Tag Archives: Michael

Birthday at the Aquarium of the Pacific

For Mike’s 4th birthday, we decided to visit the Aquarium of the Pacific, where the boys both looked forward to seeing the sharks. I bought the tickets via Goldstar, but realized only the night before that the tickets only allowed us entry in the afternoon, to visit during the last three hours of the day. Bummer — the difference in discount versus the corporate sites I had access to was a measly 50 cents. We had a good time regardless, but I’d pay the extra 50 cents next time so that we could go when we want and stay as long as we want. Ah well, you live and you learn.

Mmm, crab. Pretty sure we saw this guy near the entrance.
We had been waiting for my brother, and my boys pretty much threw themselves at him when they saw he was here.
We made a beeline for the outdoor attractions because we’d gotten to the Aquarium late. Check out Mikey’s face.
Chris and that finger.
Penguins!
Chris, Mike and some strange man agog at the penguins swimming underwater.
Mike on my brother’s shoulders at the shark tank. It was annoying how all these gigantic adults were basically blocking all the kids from seeing the sharks when we got there.
Mike’s face here is priceless!
Sharks! They’d been looking forward to seeing sharks all week.
Mike hugging a ginormous penguin statue.
Chris being nice to the little penguin statue.
Jellyfish!
Nemo and Dory!
This kid has a million dollar smile.
Chris found Nemo!
A rare picture of me looking not horrible.
Colorful fish
Stingrays always look as if they have happy faces.
More crab.
That would be a rock fish. You can barely tell its a fish.
A type of seahorse that basically looks like seaweed.
Like I mentioned, we got to the Aquarium pretty late, so Chris had only had a short nap in the car, so he was understandably tired toward the end of our visit. Or was he? He “barnacled” himself to my brother’s girlfriend Kat as if he was soooo tired, but later gave us a smirk as if, “yeah, I got the girl!” What a sly fox…
Our Strawberry Festival adventure began with a 20-minute bus ride from the Camarillo Outlets. It was the boys’ first time riding “loose,” aka, without being strapped into a car seat. Chris was very concerned at the experience.
Mike, on the other hand, had a ball riding loose.
It took us a while to find the main attraction from the entrance from which we entered. But finally, we found our desired destination — the food booths.
There were so many food booths, it was a little difficult to decide what to partake in first. First thing we did was eat chicken skewers — which are not pictured because we ate them right away.
When we first walked into the festival, we ignored a couple of strawberry smoothie booths because we didn’t want to be spending too much time at the porta potties. Finally, we gave in and the smoothies were SO GOOD.
Mike playing with the hay from the bales we were sitting on.
It was early, so there weren’t as many lines here.
I really want to know the recipe.
Strawberry pizza was basically pastry bread cut into a triangle, topped with cut strawberries and lots of whipped cream.
Mike and Chris were all smiles when they saw it, but…
…all they wanted to eat were the strawberries…
…and the whipped cream.
Basically, they left me to eat all the strawberry pizza.
We partook in some of the free kiddy rides. Again, Chris is concerned.
Mike really enjoyed the plane ride.
He enjoyed it so much, he didn’t want to get off, so they rode it a second time.
Chris got into it a little…
…but he was mostly concerned.
Later, we got strawberry nachos and strawberry snow cone. The strawberry nachos were really good — crispy cinnamon sugar chips, topped with strawberries and whipped cream, of course.
By about 1 p.m., Chris was acting quite crazy because of fatigue and he passed out on my shoulder as we waited for the shuttle back to the outlets.
Mike passed out in his bed.
Chris passed out in his crib. I think he even slept an extra hour.

Another birthday week, come and gone

Every year, when my birthday rolls around, I feel its a good time for Trinity and I to take time off work. Pre-kids, it might mean a vacation — like the week we went up the coast to check out Hearst Castle and the Monterey Aquarium — but now that we have kids, it means staying home while the boys are at daycare.

Mama's birthday!

My birthday happened to fall on Memorial Day this year, so we of course stayed home and fired up the barbecue. Later in the day, after the boys had napped and we had our big lunch, we went to Barnes and Noble and bought Mike some new Dr. Seuss books.

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The year began with a blowout

I haven’t blogged in 20 days. Sorry! But, for good reason. I’ll get to that in a minute.

But, yes, literally, the year began with a blowout. We were on the way to church, when the front passenger-side tire (the one right under me; Trinity was driving) of my car blew out on New Year’s Day, Mikey’s 2nd birthday. It was a bit terrifying at the time — I did freeze up a bit, but we were able to get a AAA tow out there to get a donut on, and we continued on to church. Trinity took the car to Wal-Mart, where he got me four new tires (we knew they needed replacing and had been stalling until we had more money…).

Oh, but that wasn’t it. It was Mikey’s birthday of course, so we had plans to take him to Chuck E. Cheese. He was so excited to play, we could barely get him to eat anything. After not having any nap and a full day of hard playing, he looked like this:

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