San Diego!

We got back last night from our awesome trip to San Diego with my family. Jacob and Madelynn are gone to Home Depot, so I have a minute to post, but they also have the camera with them, so pictures will have to come later.

Anyways, we had a wonderful time. We went with my family, it was my mother and ALL of my siblings. We looked at it as our one last trip where we will all be together, but now that I think about it, we did this before Hollie left on her mission too, and here we are able to do it again. For those of you who don't know, Hollie leaves next week to Guatemala where her fiance lives. They are going to be married July 19th (sound familiar.... it is our anniversary too) in the Guatemala Temple. They plan on living down there until they can get visa's to get back into the country, whenever that may be. So it was nice to spend time with her before she leaves.

Also, Ben has his mission papers turned in!!!! We are so excited to find out where he will be serving!!!

So anyway, San Diego was a fluke of a trip that turned out to be so much fun!! We went to Old Town San Diego (I kept calling it Old Town Kern, not as exciting) which was beautiful. Then we went to Balboa Park, some of the group went into the Natural History Museum and said it was awesome, while the rest of us walked around the park and went into the free gardens, which were absolutely beautiful!! Then the next day we went to the Birch Aquarium, which wasn't as exciting as we thought it was going to be, but we went down on the beach for the rest of the day and had a wonderful time.

Madelynn is soooo funny!!! I have so many stories of her from this trip. First of all, she has added so many new words to her vocabulary, the most impressive are yellow and helicopter (copicopter). She will spot a helicopter or airplane and get so excited. Anytime she hears them she looks until she finds it, trains too!! When we were at the beach the lifeguard or military choppers were constantly going by, she pointed out every single one of them!!

We put her bathing suit on her and some water shoes, no diaper. So when she and Jacob were making sand castles, she was squatting and standing up, over and over again. At one point she came over to me and kinda squatted, mostly stuck her hiney out and gave it a little shake. I had no idea what she was trying to do, so in my effort to figure it out I asked her several questions, mostly I thought she needed to go poo! She kept saying no to all of my questions, just kept shaking her hiney. Suddenly the thought came to me, she had a WEDGIE!!!! Her hands were covered in sand so she wouldn't just reach and pull her bathing suit out herself. Anyway, once we got that taken care of, she went back to building her sand castle. Oh, but it was sooooo funny to see her little shake!!!

Another time, when we were in Old Town, we were walking through, and I don't remember what it was called, but there were several vintage houses up a steep hill right across the street from the Mormon Battalion Center. Anyway, they had recently airrated the grass and there were little dirt clods all over that look like doggy turds. We have a dog, Bella, and Madelynn knows what doggy terds are and that we don't step in them. She calls them 'woo-wees'. So, we were walking and suddenly we hear Madelynn in distress. I look over at her and she is frozen in mid walking position not knowing what to do. She is surrounded by 'woo-wees', she wouldn't take a step in any direction in fear of stepping on one. I guess it doesn't quite sound as funny written down.

Madelynn has found a new love for one of her cousins. She and Lizzy were inseperable. Lizzy rode in the car with us and Madelynn was so excited, every now and then she would reach over a give her head a big hug. And when we would be walking around places, Madelynn would want to be holding her hand, it was so cute!!!!