san diego: part one

the drive down friday evening was pretty good. weston ended up powering through and driving the entire time, getting us into oceanside at about 4am, MST. this is a shot of a fire in southern utah. we were breathing in smoke for about 10 minutes.once we got settled in and started sleeping, the next thing we knew, that alarm started going off. we headed out for breakfast to meet the olsens! we hadn't seen shireen in what seems like at least a year and we hadn't seen brett in more than 3 years! it was definitely worth waking up after just a bit of sleep :)weston had to keep the bird (blanco) and the cat (kona) separated or who knows what disaster might have ensued! sunday afternoon, we decided to be tourists and tour the point loma lighthouse. erin wanted to use the "distant viewer" to see further out and spy on the sailboats :) of course it took 25 cents, but weston handed over the quarter so we gave it a shot. the timer started ticking away and the view wasn't any better than when you looked at the boats with your own eyes. probably about halfway through the "thirty seconds" the viewer started closing, giving a crescent moon-shaped view of the ocean. lame. this is the old, historic lighthouse. it is now a museum so you can see the rooms as they were left. this is the new lighthouse - bigger and better with much more room for living quarters! here is a picture weston caught of a lizard trying to escape his quick lens :) here we are at the "whaling area." we had ZERO luck trying to spot a whale doing their various whale moves :) so we took a picture of us instead. when we went to the tide pools, there wasn't a whole lot to see. apparently winter is the best time for lower water and better specimen viewing. erin was a bit bummed... but at least we got to see some cool crabs!weston spent some time skateboarding with christian, who is 10 and can heelflip and kickflip :) . Christian and Weston went to MLK Middle School to do some skating. Christian was doing ollies up curbs and even ollied off this bench. He broke the hanger on his board, but then landed the ollie on Weston's board. monday night, carmen went with us to see the bodies exhibit in la jolla. erin loved it - she had all kinds of flashbacks of taking anatomy from dr. shively at uvsc. too bad those 2000+ memorized landmarks and terms are long gone!
we have been doing a MAJOR catch-up on all things harry potter in preparation to see the order of the phoenix wednesday. each day, or night, we have watched at least one dvd to refresh. we are pretty dumb when it comes to harry potter, so we have nerdy conversations about things we caught in this movie or that one and the things that tie from one character to the next. we're a couple of nerds :)