December's 1st Fishing Trip

A blast from the past...

Here's a post I was in the middle of working on when our computer crashed a few months ago. I thought I'd finally finish it and put it up, although all of these pictures were taken in July, when we were out visiting my parents for Klynt and Marie's wedding! But December loved doing this, and she still talks about it and wants to go fishing with Grandpa again!

My Mom and Dad have a pond in their backyard that has tons of fish in it, so Dad took December out for some fishing! As you can see, Belle (my parents' dog) loves to fish, too.

December caught her very first fish! Kind of. What would happen is December would get Dad a piece of corn (which was irresistable to the fish), and Dad would cast into the pond and catch one in a matter of seconds. Then he'd thow the fish and line back into the water for December to reel in herself, and she "caught" the fish! It was GREAT fun for her to do and for us to watch!

Isaac playing in the grass, trying to get used to the weird feeling of it.

I think Isaac's playing with a rock in this picture. Maybe it's a leaf.

Brad and Isaac having fun. Isaac adores being up on Daddy's shoulders!

Mom's Visit! Part 2

Here we are playing in the hot tub. Brad is teaching December how to swim.

Mom and Isaac by the hot tub

Brad letting Isaac kick away in the water (one of his favorite things to do, predictably, is splash like a banshee!)

Mom playing Humpty Dumpty with Isaac. Both kids love this game!

The day before Mom left, we decided to take one last trip to the beach, and I'm glad we did! It was a beautiful afternoon.

Brad and December running into the waves. The ocean temperature was really comfortable still (we decided it was surprisingly warmer than the unheated pool at home), and Brad and I tried to body surf the waves...with varying levels of success. It's much, much easier to catch the waves on a boogie-board (which, unfortunately, we don't own)!

Isaac and I

Brad and December used shovels and buckets to dig out a pool. Brad mostly did the digging, and December used the buckets to bring water from the ocean to the pool.

Then we tried to put Isaac in the pool. As you can see, he clearly loved it! ;o)

He did get more used to the idea over the next few minutes, and he played in it with a shovel for a while.

The sun started to set...

Brad rinsing the sand off Isaac in the waves. I don't know if you can see his face very well, but he is NOT impressed!!

Brad rinsing December off in the waves.

December watching the ocean

We watched the sun set, and then, just as we were leaving, a pod of dolphins came and started jumping and playing in the waves. Some of them were jumping completely out of the waves, so you could see their entire bodies out of the water before they went back in! It was really exciting -- and rare. We've seen an occasional dolphin jump, but never like this!

These next few pictures are badly out of order. They were taken on the day Mom arrived, and we had gone straight from the airport to the beach. As you can see from this picture, the beach had some sort of marine layer of fog on it, so there was no sun when we went.

Mom and December playing on a beach-side playground

Isaac hanging out in the stroller.

We loved having Mom out to visit, and she is certainly welcome -- as are you!! -- to come and visit us any time! We'd love to have you out.

Camping at the Beach

This past Tuesday, we decided to do a bit of a whirlwind camping trip. Some of our friends were really wanting to get out and go camping, so we went with them. We just did one night, since both of the guys had to get back to school the next morning. But it was fun! We left when Brad got out of school on Tuesday, and his Wednesday class didn't start until close to 11:00am, so it worked out well! Here's a little video of where we were...

Mom's Visit! A Trip to the Zoo

Mom came out and visited us for ten days, and we had an AWESOME time with her! Each day we did something fun and exciting, and on one day (a day when Brad could be with us), we went to the San Diego Zoo! We all had fun, and I thought I'd share some pictures with you from that day...

Here's Mom with the kids on the day after she arrived, right before we all headed to church

Our cousin Danielle had given December some clothes, and Mom had brought them out for her, so here's December in some of Danielle's clothes, right before we left for the zoo.

Isaac at the zoo, being mesmerized by the fish

Mr. Crocodile. They hold so still that they look fake!

A beautiful flowering tree

A waterfall in one of the bird atriums

This was cool. This is in San Diego Zoo's new Elephant Odyssey exhibit, and what Brad, December, and Mom are looking at is this pool-like thing that water alternately fills up and drains away. There are some animal skeletons (I presume fake ones) of now-extinct animals (like a saber-toothed tiger, woolly mammoth, etc) at the bottom of the pool that are entrenched in mud. I guess San Diego used to have some sand pits that animals would get stuck in -- and their remains would get very well-preserved in them. So it's a demonstration of that.

December loved this pool, although she didn't understand it at first. She didn't know why they animals were stuck in the mud at the bottom, so I explained to her that they fell into the sand pit because they didn't listen to their mommies when their mommies told them to stay away from sand pits. For the rest of the trip to the zoo, December kept begging to go back to this pool, saying, "I want to see where the animals didn't listen to their mommies again! Why didn't they listen, Mommy?"

Llamas and capybaras (the largest rodents in the world). So yes, it's true -- ROUS's really exist!

The elephant care center. The cages are enormous!

A life-size replica(!) of a now-extinct bird. Can you imagine a bird of this size wandering around your backyard?!? I think it could've carried small children away and ate them for lunch!

A red panda. His little face was so cute!

Here we are waiting for the sea lion show to start.

The sea lion show. It's alot of fun to watch! They do some fun tricks.

Pretty good balance!

The sea lion show must have really worn Isaac out, because he fell asleep shortly afterward while we walked around.

Mom and December in the children's part of the zoo.

Haha! December was barely tall enough to stick her head in this one!

A parrot that just sits in the open air in this part of the children's area.

December next to a cute little house (you couldn't go inside, though, which upset December)

Good morning, Isaac! This was right after he woke up. Brad is taking some pictures of beautiful hibiscus flowers. The picture that follows is what he was taking.

And Mom took a picture of this one with her camera. Beautiful!

You can see in the backround Mom taking some pictures of December. And what follows here is what she was taking...

I like this one of December.

So these were just our pictures from the zoo. I'll put up more next time about the rest of Mom's trip...