san diego, part 2.

yay for free wifi in the airport so i can finish up blogging of my travel adventures!!

let's see....friday was a lazy day. nathan took the car to work so i slept in, meandered down to eat breakfast, facebooked a little, read a book, and generally lazed about like i don't get the opportunity to do at home. when he got off we headed up to temecula valley, were we visited several wineries. our last stop was at Stuart Cellars, where we had dinner outside while a live band played. we won't talk about how i may have had a few too many glasses of wine and was feeling a bit green by the end of the evening.


the first tasting room we visited.


the second winery.


me at leonesse. still coherent here, ha!


Leonesse was probably the prettiest winery we saw.


at oak mountain winery.


our last winery, where we had dinner. i will choose to remember it pretty, like in this picture :)

saturday we drove over to julian, a quaint little town about an hour away from san diego. we went horseback riding at Julian Stables, which was awesome. i've always just been handed a horse already saddled and ready to go, but here we got to actually get our own horse ready, including currying and brushing them, picking their hooves, and saddling them. it was so cool. then we headed back into julian where we had lunch at a little BBQ joint and then had some of their world-famous apple pie for dessert. after wandering down main street and torturing nathan as he endured shop after shop, we headed back to our hotel and had appetizers and drinks at the bar, and then i tortured nathan some more by watching "Black Swan".


us with "Harry Trotter", nathan's horse.


me and angel.

sunday. probably my favorite day. we went over to San Diego Bike and Kayak tours in la jolla and started the morning out with a bike ride from the top of Mt. Soledad, the highest point in coastal San Diego. it was a gorgeous morning with breathtaking views along the way down. we rode along pacific beach on into mission bay, and then turned around and headed back to la jolla. we grabbed a quick lunch at the Cheese Shop when we got back and then readied for the second half of our adventure. we headed out in our kayak into la jolla cove, among the many caves that dot the coast there. sea lions languished on the rocks just yards from us, and one even popped his head out of the water not too far from our kayak. i wanted to harness him, drag him behind the kayak with us, and take him home to live in my bathtub. we ended up in old town that evening, and had dinner at cafe coyote, which was suggested by my friend heather, and had the most delicious margaritas and pork carnitas.


ready for our bike ride with our brain buckets on.....safety first :)


our guides getting the bikes ready for us.


view from the top of Mt. Soledad. it was a bit overcast in the morning, guess this is the "june gloom" everyone warned me about.


some kayakers down in front of "sunny jim's" cave....we were down there just a short time later!!


we got sandwiches here for lunch, two thumbs-up for my turkey, jack, and avocado sammich!!


i just picked this hottie up on a street corner in old town.

monday i drove nathan into work and then went running at pacific beach. it was a beautiful morning, overcast and a touch cool, perfect for a run. when nathan got out of school we went over to coronado island, where we checked out the Naval Air Station, and then went down to coronado beach where we grabbed some lunch at Miguel's. they had THE BEST tortilla chips i've ever had, and they served it with some deliciousness they called "jalapeno white sauce". it was to.die.for. then we went and rented a couple beach cruisers and rode around the island, exploring for awhile and envying all the rich people in the gorgeous homes who live there. that evening, we went on a dinner cruise aboard the Lord Hornblower, and had an immensely fun time people watching on the dance floor LOL


coronado beach with our beach cruisers :)


dinner cruise.


coronado bay bridge with downtown SD behind it.

tuesday. our last day here. we decided on a lazy day....we headed over to ocean beach and grabbed some lunch at some little hole-in-the-wall place that i ate at last time i was here, and that had super-yummy burritos. then we went and sat out on the beach and read and watched the surfers for awhile. when we were sufficiently crispy, we drove over to the Cabrillo National Monument. First we checked out the tidepools, which were WAY cool....and then we drove up to the top and saw the monument and the lighthouse there. the VIEW from the tip of Pt. Loma was absolutely incredible. after a couple appetizers and drinks back on the beach, we went back to the hotel to pack *SIGH*.


little dive mexican food joint but the food is DELISH.


tidepools at cabrillo national monument.


i loooooved it here....so pretty!


view from pt. loma.


juan. he did something really important, like was the first white dude to set foot on the west coast of the US or something. yeah, he was a big deal.


stairs inside the lighthouse.

we thoroughly enjoyed our getaway and were sad to leave the land of sunshine, but glad to come back to our own beautiful piece of paradise and our kiddos. to close, here is a lovely shot that nathan took in the hotel room.



thanks for looking!!

san diego, part 1.

as much as it pains me and my OCD nature to write about another vacay before i've finished blogging about my HI vacay.....it is now or never. (and since nathan's in school and i've got time to kill i figured i might as well waste some time on the computer.) i arrived yesterday and nathan picked me up from the airport. after a quick stop at the hotel to drop off my stuff we headed up to Torrey Pines. we parked at the far end of one side of the beach and walked the beach down to one of the trails, and then walked back on the trail. it was SO beautiful and peaceful. after dinner and a quick target run (alright, maybe NOT so quick....) we came back to the room and watched 127 hours. i really really liked it, no matter what jeff says :P


torrey pines beach.




these little buggers were all.over.the.place. (and quite brazen!)


this pinecone was as big as my head, and probably as heavy. (and aptly named "the widowmaker" LOL)

this morning i got up an ungodly hour to take nathan to his school and then went running at one of my fave spots in san diego, Sunset Cliffs. it is so incredibly beautiful there, running along the cliffs and watching the waves crash on the beach (and did i mention the cute surfer boys?! :) after he got out of school we went on a 2-hour harbor cruise of san diego bay (the sea lions were my favorite part!) and then met our friends Beth and Brandon and their fam for dinner at World's Best on Pacific Beach. (though the service was lacking a little, the food was great.) AND i got to see their brand-new addition, miss ella! (even though she was asleep almost the entire dinner....)


in front of the USS Midway, before the harbor cruise.


a GAGGLE of sea lions!


coronado bay bridge.

can't wait to share more of our vacation adventures with you soon!

hawaii: part 1.

so i have been wanting to blog about our vacay since we've gotten home but every time i sit down i get SO overwhelmed about all the stuff we did and everything that i want to include that i just give up before i start and go clean or something. so today i decided that i am going to START it, and i will just break it up into chapters so that it's easier. so here it is, chapter 1.

Sunday morning: rise at the butt-crack-o-dawn. hurriedly get ready and pack last-minute stuff as my husband frantically rushes around, giving me an update of the time every 5 minutes.

"hun-bun, it's 5:30. we have ONE HALF HOUR til we need to leave."

"hun, it's now 5:35. 25 minutes."

"hun, are you going to be ready to walk out the door in 20 minutes? cause it is 5:40."

you get the idea.

we manage to get everyone in the truck, children snuggly buckled in their seats, luggage stacked to the ceiling, back-up travel mugs of coffee and everything, and are only running about 9 minutes behind schedule. i'm silently gloating that i was such a model of efficiency getting out of the house (because for me, 9 minutes behind schedule translates to AHEAD of schedule.) we're driving along, and get about a half-hour away from home in port orchard, before it occurs to me that we MAY need the kids' birth certificates to board the plane. crap. Crap. CRAP.

nathan pulls off to the side of the road while i tear apart the truck looking for something, ANYTHING, with the airline's phone number on it. it's not on our boarding passes, and what the hell happened to the phone book that belongs in here?! damn i wish i had a smart phone right now. ach. i finally find a scrap of paper somewhere in the depths of the truck with Hawaiian Airlines phone number on it. call them to verify that yes, in fact, we DO need their birth certificates. mother-effing-fabulous. i see my level-headed husband, who normally takes everything in stride, start to panic.

there is not really anything left to do at this point but turn around and go back home and grab them, and PRAY that we make it to the airport in time. we turn around, drive home, and i dash in and out of the house in an just over a milli-second (thank goodness that i am an organized person for the most part and knew exactly where they were). we got back on the road and raced against the clock. luckily, there is not much traffic on the road at 7 on a sunday morning, and we arrived at the airport just shy of an hour before our flight left. fate was smiling on us, because there was NO line at the airline counter either, we got checked in and our luggage checked quickly, and the security line moved along at a decent rate as well.


our plane, waiting for us!!


here we gooooo!

the flight was uneventful, the kids were relatively quiet and well-behaved, and 6 hours later we arrived in honolulu. what a day. bring on the pina coladas.


finally. we have arrived in paradise.

thanks for looking, and stay tuned for part deux!

milestones and marathons.

this past weekend i celebrated my thirty-something-ish birthday with a trip up to Victoria for the Goodlife Fitness Victoria half-marathon. accompanying me were my better half and kidlets, my mom, and several friends who were also running the race. we ferried over on friday afternoon, and after checking into our hotel we ventured over to the conference center to pick up my race packet. a word of advice: when you arrive as SOON as they open on the first day, with almost 14,000 people registered.....be prepared to wait awhile. the line was crazy long and wrapped around the corner and down the block. it did move quite fast though to our surprise. after we obtained said race packet, we wandered around a few shops downtown before we met up with audi and dee for dinner at Milestones. it had a great atmosphere, fab views (it's located right on Victoria's inner harbour) and good food. AND i was surprised with a sparkler-topped ice cream after dinner and a rousing chorus of happy birthday. yes, i know it wasn't my ACTUAL birthday but my husband said that i deserved a whole weekend and thus declared it "birthday weekend" :) the only damper being when sam somehow managed to knock over my almost-full bellini, breaking the glass in the process and sending my deliciously slushy drink all over me. luckily the napkin in my lap caught most of it, and the waiter very graciously brought me a new one. whew. crisis averted.


on the ferry to victoria




crazy-ass long line to get race packet


parliament building during the day


parliament at night.

after dinner we parted ways and went back to our hotel so the kiddos could go swimming. our hotel was pretty nice, but the pool was definitely NOT designed with kids in mind. there was absolutely no shallow part, you walked down the stairs and were immediately in 5 ft. deep water. or there was the hot tub, which was so hot they could only tolerate it for a few minutes at a time. next time i will defintely stay somewhere with a more kid-friendly pool, as i'm fairly certain this is their absolute favorite part of any trip....swimming in the hotel pool. ha.

saturday morning we drove up to Butchart gardens. one of the big bonuses of bringing our own vehicle, as i've heard the tour buses charge an arm and a leg to take you up there. the gardens were *gorgeous*--unfortunately i don't have more pics due to what i will hereafter refer to as the great camera debacle of two-thousand and ten. in a ever-so-slight miscalculation as i handed my mother back her camera, i let go a millisecond before she grabbed it and in slow motion i saw it plummeting to the ground. i thought it might make it for a minute--nathan and i both tried resuscitating it, but to no avail. it was gone. so i sacrificed my camera to her for the rest of the day.




katie and sam, butchart gardens


probably my favorite part of the gardens, the "sunken garden"

we made it through most of the morning without rain, and then it started coming down a little heavier. the kids were rapidly starting to melt down as well so we all piled back into the truck for a little drive (see: NAPTIME for kiddos). we drove over to a little town on the eastern side of the peninsula called "sidney by the sea", it was adorable and had the kids not been sleeping and the sky not been raining we totally would've gotten out and checked out some of the neat little shops. maybe next time.

by the time we got back to victoria it was time to meet up with everyone for dinner. if you have ever tried to find somewhere to eat for a party of 10 people with an extra 14,000 people in town for a race AND on a national holiday (it was canada's thanksgiving weekend), let me tell you folks, it's not pretty. everywhere was either turning us away completely or telling us it would be hours before they could seat us. i will absolutely know to make reservations well in advance next year. my friend ruby finally suggested the restaurant inside the hotel they were staying at, so we went there. no wait? AWESOME. we pushed a bunch of tables together to accommodate all of us and finally ate around 7:30-ish. after dinner we went back to the hotel and went down to the pool for just a bit, then turned in early.

sunday morning was cold and overcast. i woke up and prayed the clouds would hold out and not dump rain on us, at least not til *after* the run. i had the familiar knots in my stomach that i get before EVERY race, no matter how many times i tell myself that i am just gonna do the best i can and that is all i can do....i still get nervous every.time. met up with audi, dee, and ruby and did our thing. the race went amazingly well, the skies held out and did not rain on us, and it was actually really great running weather. the course was really pretty, and i was pleasantly surprised by the lack of hills....it was a relatively flat course. in spite of my severe lack of preparation, i finished in 2:01:17. i have to credit it to heather's cycling class, as i believe it really helped with my endurance.


in the darkness of pre-race. note my awesome new jacket from the race, a b-day gift from ruby, dee, audi, rhonda and heather!


my most awesome bib ever :)


a sea of runners


audi and i post-race. we keep such great pace together!


team sparkle with our finisher's medals!

after going back to the hotel to shower off the stank, the fam headed over to the Victoria Bug Zoo to check it out. minus my mom who opted out, what a partypooper :) a huge thanks to audi, who suggested it, as we all thoroughly enjoyed it. it was small, but had TONS of really cool bugs, which they tell you all about and then they take most of them out so you can hold them.


nathan holding.....something. i forget what kind of critter this was. a big one, for sure.


sam holding a leaf bug. bizarre how they looked exactly.like. a leaf.


katie and i checking out our fuzzy friend, the tarantula.


this is nathan's fave pic of the trip i think LOL.....i was holding the critter up to get a pic with him and he started trying to climb on my face and it tickled :D


in front of the bug zoo. nathan and sam are missing because halfway through the tour sam said he had to go potty, and nathan said "no way does he have to really go again, i just took him". about a minute later nathan said "i guess he really DID have to go", as sam stood there in a puddle of pee. so he had to run sam back to the hotel to get cleaned up while katie, aus and i finished the tour LOL

after the bug zoo, we went on a tour of Craigdarroch Castle. it was SO impressive....the huge stone architecture, the elaborate woodwork inside, the muraled ceilings.....wow.


the outside. sorry for the washed out, skewed pic.


standing in the entryway looking up. 4 stories of beautiful stairs, railings, banisters and ceilings.


my children on the tour. we received lots of stink-eye from the guides and i'm sure they were breathing a sigh of relief when we left LOL


my mother insisted on this pic. i actually really like it :)


the ceiling in the sitting room.


me.

after the castle we went to dinner at spinnakers on dee's recommendation. this was probably my fave meal of the entire trip, and the atmosphere was great. it's a pub-like setting right on the water and the food was fabulous. they brought me out pumpkin cheesecake with a candle for dessert and my fam (yet again!) sang happy birthday to me. for real this time. cause it really WAS my b-day. then we went back to the hotel and some present opening commenced.



after that my mom offered to watch the kids for a bit so nathan and i could go out for a drink alone. too bad i was soooo tired from the race/being up so early that i needed toothpicks to hold my eyes open by this point. we weren't gone long before we came back to the hotel to turn in for the night.

monday morning dawned clear and sunny. a perfect day for traveling home. the ferry home was gorgeous. what was NOT fabulous was when my daughter started complaining her ear hurt and crying so much that we had to stop at the first drug store when we got off the ferry for some motrin. our first stop upon arriving back in town was to harrison ER. an un-fabulous ending to an otherwise great trip, but at least the ear infection waited til we were almost home. all in all, it was a pretty great trip....and i'm already committed to next years FULL victoria marathon! yikes!

thanks for reading!