More Cali. Pics

More fun in the sun!

While we were in LA - Yorba Linda (and my Linda) decided to drive to San Diego and go to the Zoo. It was our first time going and it was sooo cool. Hogle Zoo looks like somebody's farm compared to this bad boy! Our first stop at the zoo was to see the new baby Panda! She was so stinkin' cute, I took like 150 pics of just them interacting with one another. This one is my favorite though, the mom was playing "peek-a-boo" with her little baby! It was the most absolutely ADORABLE thing I have ever seen. The little one would "hide" in that box and the mom would walk over and "peek" in and the little one would just stare at her and then the mom would walk away a little and then come right back and do it all over again. It was hysterical. They literally looked like any other mom and child playing "peek-a-boo" and you just knew they were "laughing" in their heads off! After they played "peek-a-boo" for a bit, they switched it up and "wrestled" with each other. Beary, beary cool thing to see! :)

Dominic on Ricky's shoulders trying to catch a better view of the Elephant (although, he was standing right in front of me - you would think he had enough of a clear shot!). This poor fella was starving and they had put some carrots in a bowl that hung from a rope. Well the bowl had different shapes in it, kind of like that toy from Tupper-Ware, ya know the one that was red and blue and had yellow handles and there were shapes inside and when you pulled the yellow handles apart, the shapes would fall out and you had to put them back into the correct slots. Anyway, this bowl was just like that and this little guy had to roll in back and forth and back and forth on his head until a carrot came out and when it did it landed everywhere so he had to use his trunk to sniff for it - which sometimes took a LONG time. Needless to say we stayed there cheering him on until he not only got every carrot out, but that he found everyone of them off the ground!

SD Zoo had a petting zoo for the little tykes. Dominic really, really liked this part. He absolutely HAD to pet everything he could get his little patty-cakes on!

Look at these two little "bugs"! Ohhh, I just love them!!Squeeze on Mathew, squeeze on! This is exactly what I do to their little faces. They are so cute I just have to squeeze the crap out of them! This was the boys waiting ever so patiently for the little Sea Lyon show they have at the zoo to start. They really were good about waiting - they entertained each other perfectly! :) This was the Sea Lyon show. We had front row seats so we really "caught" it all! I had never been to one of these types of shows (yes, another tragedy from childhood) so it was really fun to get to see a show like this. Dominic and I had the exact same expression on our faces the whole time! What an fun, fun day!

Well, if I thought going to SD Zoo was fun - then we went to... SeaWorld!!The day before we lefted to go home, we were able to go to SeaWorld!!! My AMAZING brother called and got us ALL complimentary passes to the park!! This was fantastic! I have ALWAYS wanted to go to SeaWorld and if it hadn't been for my bro (gosh, I love the news) and my family willing to drive back to SD - we wouldn't have been able to go! Thanks again guys!

This is at the Dolphin Discovery show. This little lady is giving this guy a little friendly hand-shake! Ok, if I thought the little Sea Lyon show that they had at the zoo was cool - I clearly hadn't been to see Shamu!! When we arrived at the park my family asked what I wanted to see first and when they said "Shamu" I said "Why, I have already seen myself swim!" Really, though - this was absolutely AMAZING!! If you can't tell from the pic (click on it and it will enlarge) but the guy is giving Shamu a hug coming out of the water! There they are shooting out of the water in an embrace. I could not believe it. The picture I took of the guy standing on Shamu's nose, coming out of the water, somehow I managed to only get the guys head :( and I am sad because that was even better than the hug! This is the trainer "surfing" on Shamu!! I am telling you I could have and did take hundreds and hundreds of pictures at this show. I kept saying to my family, how cool would it be when people ask you what you do for a living and you get to say "oh, I swim with killer Whales" how cool would that be? Yeah, and I would be the guy standing next to him saying "oh, uh I sell Carnations on free-way off ramps"!! That is my luck right there folks!! Anyway, no other words sum it up well enough - AMAZING experience! This is ME "petting" a Sting Ray. Digest that for a bit!Dominic and I at the Sting Ray pond. Not such a great photo of me - on so many levels - but I had a RAGING migraine and was SOOOOOO f'ing sick and trying to look happy as a clam! :)The boys feeding the Sea Lyons. These poor guys (not my guys) would just sit and bark, bark, bark, bark waiting for anyone to give them some fish. One guy literally "jumped" over and pretty much attacked another little guy to get the fish Dominic had thrown in. It was almost, a tiny bit scary! Ok, this was probably my favorite show - just because it was hysterical. This is the "Risky Rescue" show and I just can't describe it well enough - if you haven't been - go to SeaWorld just for this show. I'm telling you - it's awesome!So basically the show is all about this Sea Lyon "Clyde" and his shipmate (the girl) who run off to see some sites in Hawaii and loose their submarine with the rest of their crew and when they do they can't find their captain. Well in part of it they stop to have lunch and the girl (can't remember her name) says "we can't have lunch without an ice cold Pepsi" - ok, the picture below is what happened next...Ok, needless to say I almost wet myself watching this!! This little Otter comes out of the door, exactly on cue, and delivered the Pepsi to the girl. I am telling you, if I wouldn't have gone to jail I would have taken this little guy home!!Don't be afraid of this pic - it is NOT me sun-bathing!! No, eventually they did find their captain and I am not sure how the lost him - the dude weighs 5000 POUNDS!!! I had to take the picture just because I thought it looked cool but also because I realized it was from the infamous shot at the beginning of that hideous show "Three's Company" Dominic and I outside the Penquin house. Yeah, I didn't spend much time in there - it was the most disgusting, fowl-est (not a word), horribly smelling thing in the entire park! We ended the day with this really cute "Pets Rule" show. It was all about pets. There were dogs, cats, pigs, birds, mice - you name it, they had it. They did all kinds of cool tricks, it was really fun to watch!

So, once again, yet another amazing day and experience from our California trip. I can't tell you enough the amount of fun we had. I love having photos and a fairly good memory - because each time I look at these I go right back there and get away all over again!!

Californ-I-A!

"Welcome to Sunny Southern California"...NOT...for the entire first week we were there it rained! Everyone kept saying "this is so weird, it never rains this much or for this long in California." What can I say I bring out the best in everything/everybody! As most of you know, Dominic and I went to California at the end of February and despite the rain/cold it was AWESOME!! Since this was just my 2nd time to Cali (yes, in my entire long-legged-life) we tried to do as many things as possible. Thanks, once again, to my AMAZING family - we did some really fun things. So I am going to attempt for the 486th time to post some pics. I really hope it works this time because I really want to share - it's my turn! So, cross your fingers or whatever else you'd like, here we go...On the days that it was not raining, we did things like this - go to the beach. We went to Corona Del Mar Beach for a bon-fire. This beach is close to Newport Beach (which is where I thought we were :)). I took this picture because I kept hoping it belonged to Captain Jack Sparrow and he would invite me aboard for some Rum! Who wouldn't want to be marooned with Johnny D.?? :) Tori and Dominic running to catch up with the others to climb on the cliffs/rocks. It was so cool! Since this was Dominic's first trip to the beach, ever, Auntie Cindy was his tour guide and showed him so many cool things. I think they are looking at 1000's of muscle's in this little cove. Now you know why I wasn't the tour guide - I'm not getting in there!! :)Looking for sea shells and other sea things to put in our bucket!Just a message to our daddy.My mom is not a beach person - at all - so I had to write her this message. In case you can't make it out it says..."Hi Grandma, we are at Newport Beach! R U jealous? 2-26-08" Once again, it wasn't until after I took this picture that Ricky said "uhh, we are at Corona Del Mar". Ooops! Matthew and Dominic playing in the water. They had SOOOO much fun and laughed SOOOO hard! It was adorable. Gosh, look at that view. Absolutly exceptionally gorgeous boys, the water, the sun, the palms - could it get any better than this?!? I think not.Playing in the sand. Ohhhh, I just want to squeeze the crap out of both of them - they are so stinkin' cute!This was the sunset right before we started our bon-fire. It was so, so, so beautiful, I could have stayed there for the rest of my life. I discovered that I really, really love the beach - it was so calm and relaxing and you can have so much fun just playing in the sand, walking on the beach, climbing on the cliffs and forgetting about time. Next to my family - I really miss this a lot. OK, I'm thinking that I am going to have to post these pictures in separate entries because I am not in love with Blogger right now. It is doing the strangest things, it changed the first paragraph to a totally different font than the rest of the post and it doesn't give me the option to change the font not even to look like the top part. For a person with OCD, this is not a good moment in my life. However, since it has taken me a VERY long time to post just these pics - I think I will give it a rest for now and go take some Xanax. Stay tuned though, we have a lot more to share!! Who's excited??!!?? :) TTFN

UUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Ok, the title of this post is the most clean title I could/would allow myself to put on this stupid thing! I don't know if anyone else is having issues with "Blogger" but I am about ready to send "Blogger" down the old "you-know-what-er"! Uugghh!! I have been trying for 3 days to post pics of my California trip and I get the pictures to go in the right place and when they do the post looks 18 miles long because it is adding space where I don't want space and not letting me delete the space - plus, I can't add a description under the photos like I want to. OOOHHHH! @!*^$@!$^%!!!! You can add whichever 4-letter words into that as you wish. So, needless to say, I am BUGGED! I am very excited to show everyone the fun we had and "Blogger" seems to be raining on my parade! Stay tuned for either more cursing or actual photos. :)