Who will she be today?

Part of the highlight of my day is seeing what Aliyah will dress up as (or who). I need to take more pictures of her outfits, she gets very creative. She's a bride today, if you can't tell. Notice the 1 sock and the hand posed, just so. Her veil is made of only the fanciest material which was formally a wizards cape. The sock has a lace trim around it and not being able to find the other one does not matter. One is better than none. She's a delight!

I WON... a tea kettle?

Some of you may remember that I won an ipod touch earlier this year. I've loved it! Anyway I was surprised to win something again. On facebook I have California Strawberries as one of "my friends" and one morning they asked what people had for breakfast and if anyone mentioned the secret ingredient (which was not strawberries) they'd win a strawberry tea kettle. So normally I don't participate in things like that, just because I normally don't feel like it but it didn't take long to write "oatmeal & toast" so I did. And since the secret ingredient was oatmeal, I won! And shouldn't everyone living in Santa Maria have one of these?

After that win, and the ipod, I was tempted to go buy a ticket for the house they're giving away....

Quite the Kiwanian

Matt was Kiwanis President (and everything leading up to President), then he was Immediate Past President (naturally). But this year he was awarded the Dunlap award which is the highest award a Kiwanian can be awarded and only one person per club per year gets it.  Look at all these awards he came home with! He was quite thrilled... now we'll have to make room on his wall for them. With all the awards he gets, the wall is getting smaller and smaller!

Aliyah's Prayer

I had just finished complaining to Matt about the mess in our house. The kids were in bed but not tucked in so I was heading in there to sing to Aliyah & as I looked around the living floor it was covered with crayons, coloring books, coloring pages (cut and uncut) and beads. With our living area so small, it really looks like a huge mess when it may not be that bad. Anyway Matt's response to my complaining was, "it's because our daughter likes art". Well true. One stack of crayons and books were from earlier today and the other stack came out when she saw the sunset and wanted to draw it. She drew a house with a purple sunset. There was purple in our sunset this evening, it was beautiful. She also discovered how to make purple at pre-school today when she mixed the red and blue chalks on the sidewalk. They had pool day so the sidewalk was wet and the chalk became paint, it was really cool. Aliyah was walking around in it and swirling the colors with her feet.

Anyway, tangent. But that's how my brain works. Tonight after getting frustrated with the mess (& Matt cleaning it up, thanks Hon!) I went into Aliyah's room for our night time routine. Well she always says her prayers in her bed but I figured it was time to have her kneel beside her bed. (again tangent) As she was praying she thanked Heavenly Father for all the colors, the rainbow & the temple that we can pray in! Isn't that cute?! I've been so impressed with her prayers lately. She's been very grateful for the earth, gravity, and rocks but after the colorful day she had I guess it was time to thank Heavenly Father for the colors. Makes me realize I need to stop taking so much for granted and notice & be thankful for what's around me, like gravity. Thank heavens for gravity so we can enjoy all the beautiful colors this world has to offer!

Little Italy, Downtown San Diego

Okay this is seriously one of my favorite places now. Our hotel was right up the street so on our last day (after Becca left and we didn't have a car anymore) we walked here for breakfast. What a beautiful area!

I love downtown San Diego! If we ever decide someday to live in the city, in a high rise, this is where I want to be. They had a Farmers Market (a very elaborate one) on one of the days we were there (the days have blended together). It's just a really cool city and I love that the train took us right there from Santa Maria (Guadalupe)! A great vacation for sure.

No this was not our breakfast, this was our 2ND breakfast! We ate a normal breakfast, then they had an Italian bakery in the cafe so we helped ourselves to more. It was vacation okay?

After breakfast we bought Gelato for the kids and sat outside indulging ourselves. Yummy!

Who wouldn't be happy with ice cream (Gelato) for breakfast?

Beach, Balboa Park, More fun stuff

It's been a long day! Aliyah always falls asleep in the funniest positions.

Balboa Park cool tree

So many cool museums at Balboa Park and we didn't go in any of them! We did go to a Marionette Puppet Show though.

A VERY large tree in Balboa Park

The kids got tired and cranky, this was our 3rd day. We'd already done Legoland & Sea World so Balboa Park was too much. We went back to the hotel to swim and they were perfectly happy.

We had dinner here one night. After dinner the kids loved running around on this pier and making dinner romantic for everyone around.

Gabe twirling Aliyah in the parking lot.

Good photography. Matt definitely has an eye for it. Now he wants a better camera. This one's good right?

A favorite photography trick of Matt's.

Sea World

Okay so this is a continuation of our trip to San Diego... in July. I just upgraded our internet to FAST (8MB) so I'm hoping blogging will be a little easier now. It was taking forever to load my pictures before. No I wasn't still on dial-up, just the slowest DSL possible. So let's see if this is faster...

Aliyah went on Flying Elmo Fish ride. I thought after the line she'd freak out but she was great! It's one of those that you have to make go up or down & I assured her we'd stay down and not fly. Well sure enough the ride shot us right up and I couldn't get it to go down! Isn't this a child's ride? Shouldn't we be able to "easily" control it? Well perhaps it was just beyond me but I couldn't get it down! I started laughing so hard because poor Aliyah was saying "go down! go down!" I tried to explain that I couldn't get it down but I was laughing a little too hard. It went down once and she was thrilled but it immediately shot us back up again. So for the whole ride we were only on the ground for about 5 seconds and the rest of the time we were flying fish! LOL! She did alright though. She was a little shaken up but didn't cry and afterwords said it was fun.

Aliyah, Lizzie, Michael, Gabe, Sariah, Matt & Becca at Cirque De La Mer

Shamu!! (not attacking anyone)

Waiting for Shamu, it had been a long day of worrying she'd get splashed since dad kept sitting in the splash zones. Luckily we made it out of the shows dry.

 

 

 

 

Aliyah, Lizzie and their friends from Sesame Street. The girls were so excited to see them!

Aliyah & Lizzie

Michael & Gabe, the coolest guys in Sea World

Aliyah and Gabe

It was so cute, Lizzie and Aliyah adopted older brothers, Lizzie attached herself to Michael and Aliyah attached herself to Gabe.

Michael with his cousins Gabe, Lizzie & Sariah and his aunt Becca.

Michael & Gabe bouncing off the walls, literally.

 

 

 

Guess what!! My internet is sooo much faster! It didn't take me all morning to wait for these pictures to load. YAY! I'm about to be a blogging maniac... watch out.