imagining myself back to sunny SoCal...

The weather here has turned from kinda-nice to completely-gross, with sky so dark it looks like twilight, pouring rain, and booming thunder. And the temperature has dropped about 30 degrees (or more) since two days ago. blah.

Therefore, I will blog about my vacation, which was a month ago and therefore needs to be refreshed in cyber-memory. :-)

The weather was gorgeous...

I visited the LaBrea tar pits for the first time. They are super weird..and you can totally see how animals got stuck. It looks like just a mud puddle, until the creepy tar bubbles start oozing out.
Ground sloths (shown actual size!) are one of many species now extinct whose bones have been found in the tar pits. can you imagine these things wandering around southern california?

We went whale watching and saw thousands of dolphins. they were so fun, playing in the wake, joyriding along the front of the boat, and generally just being dolphin-y.

we also saw lots of sea lions lounging around--on the back of boats, on buoys, on anything they could find to lounge on. On the other side of this buoy was one sea lion who was clearly swimming around going "when is it my turn? come on, guys, you said we could swap out...let me up!"

Max engaged in the ever popular rolling-down-a-hill activity. Good times! much giggling ensued.

Of course we visited the Land of Mickey....

I did not ride the teacups, as they make me want to vomit. We did, however, ride basically everything else in both Disneyland and California Adventure. There were very few lines, and Max is tall enough for everything except California Screamin'...he even got to ride Indiana Jones for the first time (and second time!). Indy is still my favorite ride in the park. Space Mountain is a close second. And I rode the Matterhorn for the first time in 24 years and it was not as rough/jerky as I remembered--it was hilarious. At every ride, we would ask Max who he wanted to ride with and he always said "I want to ride with Teri!" oh yeah. :-)
We played in the Bugs Life water area when it got hot...immediately after which, he was freezing. LOL.

We visited the San Diego Zoo twice (the benefits of membership!), so I got to see all the pandas. yay!
Bai Yun loves her some bamboo....we're hoping she's preggers again and there might be a new zoobaby this summer!

Gao Gao almost always has his back to the crowd when I'm there...munching away.

Yun Zi has gotten so big--he's a real grown up panda now. he had some treats and was looking to see if there were any more. delish!

of course, there are also other animals at the zoo. (LOL)
baby hippo! mom was pushing him around the floor of the tank, then up to breathe, then around to "swim"...it was hilarious.

it was bird mating season...the ducks were insane, and the peacocks were strutting their stuff in full regalia.

Max appears to be peahen colored...luckily, the peacock still saw a difference between a girly bird and a 6 year old. :-)

Aside from all the incredible food (which I ate too fast to take pictures of...nomnomnom) and the fun conversations had with my fam (including some very intense conversation about various games for the iPod), that pretty well sums up my awesome vacation. Loved it! :-)