wife who use to be like parents to me. They were waiting to see me at the hotel. We visited quite a bit including the next day where the girls spent the day swimming in their pool. I put sunscreen on Mercy right before she entered the pool and didn't realize until that night that it was NOT waterproof. As for Justina she came later to the pool and I completely spaced off sunscreen, after all I was sitting in the shade. Man did I feel really bad for both of them later!! We haven't had sunburns since we moved to Alaska. Justina had a couple of blisters on her arm it was so bad and Mercys back looked extremely painful as did her face and Justinas shoulders. Bad mom moment!!! I spent 2 hours putting ice cold towels on them trying to pull some of the heat out. Lets just say the next day was horrible. But we moved on and they peeled and blistered it out for the rest of the trip.
Lets see the next thing we did was Disneyland. Let me just say now that I will try not to say another negative thing AFTER Im done talking about DL. I Loathe DL, is that worse than hate?? If so then I have correctly described my feeling towards this place. It may have been different if I had went at a less busy time. I went before school was out for that county in the middle of the week but the fantasmic show was showing that night and the park was open later so I guess everybody in the state of California along with the rest of the world decided to go that day as well. Im not a crowd person, so why did I go to California you ask, I dont know, I plead insanity. On a positive note the girls did AWESOME, never once did they complain about lines. I was very impressed! We waited about an hour and 15min to go on splash mountain, but it was well worth the picture of Mercy. I need to scan that picture for you guys, it was like pure terror on her face. I did feel bad when she was screaming and crying her heart out after the first little plunge in the dark and we started to climb to the top of the drop. Her little heartbeat actually made me nervous, I thought she was gonna pass out. After that I told her we needed to go on Space Mountain, after all we had our fast pass tickets for it and I remembered it being a fun ride. In almost complete honesty I knew it was a little scary but i thought it was not as bad as a 50 foot drop going 37mph. The almost part meant I just really didnt remember. But I told her she would be fine. Lets just say that was the last roller coaster we went on that day!!! Wow even I was scared and I thought at the end of the ride that Mercy was dead. She screamed and cried the whole ride of course but at the end she was slouched over completely still and quite, so much so that I actually panicked and started to shake her. She was alive but barely, I did not carry her out as I did not want to chance walking around in clothes that had been vomited on. Thankfully she never did throw up but i did permanently damage the poor thing. Justina on the other hand who I thought would never go on any of those rides wanted to go on it again. She proved to be quite the daredevil. She rode everything and looked as happy as could be. I was very proud of her. We specifically went that day to see fantasmic but we left an hour before it was scheduled to begin due to complete exhaustion, we had bee there 12 hours already and I had an hour and a half drive ahead of me.
Wow this is getting to be a long post, maybe the longest ever. Ok so after this we went to Sea World. We really enjoyed Sea World, so much so that we went 4 or 5 times. Our favorites were Shamu and the Sea Lions. Its amazing what these animals are trained to do. I liked that there were no lines for anything and it was way more laid back. The highlight was our last day, Justina was picked to participate at the end of the Shamu Believe show. I will attach a video at the end of this post of it. We went to almost all the shamu shows during our visits to SW and we kept sitting where they seemed to be picking the lucky young girl or boy (mostly all girls) to be a part of the show. The last day we figured out that one of the trainers stands out at one of the entrances and randomly picks one person about 30 min before the show starts. Ah hah now I understood why there was reserved seating right where we were trying to sit to get picked! Soooo being the cool mom that I am, we went about 35 min early and couldn't quite figure out where the trainer would be standing so I stoped and asked a security guard there at the Shamu area how to get picked and where the trainer would exactly be. Good thing I talked to her, she revealed not only where the trainer would be but let us know that they will NOT choose anyone who asks to be picked. My original plan was to go up to the trainer and ask to be picked, hmmm that was now not going to work. Plan B, casually walk by the the trainer (not giving direct eye contact of course) smiling, looking interested and stoked to be seeing Shamu and VOILA!! It worked!!! She came up to us and asked Justina her name and it was in the bag. I was soooo giddy inside knowing that I took some control of our fate that fine day at the Shamu stadium. They took her picture and then escorted us tooooo yes thats right the RESERVED seating:) I think I was more excited than Justina and I can defiantly say I was more excited than Mercy who poor thing was sad and jealous that they didnt pick her. Oh well, its good for the big sister to get the attention once in awhile:)
Im not gonna talk much about Lego land and the San Diego Zoo. We defiantly liked Lego Land better than DL. Glad we went there. As for the Zoo, we liked it but I would never go back. We got there when it opened and stayed until closing, very long day. We missed our shuttle at 3:30 by 5 minutes!!! So we had to stay there the last 2 hours until it closed. There were many cabs with drivers ready to take you anywhere your heart desired but they looked like they would drive me into the twin towers if you know what I mean! As for the hotel shuttle, that was the first and last time we took that anywhere. The guy was going 60 in a 35, come on thats a heart attack waiting to happen. I asked him to slow down and told him I have really high blood pressure and that he was going to kill me. Yeah, it worked. He slowed down and drove quite well from that point on.
I was actually relived to fly into Portland and see green again! I was a nice retreat from a busy brown city and I enjoyed my 3 days there. I think the girls actually preferred being there as well:)
Then it was back to the great state of Alaska! I missed Paul after all it had been 2 weeks since I had seen him. I was worried about coming home and seeing all the work he had done. In fact I practiced my happy face and rehearsed all my great lines telling him how wonderful everything was. When I got home I was glad to see i worried for nothing as did a great job and I was very proud of him. But we still have A LOT to do in order to ever be finsihed! Maybe I need to take a couple weeks in Hawaii to let him finish??
CLICK TO WATCH JUSTINA AND SHAMU
So the plane comes in to San Diego and my immediate thoughts were " wow this place is brown and ugly", and then, "Oh my gosh a terrorist has high jacked the plane and we are going straight towards the downtown buildings". The plane I swear was inches away from those tall skyscraper things! So now I have officially landed and am off to figure out how Im going to get to my rental car, the signs were horrible once I got outside and I had no clue what I was doing. I finally saw a Dollar rent a car shuttle bus that I could take. For the record I hate 99% of all shuttle drivers!! I also hate how those shuttle buses dont have seat belts. The guy was CRAZY, the worst one I have ever EVER EVER had to deal with. It was only the girls and I on the bus and he pulls up to a Thrifty bus and starts asking the guy if hes got any good tips and tells him he hopes the tips start picking up. Talk about awkward and annoying! I hate tipping nice people let alone complete jerks. I cant even express to you enough how horrible this guy was driving. I was in tears, I told him he was scaring me, I thought this is it we are going to die. He told me he could do nothing different, this is the same guy who was hoping tips would start picking up. I have never had to say anything to a shuttle driver, I always grin and bear it. So this was bad. I complained to the guygirl who was checking me in. I say guygirl because I am not certain what it was. Of course nothing came of it as I found out later when I returned the car and the really nice shuttle manager who was driving me heard nothing of it. He was the 1% of shuttle drivers I like:) He actually took all my info and assured me that the guy who drove me previously would not get away with what he did as he has had past reported problems. Anyways Im jumping ahead, after I had got into my car and the girls were settled in the back I began to cry for 30 min. I did not even want to drive as i was not sure if all San Diego drivers were this way. I actually wanted to go ahead and fly back home at that point, but Paul calmed me down enough to attempt to find my hotel. After getting on the road and going to my hotel I was relieved to find that nobody else drove that way.
The nice part about San Diego was seeing my old pastor and his wife who use to be like parents to me. They were waiting to see me at the hotel. We visited quite a bit including the next day where the girls spent the day swimming in their pool. I put sunscreen on Mercy right before she entered the pool and didn't realize until that night that it was NOT waterproof. As for Justina she came later to the pool and I completely spaced off sunscreen, after all I was sitting in the shade. Man did I feel really bad for both of them later!! We haven't had sunburns since we moved to Alaska. Justina had a couple of blisters on her arm it was so bad and Mercys back looked extremely painful as did her face and Justinas shoulders. Bad mom moment!!! I spent 2 hours putting ice cold towels on them trying to pull some of the heat out. Lets just say the next day was horrible. But we moved on and they peeled and blistered it out for the rest of the trip.
Lets see the next thing we did was Disneyland. Let me just say now that I will try not to say another negative thing AFTER Im done talking about DL. I Loathe DL, is that worse than hate?? If so then I have correctly described my feeling towards this place. It may have been different if I had went at a less busy time. I went before school was out for that county in the middle of the week but the fantasmic show was showing that night and the park was open later so I guess everybody in the state of California along with the rest of the world decided to go that day as well. Im not a crowd person, so why did I go to California you ask, I dont know, I plead insanity. On a positive note the girls did AWESOME, never once did they complain about lines. I was very impressed! We waited about an hour and 15min to go on splash mountain, but it was well worth the picture of Mercy. I need to scan that picture for you guys, it was like pure terror on her face. I did feel bad when she was screaming and crying her heart out after the first little plunge in the dark and we started to climb to the top of the drop. Her little heartbeat actually made me nervous, I thought she was gonna pass out. After that I told her we needed to go on Space Mountain, after all we had our fast pass tickets for it and I remembered it being a fun ride. In almost complete honesty I knew it was a little scary but i thought it was not as bad as a 50 foot drop going 37mph. The almost part meant I just really didnt remember. But I told her she would be fine. Lets just say that was the last roller coaster we went on that day!!! Wow even I was scared and I thought at the end of the ride that Mercy was dead. She screamed and cried the whole ride of course but at the end she was slouched over completely still and quite, so much so that I actually panicked and started to shake her. She was alive but barely, I did not carry her out as I did not want to chance walking around in clothes that had been vomited on. Thankfully she never did throw up but i did permanently damage the poor thing. Justina on the other hand who I thought would never go on any of those rides wanted to go on it again. She proved to be quite the daredevil. She rode everything and looked as happy as could be. I was very proud of her. We specifically went that day to see fantasmic but we left an hour before it was scheduled to begin due to complete exhaustion, we had bee there 12 hours already and I had an hour and a half drive ahead of me.
Wow this is getting to be a long post, maybe the longest ever. Ok so after this we went to Sea World. We really enjoyed Sea World, so much so that we went 4 or 5 times. Our favorites were Shamu and the Sea Lions. Its amazing what these animals are trained to do. I liked that there were no lines for anything and it was way more laid back. The highlight was our last day, Justina was picked to participate at the end of the Shamu Believe show. I will attach a video at the end of this post of it. We went to almost all the shamu shows during our visits to SW and we kept sitting where they seemed to be picking the lucky young girl or boy (mostly all girls) to be a part of the show. The last day we figured out that one of the trainers stands out at one of the entrances and randomly picks one person about 30 min before the show starts. Ah hah now I understood why there was reserved seating right where we were trying to sit to get picked! Soooo being the cool mom that I am, we went about 35 min early and couldn't quite figure out where the trainer would be standing so I stoped and asked a security guard there at the Shamu area how to get picked and where the trainer would exactly be. Good thing I talked to her, she revealed not only where the trainer would be but let us know that they will NOT choose anyone who asks to be picked. My original plan was to go up to the trainer and ask to be picked, hmmm that was now not going to work. Plan B, casually walk by the the trainer (not giving direct eye contact of course) smiling, looking interested and stoked to be seeing Shamu and VOILA!! It worked!!! She came up to us and asked Justina her name and it was in the bag. I was soooo giddy inside knowing that I took some control of our fate that fine day at the Shamu stadium. They took her picture and then escorted us tooooo yes thats right the RESERVED seating:) I think I was more excited than Justina and I can defiantly say I was more excited than Mercy who poor thing was sad and jealous that they didnt pick her. Oh well, its good for the big sister to get the attention once in awhile:)
Im not gonna talk much about Lego land and the San Diego Zoo. We defiantly liked Lego Land better than DL. Glad we went there. As for the Zoo, we liked it but I would never go back. We got there when it opened and stayed until closing, very long day. We missed our shuttle at 3:30 by 5 minutes!!! So we had to stay there the last 2 hours until it closed. There were many cabs with drivers ready to take you anywhere your heart desired but they looked like they would drive me into the twin towers if you know what I mean! As for the hotel shuttle, that was the first and last time we took that anywhere. The guy was going 60 in a 35, come on thats a heart attack waiting to happen. I asked him to slow down and told him I have really high blood pressure and that he was going to kill me. Yeah, it worked. He slowed down and drove quite well from that point on.
I was actually relived to fly into Portland and see green again! I was a nice retreat from a busy brown city and I enjoyed my 3 days there. I think the girls actually preferred being there as well:)
Then it was back to the great state of Alaska! I missed Paul after all it had been 2 weeks since I had seen him. I was worried about coming home and seeing all the work he had done. In fact I practiced my happy face and rehearsed all my great lines telling him how wonderful everything was. When I got home I was glad to see i worried for nothing as did a great job and I was very proud of him. But we still have A LOT to do in order to ever be finsihed! Maybe I need to take a couple weeks in Hawaii to let him finish??
CLICK TO WATCH JUSTINA AND SHAMU
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| From 6-7-2010 |
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Definely not kindred spirits on so many levels. And I'll end it there.
ReplyDeleteSniffle, sniffle... I like board games, moose, sweets, pictures, blog stalking, baking and stuff like that:) If its any consolation your one of those mothers I wish I could be more like:)
ReplyDeleteYou made me laugh:)I so love when you post.
ReplyDeleteJaz
You haven't seen desert yet Come on out and we'll take you the Salt Flats, and maybe go hunting for rocks and things. Maybe go down to Bryce Canyon. I know. we can go on the old Pony Express trail. Great scenery. Little bit different than the Green River, though that's pretty dry out that way too.
ReplyDeleteI'll even let you drive.
ReplyDeleteWow!!! You would let me drive! :)
ReplyDeleteSold maybe we can try to come next spring:) I actually would like to see Bryce canyon and Zion and then over to the Grand Canyon.
Justina has the cuttest voice!
ReplyDeleteI still have never been to any of those Southern Utah destinations in which you plan to go. Guess I will have to catch a ride on your bumper when you go :)
ReplyDelete