Absence

... makes the heart grow fonder. Right? Well then I've succeeded. :) I've finally gotten around to posting. Been meaning to all week, but it's just kinda taken a backseat to everything else! We had a fantastic time in California last weekend. La Jolla was absolutely beautiful. Our hotel room had a great ocean view and we were about a block from the beach.

Our hotel was also just down the street from the "Rodeo Drive" of San Diego ... pinkies up, people. The little boutiques and galleries were very cool, but just a tad bit out of our price range. You know it's bad when the "sale price" of the item is equal to your house payment - and that item is a scarf. No thanks. We decided that the area was absolutely gorgeous - we drooled for a while over some of the homes, and played the "If we win the lottery, we'll take THIS one" game for quite some time, but we're a bit more hip on the open air bars/surf-n-turf restaurants that we could just walk into off the beach. Cam, however, was in heaven - the Bentley's, Maserati's, and Ferrari's were in full force. All weekend. We spent Friday evening in Mission Beach and hit one of our favorite little restaurants for dinner. It's right on the ocean and it was fantastic. Saturday was a killer! We were up early and hit the Birch Aquarium. It was a great change from Sea World. :)

They had quite the array of saltwater fish, sharks and our new family favorite ... sea dragons. If we still had our fish tank, we decided we'd get some of these. They were so mythical looking, they almost looked fake.

We walked around the North La Jolla area after that, hit some surf shops, walked to the beach and then headed over to Coronado Island. This was the first time I had been over there and loved it. It was so beautiful and it really made me feel like we were on vacation. We did some shopping, had a great lunch - and some afternoon cocktails - at a Mexican restaurant and headed over to the skate park. One of Cameron's skate instructors told us about the skate park located just underneath the bridge to the island. It was one of the nicest parks we'd been to, and it was such a great environment. We were right next to the beach and were able to watch all the boats on the water while Cam was skating. It was a gorgeous afternoon - a nice break from the triple digits in Arizona - so Bryan and I kicked back with our coffees and just relaxed!

Here are a few pictures of Cam skating. Just so you know - we don't DARE leave home without the skate gear. His list of park conquests is growing rapidly!





We left Coronado and headed back into San Diego for some more shopping ... nothing like having your son walk around with his pants to his knees because he forgot his belt. That was top on our list. Got back to our hotel and decided to walk around for a while, although I'm not sure that was a good idea - our feet were so tired! We had a great Father's Day breakfast at the cafe at the Museum of Contemporary Art - here's a pic of Daddy and son. (Bryan wasn't real fond of this picture, I thought it was great, so I included it. Shhhhh. Not sure how often he checks this, but hopefully you see it before he does and it is "accidentally" deleted from the blog.)

When Cam was in California with Mike and Denise, he did a little shopping in Disneyland. He found what he thought to be the most hilarious (and I agree) "gift" for Bryan for Father's Day. Grandma thought one that said "Dad" would be more appropriate, but Cam was thinking more along the lines of a joke. So ... he purchased the accessory below. For Bryan's truck. Cam snuck this in his backpack, hoping to "surprise" Bryan with it on Father's Day. We took my car last weekend on our trip, and he was extremely disappointed when he realized there is no antenna. So, we had to wait until we got home before he could put it on. Bryan thought it was funny, but decided to take it off before he left for work Monday morning. He didn't think it would be all that funny driving into the Prison complex to deliver while sporting this "bling" ... :)

Kind of a random picture, but I loved it. This church was across the street from our hotel also, and was gorgeous.

That was about it! After fartin' around for a bit in La Jolla, we headed home. It was a short trip, and we added quite a bit to our "to-do-list" for future trips when we have a little bit more time.
But ... It was nice to get away even for the short time!