giving thanks at surf

I am a little slow in getting this posted, but I wanted to document our recent adventure to San Diego. My little sister #1 (whom Baby G calls, "Hah") was playing in the Surf Cup soccer tournament there over Thanksgiving so our little family tagged along for the fun. We all piled into the motorhome (or "bus" as Baby G says) and away we went.

Thank goodness for 3 little sisters to entertain the babe during the L-O-N-G ride. Baby G loves his "Ray-Ray" (little sister #3) and she is so good about keeping him occupied.When he wasn't strapped in, Baby G took control of the bus himself. Since it is a rather large vehicle and he is a rather small human it required all 4 of his limbs to control.
Our first full day there we ran to the airport to pick up J (he had to work that morning so he flew out to meet us) and then headed to Sea World where we re-discovered that the baby is still fond of live aquatic creatures, and is still not particulary fond of machine creatures that move while he is in them.

Fond:
the rays
the manatee
(Yes I know, this one is not real. But it looked real and didn't move and that makes all the difference.)Ray-Ray riding the bucking manatee.Not fond:
a freaky zebra-elmo-pig mix that moved around and up and down

He started out okay on this one...

...but once it got going he changed his mind.

Baby G lucked out because he did not meet the height requirement for this ride. He would've hated it.

The next day (Thanksgiving) we went to Knott's Berry Farm (the photo of us riding the log ride--where Baby G looks scared out of his mind--from a few posts back is from this day). We stayed there until dark and then drove back a couple of hours so we could eat Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant by our hotel. Big mistake. Everything was closed. If you must know, we found a grocery store that was open and we all got to go in and pick out whatever "feast" we could find to take back and cook in our hotel room kitchen. I had margherita pizza on flat bread in the microwave oven and it was awesome.

Knott's:
Little sister #2 ("Maa-ee" as Baby G would say) and J switched one shoe each.

"Maa-ee" loves to take care of Baby G and would hold him all day if she could.

And you would all be sad if I didn't include another photo to show just how much Baby G loved all the rides.

But immediately after he would be fine and come out saying, "Gain, gain!" because he wanted to torture himself again.

Beach:
The highlight of the trip for Baby G was the beach because A) it had "wah-wah" and live aquatic creatures, and B) it did not have any machine creatures that moved. What follows is about eleventy billion pictures from the beach, mostly of the baby 'cause he's cute.

We had lots of fun and are grateful to "Hah" for having soccer tournaments in such fun locations and to my parents for letting us crash their party. We're free to do it again at any time.