Blue Angels: Round 2

I love living close to Annapolis for many reasons. But one of my top reasons is that every year, the Blue Angels do a ~45 minute show the week of the USNA's commencement. I love, love, love watching flight formations and all the cool planes. It's just amazing! Last year, I went with my friend Kara. I had a 2 year old and an immobile 11 month old. She had an almost 2 year old and was pregnant. This year, she (obviously) has a baby in addition to her toddler, so she stayed home. Do I dare attempt this by myself? In a throng of tens of thousands of people? I now have a 3 year old and an EXTREMELY MOBILE almost 2 year old and I'm pregnant, so T can out-run me any day of the week. But Lacey loves being outside, Tanner loves all things airplane related and "big jets" and I, well, as I said before, love air shows. I couldn't pass it up, so off we went!


You can probably tell these are downloaded pictures. I brought the wrong camera to take pictures of these plans that go faster than the speed of sound. But it looked exactly like this. But with lots of different tricks and formations.

Here's Lacey as happy as a bug with the $4 sno-cone I bought her. I still can't believe I paid $4 for ice and some flavored syrup, but you know what? It made my girl happy for a good 20 minutes on a 94 degree day, so it was worth it!

And here are the kids, getting settled with their snacks waiting for the "big jets." We had a "blast!" Okay, that was corny, but it's 9:22pm and I'm tired and that's when the corniness comes out in me. And I'm thrilled because after weeks of being behind, I am officially caught up with my blogging!

Visit From Vicki

I met Vicki when I lived in Vegas from 1999-2002. We became very close friends. We became running buddies and would get up at 5am to run before work. We ran our first half-marathon together in California and then ran our first (and only so far) Marathon together in Chicago a couple years later. But alas, we now live across the country together and it has been nearly 5 years since we last saw each other. So, naturally, I was thrilled when she decided to come out for a week-long visit! This was her first time ever being out in this area, so boy did we pack it in! We started out by going to Fort Meade (the sight where, during the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key saw the American Flag flying after Fort Meade was bombed by the British for 24 hours, but withstood the bombing and made the British turn around in defeat. When Francis Scott Key saw the flag, he was inspired to write down the words of The Star Spangled Banner.)


Next, we went to Annapolis. We walked all over the Naval Academy, the Governor's Mansion, the Capitol building (where George Washington resigned his commission), up and down the pier and Main Street and capped it off with ice cream from Storm Brothers. Yum!

Friday night, we went to the beautiful DC temple.....

And then we got up on Saturday and drove to Lancaster, PA where we spent the afternoon in Amish country. We took a buggy ride and saw all the Amish farms, homes and people.

We even found the exact phone booth from the famous scene in Witness!

And then we drove up to Hershey, PA where we had fun at Chocolate World.

But obviously no trip to the DC area is complete without a trip to DC. In addition to the White House, we walked all around the Tidal Basin. We saw the Lincoln memorial, Jefferson memorial, FDR memorial, Korean War Memorial, Vietnam Wall, Washington Monument, the Capitol, the National Archives (original Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Constitution) and went inside one of my favorite Smithsonian Museums - The Museum of American History. We saw Dorothy's original ruby red slippers, Julia Child's kitchen, all the ball gowns of the current and former First Ladies from Inaugural Balls, the original Star Spangled Banner (which was cool to see after visiting Fort McHenry). Like I said, we packed it in!! We even squeezed in a visit to George Washington's former home, Mount Vernon, but I'm having technical difficulties with those pictures. Lacey enjoyed our time there, but Tanner's not much on house tours and confinement! Anyway, we had a great time! And thank you to my sweet hubby who did double daddy duty, so we could have some kid-free time seeing some of the DC sights!

Final Glapagos Post

On our 3rd day on the islands, we took another 2+ hour boat ride out to Isabela. But we didn't end up taking a ton of pictures that day, so I'm skipping that day on my blog and skipping to Day 4, the day we left. Except I will I say I saw 2 sharks, which was my first time seeing sharks in the wild, so that was pretty cool! Anyway, on our final day, we got up early and went to the Charles Darwin Research Station.


And we said goodbye to the turtles. We also saw the famous St. George (not pictured here) who is a pinto turtle and he is the last pinto turtle alive. They have been trying for years to get him to reproduce with females of an extremely similar breed, but he won't. He was found in 1972 and is really old now, so once he dies, there will be no more of his kind.

We'll miss you turtles!

We flew from the Galapagos to the Guayaquil, on the mainland of Ecuador. Guayaquil is the largest city in Ecuador. We spent our first day there walking up the Malecon, a huge walkway along the water with sculptures, gardens, etc.

On our second (and final) day, we saw this beautiful colonial-looking town on the top of a hill, so we started climbing the numbered steps that wound through this cool, old village and got to the top, step number 444.

And we discovered this old church and a beautiful scenic overlook of the city.

And then we discovered that Guayaquil had a LDS Temple! So, we took a $4 cab ride and walked all over the beautiful temple grounds.

And our final adventure of the day, was coming across this park right next to our hotel. It had tons and tons of iguanas just walking around everywhere you looked. So cool! They obviously weren't afraid of people and seemed friendly enough, so we touched them and just sat on a bench for an hour or so just watching all of them

And then we got ready to leave. We flew out that night and arrived home the following morning. We got the best greeting ever from our kids! They ran up to us, hugged us and were just so excited and happy. We felt the same. We really missed them! Thank you to Aunt Heidi, Dave's parents and my mom for helping out with the kids. We had an unforgettable time!

Galapagos Islands: Day 2

I'm so far behind on my blogging! It's been a busy couple of weeks! But my goal is to be all caught up by the end of this week. So, here I am back-tracking to a month ago! Anyway, Day 2 on the Galapagos Islands was my very favorite day of the whole trip. We took a 2 hour boat ride from our home base on Santa Cruz to another island: Floreana. Floreana is one of the 4 inhabited islands in the Galapagos, although it only has about 100 people, so I use that term "inhabited" loosely! Here we are arriving at beautiful Floreana!


It is an absolutely beautiful island. Since most of it is, in fact, uninhabited, it's just like what you would picture a big, beautiful uninhabited island looking like.

There are a few dirt roads throughout the island and so, to see more, we boarded this awesome open-air truck and went exploring!

And this is one of the things we came across -- it reminded me of Easter Island (although, admittedly I've never been there). The local guide we were with says this is the only thing like this on any of the islands and they don't know who carved it or when. I found that fascinating.

And no Galapagos Island adventure is complete without lots of wildlife! We saw sea lions frolicking in the water......

Lots and lots and lots of turtles.....

And penguins (you kind of have to look closely because they blend in with the rock. There are 3 of them). Galapagos Islands is the only place where you find tropical penguins.

And then...... the best part of the trip! We hopped back on the boat and we went a short distance to Champion Island, another uninhabited island teaming with wildlife. This one, in particular has tons and tons of sea lion. We saw a mama sea lion nursing her baby and several tiny infant sea lions as well as huge ones and everything in between. We saw a sting ray jump several feet in the water and do a triple flip and then repeat it 3 times (they said this is how they impress females - it certainly impressed me!). They anchored the boat in the middle of the water by this beautiful cove and off we all jumped with our snorkel gear where we swam amidst all of these animals and it was AWESOME!!

Galapagos Islands

After our 24 hour unplanned adventure in Atlanta, we finally arrived in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, on the night of April 25th. We just spent one night there before flying out the next day to the Galapagos Islands, located 600 miles west of the mainland. Once we landed in Ecuador, we met up with my sister Maret and our good friend, Dave. (Two Dave's, so a bit confusing, but we got by!). Anyway, here I am with Maret on the island of Baltra, which is where we landed. The Galapagos Islands has 13 "major" islands with dozens of smaller ones. But only 4 of the islands are inhabited by people. Most of the islands have nothing but wild life and 75% of the species found here are not found anywhere else in the world. It's a fascinating place to visit! Once we landed in Baltra, we took a 10 minute bus ride to a ferry which took us to the north side of the island of Santa Cruz. We then boarded another bus where we took a 45 minute ride down to the south of the island to a town called Puerto Ayora, where we stayed for the next 3 nights.


Once we checked in to our hotel, the "Red Booby" we went down to the pier and waited to start our adventures!

We boarded a speed boat and cruised all around the island of Santa Cruz.

There were iguanas everywhere we looked.

And lots of blue-footed (seen here) and red-footed booby birds (thus the name of our hotel). They are gorgeous birds, but yes we were immature and there were a lot of booby jokes over the next few days :)

Our local guide stopped the boat at a hiking path and after a 20 minute hike or so, we came to Las Grietas, an awesome swimming hole with cliff jumping. It was fabulous! Here's Maret biting her nails..... and for good reason because......

This is what she was about to do! Can you believe that girl?? Diving head first off that super-high cliff. We were all totally impressed! Thankfully, I could use my pregnancy as an excuse as to why I too wasn't jumping head-first into the lake from a million feet up, but let's face it, pregnant or not, there was no way I could have gotten up the guts to do that! You go girl!

More to come.....

Sharing the Day

My birthday and Dave's birthday are funny because every few years my birthday falls on Father's Day (like Dave's first Father's day as a father) and every few years, his birthday falls on Mother's day, so we kind of "cancel each other out." This was one of those years. So, it's a bit confusing as to who gets the day off and who does double duty to give the other one a day off on their special day. Like when the kids wake up at 6am, I'm thinking "I should get the kids because it's Dave's birthday, but oh wait, it's Mother's Day!" and he's thinking "I should get the kids because it's Mother's Day, but oh wait, it's my birthday!" Anyway, we worked it out. We got a baby-sitter the night before and went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner and then had Dave's family over for a birthday/Mother's day dinner on Sunday. Here I am with my kidlets on Mother's Day.


And here's Lacey trying to wear my shoes over her shoes as we are about to leave for church.

And here's the birthday boy! And since it was Mother's Day, I took the day off from baking and got this Strawberry Cheesecake icecream cake with layers of red-velvet cake and strawberries (yum!) from Cold Stone. Happy Birthday, Dave!

Ecuador: Day One

Wait, this doesn't look like Ecuador, you say? Well, you would be right. It's Dave at Coca-Cola World in Atlanta paying homage to his favorite beverage. And yes, Day One of our Ecuador trip was spent in Atlanta! Our flight out of Baltimore kept getting delayed, so we ended up barely missing our connecting flight in Atlanta to Quito, Ecuador. Bummer. But we had beautiful weather in Atlanta and 24 hours to kill, so we made the most of it!


Centennial Olympic Park

Ted's Montana Grill is owned by Ted Turner (former owner of CNN, former husband of Jane Fonda, etc). Dave decided that this is where he wanted to eat for lunch. They are known for their bison, which neither of us had ever had before. So, we were outside the restaurant looking at the menu when........

Ted Turner and his wife (or girlfriend?) Elisabeth walked right up to us! Yes, no trip would be complete for me and Dave without at least one celebrity encounter! They were walking up the sidewalk and Ted says "Are you thinking of eating there?" We reply "We're thinking about it." Ted says, "Well, it's the best place in town. Come on in!" And proceeds to open the door and show us inside. I turn to him, give him a good look and say "Hey, wait! Are you Ted?" "Yes, I am! Now come on inside. I guarantee you'll love the food; if you don't, the bill's on me!" We then proceeded to talk to him and Elisabeth for the next 10 minutes or so. Delightful people!

So, I know this post doesn't actually show any Ecuador pictures, but I've had several friends call me, who knew we got back from our trip on May 1st and have been asking when the heck I'm going to post my pics! Well, here's the thing..... I've been home one week and am totally behind in cleaning my house, yard work, spending time with my kids and making blog posts about other announcements, so here's the first day with more to come.......

Follow-up

I feel I need to follow-up from that last post based on the comments/questions. I know a lot of people didn't see this coming; we do after all have a 3 year old and a 1 year old! But we wanted another one, and let's face it, I'm not getting any younger :) As for the picture.... I had this vision in my mind. My kids would sit serenely on the rock in the landscaped area of the yard, so we would have beautiful scenery. Lacey would hold her sign. Tanner would sit sweetly next to her holding his sign. And either Lacey, or the two of them together with their free hands would hold the Tie-break sign. They would look at the camera and smile and it would be the best picture ever! Lacey posed like a champ..........


Tanner...... not so much! So after about a million takes, we got one of neither one of them smiling in a wagon with me in the background and Dave commenting "And we're going to add another one that doesn't listen to a thing we say?" Ahh, good times!

As for how I'm feeling..... have you noticed that I pretty much stopped blogging prior to this most recent post? Does that answer your question? Sick to my stomach and totally, completely exhausted. That is how I'm feeling. But thanks to Zofran and the fact that I'm wrapping up my first trimester, I am doing better and, after having my first ultra-sound today and seeing a picture of the little boo and his/her beating heart, I feel completely thrilled and blessed!

Tie-Break