San Diego beach, Padre game, the B's birthday, garden update, and Hogle Zoo... we've been busy!

Trip to San Diego

A little hike: before the beach Shamene took us all to a hiking spot just minutes from her house hidden down a hill by a park. She showed us all the cool rocks, palm trees and the little river. It was hard to get the kids to leave :)

The Beach!! We went to Law Street beach for the day. It was a little cold to get in the water but we had a fun day playing in the shallow water and making a trench for the kids to play in.

 Testing out the cold water

 Chloe, Timmy and I had fun running away from the water when the waves would come. Blain was content to watch rather than join in.

 King Blain - so this little boy was so funny. He just wanted to be "safe and warm" in his towel, sit on the only chair that we brought, and be given snacks so he didn't have to get out of his seat. He must take after his dad, who is also not super fond of the beach. Hopefully he grows out of it.

 Digging the Trench

 Love this guy!!!

 The cousins :)

Padre Game: we sat in the grass section of the Padre stadium so the kids could run around, hit from the tee and eat all the cotton candy they could contain (provided by Auntie Em who bought each one their own BUCKET)

 Chloe eating her special treat

 This is actually an Angel's hat but Chloe HAD to wear it and when we got their Blain took over wearing it and had fun playing try the hat on Daddy.

 Daddy's turn

 Chloe with Grandma, a little sad - probably because she ate all her cotton candy

Birthday Time for the B's: we did another combined birthday party for Blain and Benji the Sunday before we left San Diego. They each had their own cupcake to blow out and each made awesome messes.

 Blain with his cupcake made by Aunt Wendy - she is so amazing. She just had little Ruby and was still able to do all this.

The birthday boys digging in!

 Blain chowing down!

 Chloe eating her cupcake - notice how all the frosting is gone...

Back in Utah

The Garden: so we had some sad news when we got back. We had some family check on the chickens the monday we were driving home because I was worried they might have run out of water. Well when we got there on Tuesday to check on things for ourselves the chickens were roaming the yard and doing what chickens do best - eating greens. So the raised bed got pretty much demolished. They ate all the lettuce, broccoli, kale and did some damage to the carrots. We ended up keeping the carrots and ripping out the rest and replanting the space in cantaloupe. I salvaged some of the kale and made kale chips (baked kale with olive oil and seasoning salt) which turned out pretty tasty. We also decided to up the water time each day from 10 minutes to 30 minutes as the garden was very dry. It's bounced back nicely though.

 New raised bed - it currently has two tiny cantaloupe sprouts

 We are swimming in peas!! We have enough to eat our fill while at the house and then bring some home for everyone to enjoy every other day and there continue to be lots of flowers and small peas.

 Nate hoeing the edamome and hills. Using the hoe is 100x's easier than weeding by hand and is a new love of ours

 Beautiful garden! So glad we decided to plant it!

 Tomatoes have a couple little tomatoes growing now with lots of flowers on all the plants now.

 cucumbers

 Zucchini: it was looking very wilty (as pictured) but it has improved greatly with some adequate watering over the last couple days.

Hogle Zoo: Nate scheduled an appointment to get his knee checked out and the office is in Sandy so I thought we would take advantage of already driving to salt lake and do something fun up there. We went to the Hogle Zoo for the first time. It's much smaller than the other zoo's I've been to (san diego and LA) but still fun and the animals were just as cute, although there were some funny ones, like a Raven aka crow :) The whole family (Em and Marie, Darius and Kiya, Molly and Sam, Yuko and her kids) came too which was a little crazy but fun at the same time.

 This is what Chloe and Blain looked like most of the day

Chloe riding on Swiper the Fox (it was actually a red panda but Chloe thought it looked like a fox)

 riding on the carousel with uncle Sam

 The giraffes got really close a couple of times, but our main view was of their backsides unfortunately

We ate lunch in the giraffe house above where they were fed. It was almost a private showing until the end when practically the whole zoo showed up and it got noisy and too crowded to see. But their heads were right next to us while they were eating

 Mommy and Blain outside the giraffe enclosure

Chloe "sleeping" on the tiger statue

                                  

Mommy and Chloe with the tiger - you can almost see it behind me on the left. 

 Blain looking at the seals and sea lions. There was a grey seal that swam right into the corner he was standing in about 3 or 4 times and he loved it saying "wow it's really big!" Hope we can come back again sometime, very fun day!