San Diego Scene 8

This past weekend we got to experience a really awesome Air Show. It is the largest air show in the USA, and it's here in San Diego! The Miramar Base puts it on, and it is amazing! We planned on taking our own chairs and sitting in the free section for the afternoon and evening shows. But it didn't take long in the afternoon show for us to realize that we were missing out on a lot because we couldn't see the "main stage." So we purchased tickets for a seat in the stadium for the evening show. The night show ended with fireworks and the wall of fire. They did a wonderful job on the fireworks, it was a very good show! Much better than the firework shows that San Diego City put on for the 4th of July!!!

The Hunger Games Party

We never went to the movie theaters to see The Hunger Games movie. It's just to dang expensive! We decided we'd wait for it to come to Red Box. But then we found out that our good friends, Gabe and Leslie had pre-ordered it! So we started planning a Hunger Games party! After they put Brooklynn to bed, we broke out the Hunger Games themed treats that I had made and were about to start the movie when there was a knock on the door. It was the missionaries. Needless to say, they were jealous! We all chatted for a bit, then they headed on their way and we started our party!

We discovered that a lot of this food wasn't shown in the movie. You had to read the book to know about this food :)

We took some of the pictures at our house before we left, but we had to put some of the food together once we got to the Smith's house.

San Diego Scene 7

We have often driven by Torrey Pines. The area where Torrey Pines turns into Del Mar is one of our favorite beaches to take a walk on because of its beautiful cliffs. But today we decided to do some hiking in Torrey Pines. As we drove in, around 10am, we noticed the most beautiful boogie boarding waves we have ever seen! We wished we had our swimming suits and board with us and we would have ran out to them! But since we didn't, we just decided that we need to check out the websites telling you about the size of waves before we go out boogie boarding next. Hopefully that will help us pick the ideal beach for that day and time that we're going out!

Anyways, we took a hike through Torrey Pines. Although there was slight ups and downs, it was a fairly level hike. But because we're in the middle of a heat wave (we're in the 90's!) it was more than a leisurely stroll; plus, I tried to keep our pace up so that it was a little more difficult :)

When we first started hiking I kept telling Ammon, "This is just so beautiful! The colors! Look at the red rock and the blue-blue ocean! Wow!" Ammon didn't have as much enthusiasm as I did for the beauty of it all. I couldn't figure out why he wasn't taking more picutres and "ooo-awww"ing like I was. Then, I took off my sunglasses and realized my sunglasses must have some kind of tint in them. It was still all beautiful, the colors just weren't as vividly beautiful. I laughed and told Ammon how my sunglasses were making it more beautiful.

Kimberly, the last picture is for you!

Take A Look!!!

Take a look at our updates...AND there's still more to come! Don't miss our new blogs that date back to April (shame on me, I know, for not doing it sooner)!

Enjoy!

Eggetts come to California

As July came to an end and August began, we had a fun week with my family! My parents had originally planned to come into town a week later, so Ammon and I had planned a camping trip with a few friends. When my parent's trip got moved up, we just re-worked our schedule a little.

On Friday, Ammon took a half day at work and we headed to Julian, CA. We had heard fun things about this small town, and thought that our campground was close to it. We had an enjoyable time, but it was a lot smaller than we had thought it would be! We had planned to spend a few hours there, and was able to stretch our time and stay for a whole hour! We were listening to The Hunger Games audiobook during our drive, so we just went to our campsite and listened to the book for a bit longer. We walked around the Dos Picos Campground for a bit, then started a fire to cook our tin foil dinners. Since we were only going to be staying one night, we decided not to bring our tent, but brought hammocks instead. However, this campsite didn't allow anything in the trees. Lucky for us, we brought our air mattress as well. But we didn't end up using it. After our friends arrived, we ate dinner, roasted smores, and had a great time around the fire. When we were all heading off for bed, Ammon and I decided to just drive home instead. It meant a better nights sleep, and we didn't feel like we'd miss out on much by going home now, since everyone else was going to sleep now anyways!




Saturday morning we woke up well rested - maybe a little tired because we had been up so late, but our bodies weren't hurting from camping :) We still had to do some camping clean up before the family all came over in a few hours. My parents had driven to CA all day Friday, then Saturday morning went to the Safari Park with Elise's family. After the Safari Park, they came over to our place and the kids "took a nap" (or that was the plan) then we all went down to our pool and played there. JD was so cute because some other people in the pool were playing with a big ball, and that was THE ONLY THING that JD was interested in! So Ammon went and found a few of our balls that JD could play with in the pool. JD loved it! That night we brought in food from The Kebab Shop for dinner. I think everyone LOVED it!! It is one of our most favorite restaurants, and one that we will DEARLY miss after we have moved! Visit www.thekebabshop.com if you want to be jealous :)

Sunday we went to church, then came back to our place and mostly relaxed the rest of the day. Oh, the reason my parents ended up coming a week earlier than originally planned was because my dad had a business trip here in San Diego this week. My dad's meetings started Sunday afternoon, so he took off to his meetings and the three of us just hung out here at the house. This trip was very much more relaxed than the last time my parents were here. We mostly just enjoyed eachother's company!

On Monday Dad and Ammon had to go to work, so Mom and I went shopping! We had a great time and found some great new things - all at JC Penny's; one of our favorite clothing stores! After work, the 4 of us had and my dad made the most amazing cookies for us! It's his famous chocolate chip cookie recipe, but instead of chocolate chips, he put in white chocolate chips and craisins! They're to die for!

On Tuesday after the men went to work, Mom and I made yummy pumpkin muffins. Then we went to San Clemente to spend the day with Lina, Elise and her kids. We made some very cute cards that Mom had prepared for us! It was a lot of fun!

Wednesday...Mom and I made more cards during the day, then went and picked up the men from work and headed out to Coronado Island. We had a picnic dinner (thanks Subway!) on the beach then went boogie boarding. There was a slight breeze, I had goose bumps, so Ammon had a hard time convincing me to get in the water. But once I got in, I was tons warmer! We had a blast boogie boarding with my dad, and my mom had fun watching from the beach. We saw a lot of dolphins, and some got really close to us at one point! We had awesome waves and were catching them quite easily!

Thursday was Dad's last day of meetings, and he got done at noon. So Ammon took a half day as well, and we headed to Del Mar. One thing that we had wanted to do while living here in San Diego was go to the Del Mar Race Track to watch some horse races. So we did! We had such a wonderful time! Dad had enough foresight to bring along a little fun money (Mom's comment after placing a few bets was, "Now I understand why he said we needed some cash today!" Lol!). After we got the hang of the betting, we did pretty good! Ammon and I want to go again! Next time we'll do better at it and hope to make back the money we had to pay to get in ($6/person)!




Friday came very early in the morning for us. We were taking the first boat at 7:30 am to Catalina, and it departed from Dana Point, about an hour north of us. This was another "small" city, but much better that Julian in that there was actually things to do there! Because we're spoiled by our San Diego beaches, the beaches on Catalina didn't do much for us, but we loved exploring the city! We wish we would have had more time to wander around and explore. We took a tour of The Casino which is a performing arts center. It was named The Casino because the definition for Casino is "A social gathering place." There was a large theater and also a large ballroom that we got to see. If anybody had pictures from this day, feel free to send them my way, I don't have any :(

My parents stayed in San Clemente for a couple more days to spend more time with Elise's family before heading home. We had a wonderful time with them and are so glad they could come! Unfortunately we didn't get many pictures with them, but we made many memories!

San Diego Scene 6

San Diego County Fair
We went to the San Diego County Fair at the Del Mar Fairgrounds with our friends Gabe and Leslie Smith and Caitlin Penrod. It was fun! We walked around and saw everything then we picked a couple of rides to go on, and finally, we tried some fried food which the fair is famous for! We got a sampler plate to share that had deep fried Zucchini, onion, chicken and a twinky. The twinky was kind of gross, the rest of it, we'd had before and knew we'd like it. It was a lot of "deep fried"ness and we couldn't finish it all!
Ammon had fun taking pictures of all the deep fried food booths. Take a look at it all!



Mormon Night at the Padre's
That night we went to Mormon Night at the Padre's with Gabe and Leslie. We went to a BYU Alumni Tailgate Party before the game. It was kind of a lame Tailgate Party, but hey, we got a free hot dog ;) Before the game, they mentioned The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints multiple times and they had one of the General Authorities come out on the field. Petco Park is in downtown, near the airport, so we watched planes that were really low and close to the stadium! The picture Ammon got of one of the planes was one of the farter away planes.

Husband's Day

We for a couple of weeks we had been planning a Saturday at the beach including friends (Gabe and Leslie and 2 year old Brooklynn) and food. Friday night Ammon came home from work with a list of things we were going to do at the beach. And I think we accomplished them all.

Saturday morning I gave Ammon an early Husband's Day (Father's Day) present...a Boogie Board! Then we headed off to the beach! Our friends who came with us also had a boogie board, so have 2 at the beach was perfect! We'd take turns going out and riding the waves! (Check!) We found that if we go out pretty far, one of us gets on our board, wait for the perfect wave, then give them a big push, then they can ride the wave all the way in. It was such a blast! We also brought kite-making materials to the beach and made kites! (Check!) Complete with wooden dowels, string, white trash bags and markers! We forgot to bring tails, so we tied some smarties candy that we had brought to string and made that our tail. They didn't fly super well, but we had fun making them at least! We also made sculptures in the sand! (Check!) We had sea turtles, star fish, and faces; Brooklynn had a fun time smashing them for us when we were all done! Our epic fail of the day was not enough sun screen. It'll take a few days for us to really feel better. We're still sleeping with ice packs :(

On Sunday we had English Muffin sandwiches for breakfast, went to church, relaxed (I think we just watched movies and frequently put on aloe lotion) and had Parmesan Chicken for dinner! We finished Husband's Day with some Howie's Root Beer (Ammon's favorite brand of root beer) and ice cream cake!

I think this weekend was a success!

California Travels

Coastal Drive

On Friday we began our drive up the coast towards San Francisco. We made many stops and detours on our trip to see things! Our first stop was at the Newport Beach Temple (the pink temple). We just drove around it, then continued on our way. Next was the LA Temple, where we stopped and went into the Visitor's Center. It was a very cool Visitor's Center because it was interactive. There were screens where you could choose to watch segments about the Church, the LA Temple, there were ipad's with kid activities on them, just a ton of really fun things to do! We continued our drive through Malibu - just because everyone's heard of Malibu - and stopped for lunch there. Then we headed north to Santa Barbara. We loved this cute town! We stopped and walked the beach and learned that the ocean water up north isn't as warm as it is in good ol' San Diego! We drove through down town, which seemed to be a hoppin place in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday! Oh, the reason we wanted to stop in Santa Barbara is because that is where the TV show Psych is filmed. We didn't see anything in particular from the show - although we did see a Santa Barbara Police Station, and it is NOT the one from the TV show :( but still had an enjoyable time there! We continued north along the coast, which was so beautiful. We went past a famous castle called the Hearst Castle which is now a museum. The castle is up on the hill, so we couldn't see it very well, but the area is beautiful! There were so many jaw dropping beautiful ocean views, we had to keep stopping! When you're looking at our pictures of today's drive, notice our "Utah" pictures :) We drove through Big Sur National Park, which continued to have beautiful views, or so Ammon told me. This point in the road got so curvy I just had to keep my eyes ahead of us. I'm used to mountain driving, but this was so much worse! Tighter curves, and more of them! I went and looked at the google map of the road after getting back, and there's no way that map can be right. Either that, or we somehow got onto the wrong road for a while! We finished our drive for the day in Monterey, where a friend of ours lives. So we spent the evening hanging out with Ellen! It was so much fun to see her again! We hadn't seen her for about 2 years!

San Francisco

Saturday was a fun day as we finished our drive to San Francisco and spent the day there! When we first got into the Bay part, our first mistake was we ended up on one of those stereotypical San Fran roads where you have to stop 10 feet behind the car in front of you because you're scared when they start to go, they'll roll back into you! The hill was CRAZY! (see pictures below!) The first place we went to was The Cable Car Museum. We weren't sure what to expect, but were SO glad that we went! It was awesome seeing how the cable cars work, learning about them, and actually seeing the cables moving, knowing they were being used at that exact moment! Next we went to China Town and walked around the shops and scoped out restaurants for lunch. Mmmm Mmmm, it was yummy! After China Town, we went for a drive on another steep hill, this time on purpose! There is a famous block that people go to to take pictures. They have made the road into switchbacks, I suppose to give people a longer time looking at the view since steepness of the road doesn't seem to be an issue in San Fran. We walked around that neighborhood for a while, then continued our day to the Golden Gate Bridge. It happened to be the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, so there was a big festival going on the next day so the roads were crazy busy. So we didn't drive on it, but we got some fun pictures! We even got to watch some wind surfers and kite surfers (who knows what the real name of these sports are, but that's what we called them!). Next we walked through an art garden. The art was the pillars and structures that we walked around in (see pictures). Our last destination in San Fran for the day was Fisherman's Wharf. Granted, we went to a lot of places there! We enjoyed just walking the streets, we bought some sour dough bread (it was okay, not the best we've ever had) at a factory where you could watch how it was made, went to Pier 39, watched spray paint artists, and Ammon claims I MADE him go to Ghirardelli Square (since he doesn't like chocolate - wink wink - it was torture for him to HAVE to be there ;) We BOTH enjoyed it! We even bought a bag of their chocolates and liked them a lot!

We headed over the Bay Bridge to walk around the Oakland Temple, and were lucky enough to get there right in time for the sunset! We went to a Jack In The Box to get dinner on our way to our hotel, but the lights in the lobby were kind of low, so we weren't sure if it was open. It was only 8:00ish on a Saturday night, so we were surprised! But they were open, so we went in and ordered our food. While waiting to get our food (which we were planning on eating at the restaurant), we mentioned that because the lights were so dim and the sign by the road wasn't lit up, we weren't sure if they were open or not. The worker then told us that she's guessing the lights were that way was because a week ago their store got robbed, and just a couple days ago, a man got mugged in their parking lot. We then asked for our food to go. I liked the idea of eating in our hotel rather than the restaurant at that point!

Yosemite

On Sunday we woke up and started our drive to Yosemite. We had planned a stop at a Super Walmart that was along the way to pick up some produce for while we were camping. I took for granted having a local Super Walmart's in Utah; San Diego doesn't like "super" stores for some reason (It was a HUGE deal that we got a Super Target down the road from where we live), but around here, they're the best quality food for the money. Anyways, when we got to our campground, we set up our tent and cleaned out the car a little, then headed to Yosemite! Our campground was very nice, but ended up being farther away from Yosemite than we had thought. It was okay, just meant we had to plan extra time for driving. We drove most of the way to Glacier Point, then found out there was an hour and a half wait to get into the parking lot, so we decided we'd go back on Tuesday, when the crowds had died down some. But it was still a beautiful drive! We stopped at a lookout point on our way down, it was called Inspiration Lookout. We walked up a path for a little ways, but dusk was quickly approaching and we wanted to get down before it got too dark. We decided to end the day with a sight seeing drive through Yosemite Valley. That was a mistake! It felt like EVERYONE was trying to get out of Yosemite to drive home, and so we got stuck in traffic! The first line of cars we saw were all trying to turn left (towards the exit), so we thought we'd be smarter than them and go straight. Unfortunately, just around the next corner, traffic was at a complete stop in both lanes of traffic. We talked about how maybe the traffic was because a bear was walking near the road. But when we finally got out of the mess, we decided it was just traffic causing the delays. We got back to our camp site late, so we ate dinner (luckily it didn't require a fire!) and then went to bed.




We slept in on Monday, it was a vacation, what can you expect?! Ate a yummy omelet and pancake breakfast, then drove to Yosemite. We spent the day in the Tuolumne Valley area. We had planned to do a couple of hikes that day, but the roads to get to the trail heads were all still closed. Which meant that to do a particular hike, you first had to hike the road to the trail head...haha. So by the time we did one hike, it was just late enough, that we decided not to do a second hike. We hiked to May Lake. It was a beautiful hike, full of plants, trees, and large rocks (like in Moab). The lake itself was gorgeous too! We hiked around the lake a bit, ate some snacks, talked with a few other hikers (including some Russian's that Ammon talked too), and simply enjoyed nature! After our hike we finished our lunches at Tenaya Lake then continued to drive up the road a ways. When we got back to our camp site, Ammon got a fire going, and I prepared the food to be cooked! We also had smore's to roast. We played some card games, then headed off to bed!




Tuesday began (after sleeping in again, of course) with us driving (again) to Glacer Point. There are so many huge trees in Yosemite, that we decided to stop and take a picture with one. We got to drive right up, no delays, it was wonderful! When we got there, the Glacier Point outlook was actually closed off, the police said they were investigating, that a man either jumped or fell off of Glacier Point the night before. Apparently the Glacier Point outlook had been closed all morning, but then they opened it up about 5 minutes later. It was beautiful seeing everything from so high! Next we went down to Yosemite Valley again, thank goodness there wasn't any traffic this time! And we hiked Vernal Falls. It reminded us of Timpanogos Caves hike, where it is hard because it's so steep. But again, we had a wonderful time! The last .2-.3 miles was all stairs, and I finally understood who would use the stair climbers at the gym! After hiking to the top of Vernal Falls, we went to Yosemite Falls, which we found out is the tallest waterfall in the United States. We had planned to hike to the lower fall, but then found out that our choices were a 30 minute round-trip leisurely walk to the bottom of the falls, or a 6-8 hour hike to the top of the upper falls. Unfortunately, we had to choose the bottom of the falls because we still had so much we wanted to see on our last day in Yosemite. Last, we went to Bridalveil Falls and again just went to the base of the falls. Then we said goodbye to Yosemite and went back to our campground.



Wednesday was a long day in the car as we drove home. As we were approaching our exit on the freeway, Ammon said, "It's nice to be home. This feels like home, doesn't it?" and I replied, "Ya, it really does feel like home." We sure do love San Diego! We're grateful for the opportunity we have to live in California and see all of the beauty here!

Wife's Day

We had a fun time celebrating Wife's Day (aka Mother's Day) this weekend! On Saturday morning we went and saw the movie Avengers, which was AWESOME!! After that, Ammon gave me two options: Ride our bikes to the beach, or go out for Mexican food. I chose the bike ride! The ride was hard, but a lot of fun. It was NEVER flat! But it was so much fun! There are so many bike paths / bike lanes here! We were almost never without one! It was about a 25 mile ride (round trip). That night we had some friends over to play games.

Sunday after church, we ate lunch then drove down to the beach and went for a little walk. We felt the water, and it wasn't super cold anymore! That means we'll be planning a swimming trip to the beach soon! We came back home and Ammon cooked a wonderful dinner! After that, we relaxed and watched a little TV. Oh ya! And Ammon got me a new bike computer!!! YAY! I've been wanting one that would work on my new bike!!!

Thanks Ammon for such a wonderful weekend! Every day I'm grateful to have you as my husband! I love you!

Ohhh, how cute!

This past weekend, as part of our weekend activities, we went out window shopping. We window shopped at many different stores for many different things, all just for fun. One of the things we like window shopping for these days is for appliances for our "dream home." On this particular Saturday, we decided to go to Sears and look at their refrigerators, freezers, wall ovens, stove tops, etc. But before we left the store, Ammon wanted to go check out the tools.

Now, I've often heard girls say, "Ohhh, how cute" to things, a lot of times they're baby sized things (Ex: baby shoes, a small stroller to push a doll in, a cute outfit for a young child, and maybe even a tool belt for a little boy who wants to look like their daddy). But let's face it, it normally comes out of the girl's mouth. Not this time!

So we're looking at the tools, we're on about the 4th row and Ammon says, "Ohhh, how cute!" I smiled, "Did you just say this tool is cute?" And Ammon responded, "Ya, it's a miniature Jointer." So I just had to take a picture of the tool. Now you know what can make a man say, "Ohhh, how cute!"

Stay-Vacation with the Eggett's

So my family (Dad, Mom and Kimberly) drove into town on Thursday, April 19, but we didn't see them until Saturday. Saturday morning Ammon and I drove to San Clemente where my parents treated us to our annual Income Tax Return meal out. It's always been dinner in the past, but because of schedules, this year we did breakfast at IHOP! While looking at the menu, Lina learned that Americans can eat ENORMOUS (in quantity and calorie) breakfasts!

Saturday was the day before JD and Maia's 1st birthday, and the day of their birthday party! After breakfast, we ran a few errands then headed to Alan and Shelly's house to help set up for the party. Elise had planned a very cute Circus themed party!

On Sunday we went to church, then visited some local San Diego places. First we went to the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum because Kimberly loves airplane everything :)

Next we went to Balboa Park, not remembering that it was Earth day. After about 20 minutes in bad traffic and a VERY quick walk around, we decided it wasn't worth fighting the huge crowds and headed to Children's Beach to see the seals and to La Jolla to see the paragliders. We had Ross and Jane McCollum over for dinner that night. That night our feet were tired, but we were looking forward to another day of fun!

Monday we went to the Carlsbad Tulip Festival. The colors were beautiful and we had a wonderful time! After the flower fields, we went to the beach and ate lunch.

Whole Family Picture

Enjoying the good weather and company

JD absolutely LOVED being swung!

Beautiful Flag of flowers

After lunch, we headed back to San Diego to visit the Midway Aircraft Carrier.

In one of the Captain's seats

Kimberly and Dad did a pilot simulation and had a lot of fun!

There was a plane that you could actually sit in. Kimberly loved checking out all the airplane gadgets!

On Wednesday, the Johnson's came to San Diego and we all went to the San Diego Zoo together.

We had such a wonderful time with my family! We're so glad they could come and we could show them the beautiful city that is our home! We're already looking forward to their next trip here in August!

San Diego Scene - Update

I realized today that I haven't posted on here for quite a while. It's not that we're boring people, but Ammon's been in this funk lately of not wanting to take his camera places. And what's a post without pictures? We still get out almost every weekend! Last weekend we went to Elise's house and Ammon built a temporary wall. He had a lot of fun creating it. In Ryan and Elise's new home, there was a pass-through that they didn't like. A pass through is like putting a window on an interior wall (between to rooms inside a house), except that it is just open, no window is installed. A couple of weekends ago, we did a bon fire on the beach. We ended up having it on the beach of an ocean bay because it was packed that night at the actual ocean beach. But we really liked the spot! In the distance you can see all the lights of downtown SD. We're going back to have another bon fire this weekend! A few weekends ago we went to the Safari Park and walked around there. We went through an exhibit of butterflies. There were hundreds and hundreds of butterflies flying around the aviary!It was pretty cool! Anyways, that's a few of the fun things we've been doing. Sorry about no pictures! We'll try to get some this weekend!

3D House Project

So this weekend Ammon got a fun new toy that we've both had a blast with so far! It was great yesterday, because we had plans to go out and explore more of San Diego, but it rained all day long, so we couldn't :( So for our adventures today, this is what we did! It's a designing program where you can design a house. Whether it be your dream house or a current house. We played around with a house that Ammon's parent's own in IL. Here's the results of lots of fun, hard work!

Crafts

I've been doing some fun crafts lately. The first one I started was a menu board. I saw the idea online and really liked it. At the time, I normally planned the weeks meals out, but just wrote them on a plain old index card and put it on the fridge. This is much cuter! At the top, it says MENU in green sparkly letters. There are meal cards, which I chose to color code (yellow = chicken, pink = ground meat, red = fish, etc). Each card has a main dish, a side and a vegetable on it. The yellow box holds the meal cards that we haven't eaten yet. Then they get moved to the clips when they're on the weeks menu. After we've had it, the meal card gets put into the pink box. Keep going till you've used all the meal cards, then start over again! On the back of each meal card is a list of all the ingredients I need to make the meal, it helps when I'm making my shopping list.

From 2012-02-23 Alli Crafts

The other craft I made started at a Relief Society activity. They taught us to make these hot pads that have the "rag" style of sewing on them. They told us to just let the edges have the "rag" look as well, but I really didn't like them. So I bought the boarder tape stuff and sewed that on. It was my first time ever using boarder tape stuff; it's harder than it looks! My stitch lines are FAR from straight! With practice I'll get better :)

From 2012-02-23 Alli Crafts

San Diego Scene 5

Saturday, February 18

Today's SD Scene adventure started off with lunch in Ocean Beach. We went to a local burger shop that is supposedly ranked in the top 5 hamburger shops in SD. It was really good, we liked it! The atmosphere was fun, the walls were covered in license plates from all over the US, actually, there was a small handful from other countries as well. After we ate lunch, we walked out the Ocean Beach Pier. We had a lot of fun on the pier! It was a GREAT spot to watch surfers. We surfer-watched for quite a while, it was fun! There were also a lot of fishers on the pier. After the pier, we went a few blocks away to Sunset Cliffs. They were definitely beautiful!

After that we went to the SD Zoo Safari Park. We had a lot of fun there! We liked it TONS more than we thought we would! We really liked how open everything was, they tried to make everything feel natural. All the fences were made out of wood logs, birds just waddling around the pond, etc. Another thing that was a favorite was the remote control boats. Ammon bought me one turn (like 3 minutes), I tried to hand him the token so that he could put it in the machine and start off with it, but he said no, he bought it for me. So I put in the token, and before I could even touch the steering wheel, Ammon was showing me how it worked (as if I couldn't figure it out on my own - it was very basic!). It was very cute how much fun he had with the boat, watching him concentrate and play. After a while he gave me a turn, but it shut off a few seconds later. He promised me that next time we'll both get our own boats :)

San Diego Scene 4

Saturday, February 11, 2012
We celebrated Valentine's Day today, because it's just too crazy on the 14th! We had a wonderful day!

We started off the morning by going to Torrey Pines to watch para-gliders. It was really cool to watch them. It looked like a lot of fun!



Then we went to a beach called Children's Beach. They originally built this beach for kids to swim at. They built a wall to help block the huge waves, thus making it more safe for younger kids. However, after building the wall, they found that something else liked this beach...seals! So now Children's Beach is also known as Seal Beach! There is also a walking path that goes around the park. It was a colder day today, and the wind didn't help!



Next we went the SD Zoo and almost finished going everywhere! There are only a few areas left that have been unexplored by the Dietz family! As the seasons change, so will the exhibits though, so we won't get tired of the zoo! There's always something new to go see! We first took the sky tram to the back of the zoo, then walked to the front. Then we took a bus tour of the zoo. We learned some interesting things, one being that Flamingos are not naturally pink. But wild flamingos eat a type of shrimp that turns them pink. At the zoo, they don't have that type of shrimp (they didn't say why) so they feed them a flamingo feed that has pink dye in it! Interesting, huh!



After the zoo we went to Olive Garden for a wonderful meal! We had a fantastic Valentine's celebration!

Bike Riding

Ammon has started biking to work. It's about a 7 mile bike ride. He says it's really fun once he gets started, but getting out of bed and out the door is really hard to do :) He bought saddle bags for his bike, and always uses his lights. He's come home soaking wet a couple of days now, but if we KNOW it's going to be raining, he'll drive instead. Here's a picture of his ticked-out bike ;)

Valentine's Day

I had a really fun time making Valentine's for all of my nieces and nephews this year. Here's how they turned out. Keep in mind, I did not come up with these ideas, just copied ideas off of the internet. I am a great "copy cat" crafter, but I'm not very good at originality!

Allison's Birthday & SDS 3

On Allison's birthday, the Johnson family came to help us celebrate! They came to our house first, where we got to show off our new place for the first time to family! Ryan and Elise had brought a very good lunch! After lunch, we ate a piece of traditional German birthday cake that Lina had made which was also very good! Then we packed up and headed to the San Diego Zoo.

JD and Maia loved the zoo! There were a few animals that they couldn't see very well because they didn't move, but the bright colored ones and the ones that moved they could definitely see! We had a really fun time!

After the zoo, the Johnson's headed home and Ammon and Allison headed to to Little Italy in Downtown San Diego. We had fun walking up and down the streets. We picked an Italian restaurant to have dinner at. The evening was wonderful!

I had such a wonderful birthday! Thank you to all my family and friends who made it such! I love you!

San Diego Scene 2

Our adventurous weekend started on Friday when we went to some friend's house and had a really fun game night! We also met more people in our ward...we love new friends!

On Saturday we went to Old Town. It was the weekend when they celebrate the Mormon Battalion coming to San Diego, so there were lots of fun festivities! They had a bunch of stations where kids could learn how the Mormon Battalion and pioneers lived. They made these really cool biscuits - we'll post a picture of it! There was also doll making, rope making, quilt tying and brick making. We walked to the LDS Mormon Battalion Visitor's Center. They have some pretty cool things there to tell you about the Mormon Battalion. Ammon and I thought it had a Harry Potter feel because they had talking pictures in picture frames! After that we just walked up and down the streets of Old Town. It was fun to see all the arts and craft booths. One street was lined with Mexican restaurants, and OH MAN, did it smell good! We bought some fresh tortillas from one place. We were hooked, so we ended up getting lunch there!

After lunch we drove to Coronado Island. It's really a peninsula, not an island, but it's called Coronado Island because the connecting piece of land is so small. We went to the beach, took off our shoes and walked up and down the beach barefoot! It was beautiful weather, in the 80's! It was another wonderful weekend!

San Diego Scene 1

Ammon and I have decided to do something "blog-worthy" each weekend. So here begins our adventures in San Diego, aka "San Diego Scene!"

Friday:

We went to the San Diego LDS temple. WOW! THIS is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL temple we have EVER been in! So gorgeous! We had the opportunity to do sealings. We really enjoyed how the sealer would stop every once in a while and teach us. What a wonderful spirit there is in the temple, and how grateful we are to be able to live so close to one!

Saturday:

Today we went to Cabrillo National Monument (CMN) which is located on Point Loma. CNM recognizes Captain Cabrillo who was the first explorer to find Point Loma. There is a light house there and it teaches you about light houses in the "assistant's home." We also went to the tide pools and saw a star fish, crabs, shell crabs, mino and Sea enenimies(sp)! We had fun walking on the rocks, watching the waves, talking and exploring together!

That night we got to go to the adult session of our stake conference.

Sunday:

After church (general session of stake conference) we drove to a local lake called Lake Miramar. It's a really big lake with a walking path all the way around it. We walked the 5 miles around the lake and saw many runners, bikers, roller bladers and scooter riders. It was a beautiful day for a walk! The lake is a drinking water reservoir. Fish are stocked in it, so during the summer you can go fishing there. That night we had some new friends over for dinner and to play games.

We had a very fun and relaxing weekend and hope to have many many MANY more like it!

Our New Home

Here are pictures of our new home. We moved all of our boxes into our place (with the help of wonderful ward members) last Sunday. Here it is a week later!

Zoo Passes

We decided to get a year long membership to the zoo. It costs $40/person for a day, or $106 for 2 local adults for a year. Can we say no-brainer! We went and bought our passes yesterday, and really enjoyed the hour and a half we spent there! We are very excited to go back! It's only about 10 minutes (in light traffic) for us to get there!

Roughin it in Cali

With our move, we had an interesting time frame, in which we were homeless for a while. We had to be out of our first place by December 28th, but couldn't move into our new place until January 8th. We spent a week of it in California. We stayed with some family, but we decided that if you're going to rough it somewhere, California is fantastic place. Californians were saying it was cold, we were saying it was beautiful weather!