Friday Part 2

Friday afternoon we travelled across the Coronado Peninsula to the beach.

In beautiful Mid-Michigan, the high temperatures are in the 80s and 90s…I’ve been told, but haven’t experienced, that Lake Michigan is really warm…the water temperature is up in the 70s.  Everytime we've been there it’s been glacial….

The Pacific Ocean was doing it’s best impression of frigid Lake Michigan Friday afternoon….I think the water temperature was about 61 degrees, and, with no sun because of the cloudy marine layer, it was one damn cold day in the ocean.

It doesn’t matter how cold the water is…you can’t stop Matthew from boogie-boarding

Attacking waves, keeping seaweed at bay (and there was a ton of it….to get out to where the waves weren’t breaking right on top of us we had to walk through seaweed that was from the seafloor up to our knees)

Yes, it’s cold. 

Mom’s smarter than all of us; that’s about as far as she went into the water

Not a lot of shells here….

you still can’t stop him from boogie-boarding…

After going back to the hotel and warming up, we took the ferry over to downtown San Diego and had dinner at Horton Plaza.  Walked down through the Gaslamp Quarter and past Petco Park to the Convention Center to take the ferry back over to Coronado.  Saw some fireworks at the end of the Pops Concert; we happened to be at the top of the stairs at the Convention Center when they started going off so we had a great view.

A long day, but a good one.

Travel and Coronado

Thursday:  Vacation starts.  A lot of last minute things to do….get dogs to kennel (Christopher comes with me for this early morning run….as always, I forget the dogs blankets and bedding.  I can’t even begin to total the number of times I’ve done that…). 

Wait…the first thing that happens is that as the cats return to the house after a night on the town, they are collared and sent to the basement.  We’ve left before with a cat outside; it’s not a good thing, so, we’ve adopted this approach (since they do all come in between 6 and 8) and it works pretty well (except when Stupid Dad forgets to reopen the basement door and the cats starve down there…..

So, we leave for Flint a little before noon. Have to detour around an accident on the interstate so the trip takes a little longer but we arrive an hour before flight time.  Check the bags, get to the gate, volunteer to be bumped (nope!), board the plane, and away we go.  I’m sitting with Matthew, Christopher is across the aisle with Mom, and Kevin is a row behind on the aisle.  Flight is uneventful and soon enough we are in Atlanta. 

Board flight to San Diego after getting dinner….this trip I’m in the exit row with Kevin and Mom and the boys are way at the back of the bus.  Tell Kevin that he has to say he is 16 (you really only need to be 15 to be in an exit row, but, figured he’s tall enough to go a year older) if asked…but, as the do the safety briefing, they don’t ask.  OK…he looks older I guess…

As the flight attendant comes back through the cabin as we are taxiing out, she stops, pokes Kevin, asks his age.  Kevin says 16, she goes….

“ok…had to ask, you really do have a baby face”

she walks off and I start laughing……and that’s been a catchphrase on this vacation…

Not much more to report from the trip; get to San Diego, get the car, make a stop at Roberto’s (in this case, a knock-off called Rolando’s) for some cheese quesadilla snacks and off to Coronado Island for the next three nights.

Friday Part One:  We’re staying at the Marriott resort on Coronado Island…we’ve never stayed over here on our trips to San Diego so, hey, something new.

I guess the first item of business to discuss is the weather…it’s cold here, the temp is hovering around 70 degrees and the marine layer of clouds isn’t burning off until about 1 pm.  So, the first trip to the pool is an unpleasant realization that the water is going to be cold for most of this trip.

The smartest of the bunch…touched the water and declared that she had no intention of going in…

     

while the other two boys did their thing, Christopher spent more time hanging around me.  So, he has more pictures taken than any of the other boys.  The inflatable raft was at the pool when we got there; the boys took turns riding it and getting dunked off of it.

  

Kevin before he jumped in….I know this because if it had been after he would be out of the pool with his arms wrapped around himself…

Matthew spent most of his time in the pool playing with the football that was also left in the pool.  We had a good time playing catch and he wanted the balls thrown to him to be ‘hard’ so that he had to dive for them…

Kevin on his phone at the hotel room….

I’ll do the rest of Friday and all of Saturday later…

Pre-Vacation Post

I’m behind again….but, didn’t feel like ponying up for internet in Coronado so waited until we got up here to Newport Beach.

Coming Soon:  Thursday travel post; Friday Hotel and Beach post, Saturday Kevin Paragliding Post and Sunday’s trip to La Jolla.

but first…a sports update.

Christopher:  Football practice continues….they held a scrimmage the last day before we left and Christopher was exclusively on the line.  He’s tentative…there is a lot to learn and he’s always been a kid who picks it up slowly, but once he gets it he gets it.  The biggest challenge for him right now is staying low in his stance and firing off the ball.  We are working on his three-point stance while on vacation trying to get him used to the right position.

getting ready for a tackling drill….he’s 64 near the front…

Kevin:  Had his first JV-tennis match on Wednesday before we left….he’s playing #2 doubles with Andrew, who he played with in the earlier scrimmage.  They won there match against St. Johns 6-4, 6-2 and the team won 5-3 (all of the singles and Kevin’s doubles won…the rest of the doubles teams lost).  A good start for Kevin…still a little concerned that this vacation is going to hurt him but we’ll see. Kevin has beat the kid playing #2 singles for the JV team the last two times out in practice so I can’t think he’s going to slide too far while he’s gone.

Christopher’s Nintendo Visions

After pulling pictures from the boys Itouch’s I realized that I needed to go back and pull off the pictures they have accumulated on their Nintendo DSi’s. 

Christopher had about 463 photos….these are the ones I decided to rename and keep in our files for the rest of time….and post here for your amusement.

 

A series of self-portraits with his little brother hamming it up as well

 

The flower looks better here than on Christopher

There were at least 20-30 pictures of Pokemon stickers…I only saved one of them

You can add some effects and do editing on the DSi.  Christopher loves him some Wiley.

This picture was a new one on me; the boys have collected Madison and placed her inside of Wiley’s crate in the basement….

Liked this edit as well…

 

A dog, relaxing in the front yard

When I downloaded the photos I lost a lot of the dates and they didn’t come out in order.  I think these two might be the most recent photos of the bunch and were taken on the boys journey with Grandma and Gramps to Florida Caverns

There was a smattering of photos from Hawaii…I think most of these are from the day we took the Road To Hana

   

That kid cracks me up!

 

There were a few pictures of stuffed animals posed on his bed

And at least 100+ pictures of pictures of Taylor Swift….