He Lost His Hat On The Skyfari

On Friday 7/20, we all went to lunch at In-N-Out Burger.  Peppermint got her first taste of In-N-Out back when she visited us in 2009.  This would be her son Nicholas' first In-N-Out experience.


And of course, I encouraged a first-ever-never-before-seen joint "Todd Shot". 


I don't think Tom liked In-N-Out as much as the rest of us.  He didn't eat half his burger. 


After lunch, we headed to the world-famous San Diego Zoo.  We took the Skyfari across the park.  I was taking a photo of Tom, Peppermint, and Nicholas the same time that Tom was taking a photo of us.  Ha!


Poor Todd.  He wore his white Ironman California 70.3 finisher hat, and it got blown off his head while we were on the Skyfari!  It fell into a tree below.  He worked so hard for that hat!


We couldn't resist this photo opp. :p


One of the polar bears at the zoo was playing with this ball.  He would toss it over to the rocks and the ball would bounce back to him.  He did this over and over again.


Then he dove to the bottom of the water and came up with some carrots to snack on!


This hippo held his breath under water for over 5 minutes, just walking around and entertaining us.


Open up and say "ah"!


Asian elephant.


California condors.


Giraffe hanging out.


Our day at the zoo concluded around 5:30. 




We jumped in the car and went over the Coronado Bridge to Coronado Island for dinner.  I always love this view of San Diego while on the bridge.


Nicholas is a big car buff.  He was looking for Ferraris and Maseratis, but I found this big yellow VW van to be quite charming.


Whenever we cross the bridge over to Coronado Island, I always feel like we've entered into a whole new idyllic small town world.


Arriving at our destination, the Hotel Del Coronado.  Or as locals call it, "The Del".


We had planned a dinner on the Hotel Del Coronado sun deck.  Todd and I did this for the first time last summer and loved it. 


Such an iconic landmark.  I never get tired of taking pictures of it.


We found a table on the sun deck and enjoyed the ocean views and the band that played near us.


One thing I learned during Peppermint's visit is that her whole family doesn't like to pose for photos.  So I have some rare photos of them looking at the camera.  Otherwise it's always the non-chalant look-away.  At least Todd smiled.


I got the shrimps with tomatillo sauce and it was phenomenal!  It came with tortillas and corn fritters, which were delicious.


Peppermint got sea scallops.


Todd and Tom both got the sea bass.  This one with an extra dose of sun!



After dinner, we walked over to Moo Time Creamery, our favorite ice cream place in San Diego.  Todd and I shared a two-scoop with caramel and butter pecan flavors and it was really delicious. 


The sun went down the horizon as we headed out of the hotel to our car.  I love how this scene looked.  This is how I imagine a perfect summer memory to be.






There was a wedding on the beach.


Tom, Peppermint, and Nicholas walking to the car with us. 


I love Coronado and the Hotel Del.  Very happy to share that love with friends.

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Peppermint & I Met Liz

Ha, my post title sounds stalkerish, doesn’t it?  :p

Frequently and long-time readers of this blog know that I have been friends with Peppermint (One Little Bird) since meeting her online in digital scrapbooking forums in 2008.  We were on a few creative teams together, and before we knew it, we were chatting online almost daily.  In 2009 they came to San Diego to visit us and we spent a few days together.  The most unique experience being that we went to Comic Con together.  We also introduced Peppermint & Tom to their first In-N-Out Burger experience, went to Legoland, went to see the ocean, and ate awesome seafood.  Then in October 2010, we flew to Wisconsin to attend Peppermint & Tom’s wedding.  We ate Norwegian food for the first time. We went to the Mall Of America.  We saw the beauty of Wisconsin in the fall.  We explored Univ Of Wisconsin at Madison together. And we went to the Ohio State vs. Wisconsin football game, which was quite the experience!  

Peppermint, Tom, and Nicholas came to visit us in San Diego last week.  We picked them up from the airport, then promptly dropped Tom & Nicholas off in Balboa Park to visit the museums.  Peppermint, Todd, and I drove home to get settled in.  Then Peppermint & I drove over to Del Mar to meet Liz (Paislee Press) for lunch at Pacifica Breeze. Liz drove down all the way from LA to meet up with us!  Neither one of us has ever met her before, but Peppermint & Liz are good friends and they both sell their digital scrapbooking kits at Oscraps. 


So fun to finally meet in person!

And of course, we all took some food photos.  Liz’s seared tuna salad looked yummy.


And here’s Peppermint’s turkey wrap. 

Somehow in the excitement I forgot to take a photo of my salmon wrap.  But I’ve had it before so you can just look at the photo here. :D

There was lots of chatting about scrapbooking and digital scrapbooking.  And lots of picture-taking. (Much to Peppermint’s chagrin. :p)


They are both so adorable!


After lunch, we drove back to the house so I can drive everyone in the bigger car down to pick up Tom & Nicholas from Balboa Park.  Then we all went to West Elm to look around.  I accidentally gave $5 to a meth addict.  I didn’t know she was a meth addict until Peppermint & Tom told me!  I should have known by the lack of teeth.  But she had a really cute puppy with her and I was hoping she would get some food for him. Ugh.

We all went back to the house and Todd cooked a wonderful chicken taco dinner for everyone. 


I made my special pico de gallo.  :)


Liz left after dinner (to let the traffic die down a bit).  Before she left, Todd took one last photo of us in the back yard.


It was fun to met Liz for the first time, and a fun start to Peppermint’s trip to SD! 

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Snippets of July

I’ve had friends stay with us for the last five days.  We’ve had a great time and they went home today.  I uploaded my photos from three cameras tonight and added 424 photos to my July photos taken.  Wow!  I could be overwhelmed, but I’ll just take it one step at a time and blog what I can. Here’s a hint of who came to visit.
 
Below is a summary of little snippets of life in July.

We got some used vertical filing cabinets from the used office furniture store.  Very excited to have these to get our home office organized!


I set a goal for myself to run at least one mile every single day in July.  So far I’ve done it for 23 days straight and have run 37 miles already.  I also got 18 friends to do it too and set up a group on Facebook to encourage each other on our progress.


Noodle is still so very cute and funny.


Noodle celebrated his 2nd birthday on July 14th.  He got to lick some Cheetos, his favorite!




On July 11th, Todd got the NCAA Football 2013 game.  This is his favorite game and he has gotten the annual edition of the game since the 1990’s.


Todd and I celebrated National Ice Cream Day (7/15) a day early by going out for ice cream at Baskin Robbins.




On Sunday 7/15 Todd performed some “surgery” on my new Alienware computer by putting in my hard drive from my previous computer.  I’ve been fully migrated onto my new computer since then, and I love it. 


I spent earlier last week (before I took a few days off work to show our guests around town) at work totally cleaning out and organizing my cube at work.  I had piles of papers on my desk, some were very old.
 

But afterwards I love my desk, it’s like I have a new cube.


Last but not least, we went to Slater’s 50/50 for the first time with our friends Cassi & Dan and their daughter Madison.  I had the 50/50 Burger, which is made of 50% ground bacon and 50% ground beef! 
 

And we shared some sides.
 

Had so much fun with Cassi & Dan!  And that 50/50 burger was something else.

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