California 2011- Part 1-Sea World pictures.

We’re home from a lovely 10 days spent in California. And back to reality- with suit cases to unpack, groceries to buy, work, chores-  our grass was so long, Alfred had to cut the whole yard down a bit with a weed whacker before he could mow.

Yay for California! Despite the stressful flight to and from CA…my calm, sweet Vincent becomes an angry, screaming baby at 30,000 feet…we really enjoyed ourselves.

2 days were spent in San Diego. Here we went to a college graduation ceremony for Alfred’s brother (Renaldo double majored in African Studies and Biology at San Diego State!!) Also, we got to go to Sea World and the beach. I love San Diego. I so wish I could live there.  

We also celebrated Alf’s parents 50th birthdays ( a joint-surprise Hawaiian themed birthday party!)  We were able to see and catch up with lot of the family here-great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.

Then Alfred and I were able to escape alone for a few days while the kids spent some quality time with their grandparents.  We traveled to the central California coastal area to visit my uncles Butch and Scott.  They just recently moved to Salinas, which is about 6.5 hours away from Indio, where Alfred’s parents live.  I fell in love with this part of  California with it’s mild, Mediterranean climate and beautiful rolling hills.  And wineries and wineries galore. I wish I could live here too.

 

First up…. pictures of Sea World!  

We went to a sea lion/sea otter show. (I love sea otters! )These guys put on an impressive show and had the audience laughing the whole time.

This is Seamore.

 

 

Nap Time

 

 

 

Elora had fun at the sprinkler playground, jumping in the bounce house, petting a tortoise…Vincent slept through the fun.

 

 

 

Vincent with Uncle Renaldo       

 

 

And it turns out that Alfred’s mom speaks dolphin. When she started talking to this one, he started chattering back!  Gloria the Dolphin Whisperer.  

 

 

 

    And you can’t go to Sea World without seeing Shamu.

Killer Whales are massive! And smart! They respond to hand signals and get rewarded  with big chunks of ice and buckets of fish.

 

 

The first 14 rows are the splash zone.  If you sat here, you were most definitely going to be drenched.

lesson learned

 

“Vincent, this is a remote…”

“when you find one, you should take off the back and pull out the batteries and hide them”

Some pictures from Sunday…. We went over to Mom and Dads to celebrate Mothers Day by cooking out and spending some time outdoors enjoying the lovely day.  The weather was perfect. I’ve decided I need to find a place to live that’s stays around 70-75 degrees year round. And then move there.

Vincent learned how to slam dunk. 

He had some help from Dad and Chris, but really-he was a natural!

 

Elora with 2 of her miniature horsey pals, Bitsy and Lacey.

This one  of me was taken by Elora. That’s her finger going across the top of the picture.  

Vincent spent a lot of time in the wagon. He couldn’t figure out how to climb out of it. Which was actually pretty nice-as long  as he was in it, I didn’t have to chase him everywhere.

Then towards the end of the day, Vincent climbed into my new outdoor lounge chair, toppled it over,  and smashed his fingers.  One of them is in pretty bad shape and is all bandaged up.  To keep him from messing with it, we need to keep a sock or mitten taped onto his hand.  It has been a bit of an ordeal this week with the daily cleaning and redressing the wound. He hates it and doesn’t hold still very well.  and it’s hard to look at. I cringe when I see it and it makes my own finger hurt when ever I think about it. I’m hoping it heals quickly.

So Vincent is nearly 15 months old

and is still not walking. I know that there's not much point comparing babies to each other, because they are all so very different. But what’s the longest a baby has gone without walking? They can’t  go on crawling forever, right?

Instead of walking,  he has been focusing on his climbing skills.  He’s getting good, and I’m actually impressed sometimes.  He really thinks about it! He will often times push another object over to what to whatever he wants to climb upon-to give him an extra boost.

One of his newest tricks is getting up onto our entertainment center. 

And then also this morning the inevitable finally happened. I knew this day was coming.  Time to move the dining chairs away from the table.