California! Home Sweet Home

To celebrate Mark finishing school and getting his Masters degree we decided to go to California! It was such a Hallelujah time for us! Mark is a super diligent, hard worker in everything he does and school is no exception. He managed to work full time and get a scholarship for graduate school...not to mention it was during tax season!!! Mark was good in that he always tried to find and make quality time for us a few times each week but it was a rough few months of me feeling like a single parent. I love the picture above because Conner was just so happy to have his daddy around! I second his smile because I was super happy to have him around as well!

I found a coupon online for tickets to Sea World that are the same price as a single day entry! I swear that you should never buy anything without checking for a coupon or discount code first.

We were wondering how Conner would like Sea World. He's a definite animal lover but his attention span in next to nothing. We decided to do the "One Ocean" show with the killer wales. Conner was a little restless as we were waiting but as soon as the first wale jumped out of the water he was GLUED! He kept doing the sign language for more and saying "more please". (He's stopped using all his other sign as his vocabulary has grown but for some reason he still signs more)

Every time that the dolphins swam by Conner would have his face pressed against the window and cheer and as soon as the dolphin swam away he'd turn to us and say "where go?" is a really sad voice.

So the craziest thing happened when we were watching the killer whales in their tank! It was during feeding time so the trainers were tossing in troves of fish and one of the bigger whales decided he would rather eat bird than fish, so he would spit his fish into the air to lure a big white ingrid in (I think that was the name of the bird). Well after a little while doing this one of the birds took the bait and dove down to get the bird and the whale just jumped out of the water and snatched the bird. Then it got a little graphic at that point as they fought over the bird and ripped it's limbs apart!! A lady standing by us got teary eyed and ran out from the observation deck saying "that's horrible". Conner on the other hand thought it was awesome and loved watching them eat it and play with their food.

I LOVE boogies boarding!! I've tried surfing a couple times and the only time I've had much success is on a long board. Maybe someday I'll return to my roots and live in California so that I can learn how to surf for real! We spent hours every day out boogie boarding. It was really nice because our condo was right on the beach so we could put Conner down for his nap and go out and ride the waves and check on him periodically. My family always laugh at me because I like to say I'm from California :) I WAS born in Redondo Beach California but we moved within a year of me being born. I like to say "you can take the girl out of California but you can't take California out of the girl). There's someone about the sounds of the ocean and playing in the waves that just turns the rest of the world off.

Unfortunately we couldn't let Conner get in the waves much because of his tubes in his ears. I tried to put in ear plugs but he wasn't having that! Luckily he can get in the pool as much as he wants just not the ocean :( He could play in the sand and throw shells and rocks on the beach all day long!

 

We spent a lot of time in the pool and by the end of the vacation Conner was fearless. Too fearless! He would just go run and jump into the water without anyone around and pop right back up with his floaties. It still scares me though because sometimes he gets stuck in weird positions so it's important that someone is always there. 

This is the other place we went to at least 4-5 times a day!!! The complex we stayed in had an awesome pond and he was obsessed with the fishes. Usually the first thing out of his mouth every morning when he woke up was "fishies eat now, fishies eat now"