San Diego Trip 2011

Since I wasn't working on Labor Day, I decided to take a week long trip to San Diego to visit James' older brother Sam, his wife Alison, my niece Madison and new baby Abigail! Each time we've seen Sam and Alison, I've only hung out with them for a few hours at a time, so this was a unique opportunity to get to know them better and to help them out with the kids. It was a pretty laid back week - mostly spent eating at my favorite restaurants, shopping, and playing with the girls. But that's fine with me - quality time with family is hard to get when you live in Japan! I also had fun taking lots and lots of photos of the family!

I felt a little guilty, spending time in Cali with James' family when he couldn't join me. He was on a temporary deployment to Alaska for five weeks so I traveled out to the States on my own. What I didn't know was that our commander gave the guys a chance to take a couple days of leave over Labor Day weekend and so James took a redeye down and surprised us! It was great reuniting with him, watching his mom's reaction, and watching him play with our nieces. He's always so good with kids!

The first night he was in town we met up with some of my friends from college for dinner at a beautiful restaurant/brewhouse. I'm so thankful that I have some friends who live close to family so I can reconnect with them when we're in town.

The next day, we went to SeaWorld!! I've never been there before but always wanted to go when we lived near to San Antonio - so this was a real treat! We watched the Shamu show where the killer whales do tricks and jump up in the air and splash the audience. Then we walked around to the other exhibits and saw a bunch of different types of aquatic animals including sea lions, penguins, sea turtles and sharks!

On Sunday morning, we went over to Alison's parent's house and I did a mini photo shoot for Abigail utilizing some creative ideas of hers. Then James' cousin Alex drove up to Vista so I finally got to meet him. Then we all went out to dinner at another of our favorite restaurants. We ate SO much good food on this trip!

 Below is us with James' cousin Alex!

Monday morning, James had to head back to Alaska. So after saying farewell in the morning, we went and explored the world-famous San Diego Zoo! I always love zoos, but this was definitely an experience. They have animals there I've never seen in person before including koalas! After the zoo, we took a ride on the little Balboa Park Railroad.

On my last day in California, Alison and I shopped till we dropped in the morning, then picked up lots of fresh ingredients at a local grocery store (VERY exciting for me!!) and cooked some nice family meals. Like I said - it was a very low-key trip compared to my other recent travels, but I really enjoyed myself and am sad that we don't live closer to Sam and Alison so we can hang out more and be more involved in the lives of our nieces. They're both so cute, and I miss them a lot!!