My 38th Birthday...

 My birthday fell on a Monday this year, so on Sunday my Mom and Harry came down for a bbq and fondue.

Lars grilled salmon and we had pineapple, salad, macaroni salad and cous cous. It was yummy!

 And of course fundue is always a hit :) Most of us kept our shirts on!

 Then on Monday some of my friends took me to lunch at Elements. We had so much fun and laughed the whole time. I'm so grateful for the friendships I have :)...about 4 others left before we took this picture!

Tallie even baked me a yummy chocolate/almond cake!

 Another sweet friend that I ran Ragnar with gave me this...Love it!

After lunch, I went home and the boys and I just hung out in the afternoon. Then Lars came home and gave me my gift from all of them.

I opened it up and could see it was a scrapbook, but didn't realize what it was exactly till I opened it up.

 First there was a letter from him... 

 Then a letter from Ashton...(it was after reading his that I started to cry)

"You are a very kind, loving Mom and I love you very much...In fact I love you to the moon and back!!" :) so sweet...

Then a cute one from Gunnar, and I kept crying...
I loved that they thought of what to write on their own and it just meant so much to me...

"Thanks for laying with me" because Gunnar still wants me to lay with him every night and I still love to. I love that that's what he chose to write about :)

 Then as I read on, I realized that there were letters and cards from so many of my friends and family members. Jordan even sent one to Lars on time! I just kept crying as I read so many sweet words from so many people that care about me and took the time to write down things about me, or memories we shared. They all mean so much to me...And I can't believe Lars was able to pull it off without me finding out.

Such a perfect, thoughtful gift that I will treasure forever :)

After I read through all of them, it took me about 40 minutes...we decided to go eat at the Crepery. One of my other favorite places :)

It was a perfect birthday :)

Oh and I did this again and was able to send in $455! that made it even better!

38 feels pretty good!



Last day in San Diego...

On our last day we didn't have to fly out till 6:00 that night. I'm not sure we'd plan it that way again because you have half of the day, but have to check out of the hotel at noon, then don't really have a lot of time to go do anything.

So we let them swim in the morning, but they were pretty much done with swimming after having gone so much during the previous days, then we got ready for the day & packed up our stuff and were out of the hotel by 11:15. I made the mistake again of not sitting between them and so by the time we got where we decided to go, they had been fighting like crazy and both were crying! So much fun!

We went down to Mission Beach and wandered around, then ate lunch right down by the beach and watched people doing this wave thing...

 I got the best salad I think I've ever had, so it was worth it to go there...

Then the boys got an enormous ice cream cone to share and we headed out.

 They were disappointed that we didn't let them ride any rides, but at that point we were DONE!

So we went to the airport and had to wait for what seemed like forever...

 ...and finally flew home at 6:00. Then we finally pulled into our driveway after 11:00.

It felt so good to be home! It was mostly a fun trip, but has definitely gotten harder to travel with these two!!



Tide Pools @ La Jolla Cove...

Thursday was our last full day in San Diego, so we decided to just let the boys swim in the morning...I made myself run on the treadmill again, then we all got ready for the day and drove down to try to find some tide pools.

Oh the time spent in the car...it made parts of our vacation torture! Ashton and Gunnar could not quit fighting!!

We had a small rental car and a couple times I squeezed in between them in the back seat just so they couldn't get at each other. I guess I should have done that that day, because that drive was a nightmare and by the time we got parked, we were all grouchy!

Ashton was "starving" , so we got out and walked around looking for a place for lunch and finally decided on this place...

It ended up being really good and we ate outside and could see the ocean.

 After we ate things looked up and we drove to a different spot right by the ocean and walked a little ways and found a whole area of tide pools.

 Ashton and Gunnar thought they were so cool and they spent at least an hour or so digging in them, collecting shells and trying to catch the sneaky crabs.

Ashton finally caught a tiny one...

It was so pretty there and I loved just watching them explore...

We went at a perfect time...luckily Lars had looked up the tide times.

After they finally got done with that, we walked over to a different part and they played in these huge waves for about 10 minutes.

It ended quickly when after telling them over and over to not go out so far, they each took a turn getting knocked over and sucked under a huge wave and came up crying and mad!~

 And of course that day, we hadn't brought any towels!

Oh well...they got over it. And I made them pose for a picture before we left. I love looking back on the one from 5 years ago and comparing :)
Time flies...and they have gotten so big...
After we got back to the room, they of course swam again forever...

And I sat by the pool and ate cookies :)

Then finally that night we drug them out of the pool and went down to eat our last dinner at PF Changs and it was SO good!

 



Seaworld...

On Wednesday we went to SeaWorld...we got up and had breakfast and got ready and headed out in the hopes of beating some of the crowds. It ended up being a lot less busy than LEGOLAND was thank goodness.

The boys went straight for Manta...

this big roller coaster and Gunnar stood as tall as he could and was able to ride on it even though he is a tiny bit shorter than the required 48 inches.

(they're in the back...)

Ashton and Lars rode on it twice, then they all rode on it two more times first thing before it got busy. When they went back later, they wouldn't let Gunnar on, so I was glad he at least got to ride it a couple times.

Then they rode this...

And then we went over and got a seat for the seal lion show...

It was cute.

We also watched the dolphin show right after that because they were right next to each other.

 Then we wandered around for awhile before we ate lunch...

At the end of the day we watched this show..."Cirque De something?"

It was actually really entertaining! And after that we finally watched the Shamu show...

Fun to see too.

I actually think the boys liked parts of SeaWorld better than LEGOLAND...

another long day, but fun!

That night we went back down to the mall and ate at Rubio's. Up next...fun at the tidepools :)