Saturday, June 28, 2008

Baby William

I finally got to meet my new nephew on Tuesday. He has bright blue eyes and chubby cheeks. Isn't he cute?




I'm pretty sure I'm his favorite aunt. Even though he slept through most of my visit.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Some day...

when I have a house of my own, I want a waterfall in my yard with lots of beautiful flowers.






Sea World...again

Not even Alyssa can believe it.

Last week I decided to take a couple days off to relax after graduation. One of those days we went to Sea World. I have been having way too much fun with my camera lately, so I have lots of new pictures to share. When we first arrived we went to the dolphin show. They even jumped for joy because they were so excited to see us again. (Ha, ha, ha) To celebrate, they decided to drench us in 60 degree salt water. It was...refreshing.
Then we were off to go see the penguins. The lights were dimmed inside because it is winter in the southern hemisphere right now. In Antartica, it is dark most of the time during their winter months. Sea World tries to keep a similar atmosphere in their artificial exhibit. So that meant no pictures inside, but don't worry I got a picture of Miss Alyssa outside by the penguin statue.
Next we went to Wild Arctic, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite places at Sea World. The ride is fun and it's always nice and cool inside, which is especially nice during the summer time. ;o) The cool animals they have there also keeps things interesting.
Alyssa got a little surprised while looking around in the polar bear cave. I think she may have heard one coming. ;o)
Cirque de Lamer... I mean Cirque de La Mer was next on our list. I am always amazed at the neat tricks the performers can do.
What is Sea World without Shamu? So we had to check out his show.
The we went to one of the aquariums where we saw jellyfish. Every time I see them I think of the part of Finding Nemo where Marlin and Dory run into a bunch of them. Bad Squishy. If you don't know what that means, watch the movie, it's very entertaining. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.
We had some extra time before the night time shows started so we went and saw the new 4D movie. Aren't the glasses super cool? I'm sure you're totally jealous.
The night shows finally came and we saw Ignight, the newest show at Dolphin Stadium. I thought the fire was a nice touch but it was a little scary since we were sitting in the very back and could still feel the heat when the fire started.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Idina Menzel

Friday night Katy & I went and saw Idina Menzel in concert. It was so much fun!

Before the concert, we went out to dinner in the Gaslamp district of San Diego. It was nice but I decided that I hate all of the one way streets that are there! It was such a pain. After that we drove over to Humphrey's By The Bay, which is where the concert was. We walked around by the bay and looked at all the sail boats. It was really beautiful.

There was an opening act before Idina came on. It was two guys, one sang and the other played violin. The guy singing did ok but I thought the guy playing the violin did a great job. After they finished it was another 30 minutes before Idina came on.

I really enjoyed the show she put on when she came out. She told a lot of stories and was very funny. Her husband, Taye Diggs, was there and it was funny how she would alternate between acknowledging he was in the audience and pretending like she had no clue. At one point she was giving him a hard time for not bringing her flowers and then when someone made a comment about how he should come up and sing with her, she said that would be impossible since he wasn't there.

She also talked about her time as a wedding singer before she made it on Broadway. She had a lot of funny stories to tell about that but I'm sure they weren't as much fun when she was actually living them. She talked about how one time she was singing at a reception when one of the guests had a heart attack. She automatically stopped singing but one of the members of the band told her that she had to keep singing, so she did until the bride started yelling at her. She said immediately after that she made her way over to the dessert table and started stuffing her face. I'm guessing if I had been in the same situation I would have done the same thing. She also commented on how funny it was that the most common song that was requested for weddings was Saving All My Love For You. It was funny because the song is about having an affair. Go figure. Her advice was that everyone actually listen to the lyrics of the song before making it the song for their first dance as husband and wife.

Anyway, the conert was great and I'm so glad I went. Check out the pictures below of all the fun! :o)






Tuesday, June 17, 2008

College Graduation

So I finally graduated. Can you believe it? I'm sure my family and coworkers are really happy that I won't keep reminding them exactly how many days left until my graduation. To be honest, I did it even more when I found out it driving my Dad and Doug nuts! Sorry guys. ;o)

It was really HOT at the ceremony but it went well. The speakers were interesting and they kept it fairly short. The student who spoke compared life to a game of chess. We may makes decisions in life and we can't always for see what is going to come next. But once it's done it's done and we have to see what we can do from there. The second person that was supposed to speak decided not to show up at the last minute but the person they got to take her place did a great job! He talked about how important it is in life to have a plan B. At the graduation, he was plan B, he took over when plan A didn't work out. He then went on and gave examples of how throughout his life, his plans hadn't worked out but plan B had and it may have even turned out better. One of the best examples he gave was when he was in college he thought he wanted to be a Byzantine historian. He went to go talk to his counselor and she was telling him that she thought it was a great idea and then she told him all of the languages he would have to learn; Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, German, Arabic, Romanian, and the list just kept going. In the end, he became an English historian and found that he liked it just as well.

Anyway, It's such a relief to be done. I'm sure that there will be things that I will miss about college. I will miss learning new ideas and listening to my professors tell crazy stories. But I won't miss studying for midterms, writing papers, or driving back and forth to Riverside!!!


Here are some pictures of the big day!






Sunday, June 8, 2008

Oceanside

I spent the day yesterday in Oceanside. It's been a while since I've been down there and it made me realize how much I've missed the beach. The weather was absolutely beautiful! The sun was shining and there a nice breeze. I'm glad that I went but I'm definitely wishing I had brought sun screen. It's probably a bad sign that when I first walked into church today the first thing someone said to me was ouch. I had only planned on being at the beach for about an hour but then we ended up staying for 4 hours. Oh well. It was still fun. Enjoy the pictures. :o)

The Pier
The view of the beach from the pier. The red circle is around my group of friends on the beach.



Me and Sara on the pier before we got sun burned. ;o)

A lone surfboard. The surfer fell off right as I was taking the picture.

I love the pink cottages. I have some great memories of vacations spent there.