Grazie

Thank you, Dan, for...
kissing me good morning and good night even though you don't like my hair!,
helping me raise MY boys,
doing the dishes nearly every night,
collecting the trash and taking it to the curb,
mowing the lawn when it is 105deg,
watering my plants since I haven't stepped off the back porch for a month,
letting me sleep-in in the morning without any guilt,
putting the boys to bed when I am out of commission (gone or asleep!),
and for reading my blog.
I love you and now the world wide web knows!

San Diego

Ah, refreshing! We headed west for a few days of cool relaxation. We spent most of our vacation just chillin' at Grandma's house. The outings we took included a trip to Mission Bay park, to the beach just south of La Jolla cove, to a neighborhood park and to dinner at Red Robin with Grandma. At Grandma's the boys love to play with her stash of games and toys, to go down in the canyon and play kitchen, to roll trucks down the concrete 'slide' by the shed and to eat her yummy treats (mostly red vines!) Why do kids ask for candy at 8:30am when they know the answer is 'no way Jose!'? Ryan is carrying the bucket of red vines and asks with his big hazel eyes with lashes to kill if he can have them. I said, 'I have to say 'no' but since you are already holding them I guess you should just go ahead and eat them.' Maybe that is how it was in the garden of Eden. Of course you shouldn't have that and I command you not to have that, but what is the point of life if you don't transgress from time to time to get the ball rolling?!

Thank you to the Barons for letting us overlap our vacations. Thank you to Grandma for hosting us again. Thank you to Dan for driving us there and back. And thank you to Grandma and Grandpa June for whisking the boys away for the next few days. We are going to the movies, eating ice cream for dinner, and staying up late playing video games!

Natural History Museum

Wednesday morning I woke up and thought, what the heck are we going to do all day? I have a book that lists all the museums and such in Maricopa County (with coupons) and so I pulled it out. I had to decide between the Natural History Museum or the Museum for Youth. The deciding factor was definitely the Mars exhibit at the NHM.
So we loaded up and headed to the museum. Ryan wasn't excited because he wanted to go see the sting rays. I was worried that they wouldn't find the museum fun, but we had a great time.
This statue got them excited to go inside.

A T-Rex! Everyone loves the t-rex. The Hall of Dinosaurs had maybe 10-15 dinos. They were way cool. There was a volunteer that had fossils you could touch (like a raptor claw).

An actual Mars rover on loan from NASA. It was neat to see how big it is. They also had lots of experiments set up to show what life on Mars is like. There were 2 more rovers too.

We stumbled upon the activities room where there were puzzles, books, coloring pages, etc.

The battery was low on the camera so we didn't take as many pictures as we should have. Alex took this of the ancient shark.

And Ryan took this one of the mastodon.

We stayed for nearly 2 hours and had a great time exploring. There were lots of exhibits including panning for gold, Elvis the alligator, flash flood waterfall, geology, and Arizona movies. I recommend it for your summer vacation.

Alex and Dad Outing

Alex needed a little dad time so they went to a Dbacks game together Tuesday night. Here is something interesting: Dan is a Padres fan (that was the opponent) and yet both he and Alex went in Dbacks gear. Maybe he is switching his loyalties. :)

Here is Alex using his great baseball skills on the mini field.