Independence Day in San Diego

The day before the 4th, we woke up bright and early, too early. We had been up kind of late the night before attending the Singing Flag and then had to do some last minute packing, showering, etc. I fed Nolan about 3AM, then we transferred a blurry-eyed Reagan to her carseat and headed out. The kids and I slept for a couple of hours at least. Matt downed the Dew and was a sweetheart and drove. We stopped at a Mickey D's somewhere and ate breakfast. After that I drove us to Pasadena. The kids were great until we got there. They slept, looked out the window. We put the styrofoam block from our Bob stroller infant seat adapter behind her carseat so that it tilted back a little bit and she could rest her head back. Probably not cool with the car-seat nazis, but it made her (and us) happy. She didn't even need the DVD player.

We made it to Pasadena and stopped in to say hello to Matt's brother Jeff and his wife Passelly. It was fun to see them and see their place. Jeff is attending law school at USC and he took us on a tour of the campus before we headed out. Matt loves visiting college campuses. We saw a peek at the field that the football team practices on.

Here we are, our USC tour guide leading the way. Jeff and Selly had some college friends there for the weekend as well. And Jeff bought Reagan a popsicle from one of the street carts, thanks Uncle Jeff!

After our stop in LA, we headed on down to San Diego. Since it was the night before the 4th, many people were traveling and we got stuck in a TON of traffic. Me and traffic do not mix well, but I held onto a good attitude. The kids were a little fussy at this point, can't blame them. We finally rolled into Jenn's house in Del Mar and it was so good to see my friends!!!!!

After washing up a bit, we hopped back in the cars and headed to downtown San Diego to see the Padres play the Dodgers. This was a cool game because A) it was Manny's first game back since his steroid suspension and we all came up with some fun slogans regarding him and a pregnancy:

Matt: "Manny's pregnant!"

Jenn: "Looks like Manny is starting to show a bit."

Nick and Lori: "Manny, the test came back positive!"

Reason B) we had some pretty cool seats. They were all you can eat hot dogs, nachos, soda, popcorn and ice cream. Dude, we CHOWED down. I think I totalled two hot dogs, a nacho, two sodas, and a klondike bar. It was a calorie fest, but I am not one to turn down free food. Thanks Lori and Nick for the tickets!! You guys are the best :)

Here is Manny up on the billboard. Sadly, there were thousands more Dodger fans than Padre fans here, despite it being in San Diego.

Reagan ate two things of popcorn. Dodger fans can be really really annoying, too.

Here are the girlies. We had some annoying Dodger fans behind us, have I mentioned how many Dodger fans were there??

Petco Park was really cool. I grew up going to Padre games at Jack Murphy Stadium (now Qualcomm...I think) so this was my first time here. It is new and beautiful and in typical San Diego fashion, there were lots of palm trees adorning the outside. Loved it!

Reagan got to spend some time with Layla, Jenn's darling little gal.
Jenn made some princess cupcakes for Reagan's birthday and the girls had a good time eating the tops off the cupcakes.
Oh, this was hilarious. One of the cupcakes had a little tiara on it and so we cleaned it up and put it in Reagan's hair, AFTER we had clipped some of Jenn's hair extensions on her and told her to pose. It was funny and scary all that same time, because it just SCREAMED "pageant, stage-mom."

(Ironically enough, I saw a commercial on TLC channel the other night of a show called "Toddlers & Tiaras" Some reality thing. It looked disgusting, and reminded me in a hilarious fashion of this photo--all done in good fun)

We woke up early on the morning of the 4th and had breakfast at one of my favorite southern California places, Pipes. Then we headed to Torrey Pines beach, which is literally a minute from Jenn's place. I would love to live that close to the beach!

It was crowded, but Lori and I scoped out a decent place.

Me, Jenn, and Lori. I am still working on that postpartum pooch thing.

Matt and Reagan spend almost the entire time building their very own "sound wall." OK, not really a sound wall, but Reagan did explain to me that it was to keep the water out.

The water was too cold for me (or most of us) to swim in and we all got some good sun, Nick getting the worst of it. We ate authentic Mexican food (aka, the REAL stuff) from Roberto's for lunch and headed home a little while later.

We went to possibly the best fireworks show I have ever seen that night, in La Jolla Cove. I like this place, as this is where Matt and I had our wedding photos taken the day we got married. The place was packed in a way that you just pray there are no fires, since no one would probably escape. But the show was worth it. A live band played while the fireworks went off and they were RIGHT above us and huge and loud. The finale was amazing. I can still hear the loud pops. Traffic took us about an hour and a half to get out of.

Reagan looked like this the entire time. She didn't take her eyes off the sky once. Nolan slept through most of it.

We always love heading to San Diego, it will always feel like home to me. Even though it was a quick trip, we had so much fun. Thank you Jenn for letting us crash at your place!!