The rest of our CA trip

We made it to the San Diego Zoo while we were in California, and it is such a beautiful place! The very steep ups and downs gave us a nice workout, and the animals were fun to watch. Elijah's favorites were the elephants and the giraffes.



My mom (who is an extremely talented artist) made and framed a colored pencil drawing of a giraffe that is hanging on the wall of the bedroom Elijah and I slept in while we were visiting. Every morning at 4:00, the first words out of his mouth were, "Hi Faffe! Chomp chomp! Fee!" Translated: "Hi Giraffe! Chomp chomp! Tree!" Because of this, his love for the giraffes at the zoo didn't surprise me much. His intense love for elephants was a little bit unexpected.



At the end of our Zoo journey, my mom bought Elijah a stuffed Mama and Baby Elephant. Also, a stuffed Mama and Baby Giraffe. I really had no idea how hard he would fall for these. He has a million stuffed animals at home and has never given them the time of day. (Look how exhausted he looks here.)



The morning after we went to the zoo, the 4:00 Elijah Talking turned into this: "Hi Faffe! Chomp chomp! Fee! Hi Mama Eh-phunt! Arrrrrrr!" Repeat thirty times. He is still, five days later, loving on these stuffed animals big time.



We also spent an afternoon at Seaport Village, down by the ocean, but my camera batteries died so I don't have photos to share from that adventure (therefore still sharing zoo pics). Elijah got to ride on a huge carousel, which happened to completely frighten him for a while before I could convince him to please let go of my neck before he choked me since he was going up and down on a horsey that he was very tightly strapped to.



Then we saw someone standing along the boardwalk randomly dressed up in a Mickey Mouse costume. I had no idea Elijah would be so star struck! He said, "Ickey!" enough times that we went over and said hi to the mouse and we even gave him a high five. While walking back to the car, and for the next fifteen minutes in the car, he said, "BYE ICKEY!" a total of 1,452 times.



We also visited Coronado Island for a bit (camera still dead), which is a very cool little place. San Diego is a BEAUTIFUL city.

Back at my mom's place, we did a lot of relaxing and hanging out and EATING and gazing at the pretty fountain in the parking lot. My mom is in the process of moving, so Elijah became good friends with one of the empty boxes that she hadn't filled up yet. There's that security thing again! Once we put him in the box it was pretty hard to get him back out. Oh, and do you see that little yellow mirror on the floor right behind him? My mom uses it to put on her make-up. Well Elijah seemed to think it was a microphone, so he liked to hold it up to his mouth and sing pretty songs for us. I have no idea where he gets this stuff!



Our vacation went really quickly and before we knew it we were packing up to come back home. I'm hoping we can get out to visit again soon (and this time bring Dan).



The stars didn't align for us on Tuesday morning as we prepared to fly back home. Our flight was delayed two hours because a runway was closed down for construction at the Minneapolis airport.

Then I went to the agent at our gate to get our seats changed since Elijah and I were assigned seats in different rows. The young man with the sparkling personality told me he couldn't help me. I happened to know this was crap, so I asked him again and showed him my 2-year-old little boy. He repeated the same line and this time added, "You can figure it all out once you get on the plane." I was so tired at this point from getting up so stinkin' early every morning that I lost it. I started crying and had to walk away for a bit.

Once on the plane, the flight attendants were appalled that I hadn't been helped at the gate. We then started the most complicated and embarrassing Airplane Shuffle I have ever seen, with a hesitant couple moving here and one guy moving there and another gal moving up there and another couple squeezing in over there. Thank you, Unhelpful Ticket Agent! My wonderful hubby, who is known for sticking up for the people he loves, called the airline the next day and made sure somebody heard what had happened.



Like I said in my last post, Elijah did AMAZINGLY well on both airplane rides. He sat like such a big boy in his seat with his seat belt fastened the ENTIRE FOUR HOURS. I had a handful of people per flight tell me they were amazed at how well-behaved my little boy was. Good job, Elijah!

This weekend is shaping up to be an unexpectedly busy weekend for Elijah and me, and Dan will hopefully be working a bit (while freezing his bum off). I hope everyone has a nice, safe weekend!