San Diego, CA

We are here with Jessika's family for a little reunion. We are set up in a house right between the beach and the bay. We have a short walk to the beach and even shorter walk to the bay. We arrived here Saturday August 5 after I finished finals on Friday and we'll stay till Saturday the 11th. We have had a lot of fun as Sunday we went to church to the SD 7th ward. It was a really unique building very close to where we were. After sacrament we continued on to the Temple where we took some pictures and shared our testimonies. The temple grounds were beautiful and of course well kept.

Then it was on to the beach. We set up our little area and then took the boogie boards out to the waves. We had a lot of fun with no injuries. That night we started our family fun challenge with a game of Pit. After taking a large lead early on, Karen got a little greedy with the end in sight and started to hold on to the Bull and the Bear which cost her several points. I came charging back to claim the lead and then the victory as time expired.

Monday started out with a nice jog along the bayside. The weather is perfect and very comfortable with nice changes in terrain and scenery. After that we had to get ready to go to the San Diego Zoo! It is an incredible zoo with numerous exotic animals in very unique displays. Our favorite were the polar bears because they were very active. They had a viewing area with a part of it underground so you can see into the water where they swim. There were about 3-4 of them that were jumping on each other and overall enjoying themselves in the water. They kept on swimming up the window and doing some spins or something funny. We also saw the gorilla's but there wasn't a great viewing area. However the monkeys were great because there was a baby one that was still having trouble with coordination. So it's movements were very unpredictable and usually not very successful but still incredibly cute.

Tuesday we wend back to the beach and rented surf boards. We initially only got one rash guard shirt but after I tried to surf without one for about an hour I quickly went back to get one. I was getting tore up. I wasn't very successful getting up but it was fun trying. I only got up a couple of times, but by then I was usually falling already. John is very good. He and Sarah were able to go out together a few times. Caden really liked the ocean but not so much the water. It takes a lot of coercion. But he will go near the water with his little boogey board and sit on it with Grandma. It's really cute. Poor Jackson had a little more difficulty enjoying the ocean because the sand will get in his eyes and mouth. We are using a walker thing for him to stay out of the sand but he doesn't like that very much. We also did football and a sand castle building challenge as part of the family fun challenge. The football game was Sarah, Jessika, and myself vs. Karen, John, and Kirk. After scoring on their first play we had to shut down Kirk's team. We did good by causing a turnover and then stopping them on downs. But we had a lot of trouble getting any yards on our plays. After some rough plays we finally put some together that gave us some success. We almost scored on one drive with a fake short pass and then me going long on a pass from Sarah. After it getting tipped around a some