California Birthday Bash- Part 2

After Grandma's party, we headed over to her ocean house to spend some more time with family.  It was the six of us, plus my mom and dad, Jeremy's family, and Josh's family... 8 adults and 11 children, which made for one noisy and happy house!  Here are my parents with all the grandkids (minus Andrew... sorry, we missed you, buddy).

The next day was Sunday and we miraculously were ready AHEAD of time for church (not my fault ;-).  Since we had a little extra time, we headed over to the beach, which was only a couple blocks away from the place we were staying.

Ethan was determined to see how close he could get to the waves without getting wet.

We all know how well that was going to work!

Thankfully he wasn't too wet.  Here's Josiah hanging out in the baby carrier, taking it all in.

We saw lots of friends and family at church that morning.  Sunday evening we headed over to my cousin Renee's house.  Let me tell you, we had such a pleasant evening with her and Jason and all the kiddos!  It was so good to catch up a bit, to encourage one another, and have the kids play together.  I just wish we could do it more often!  (No pics though!)

On Monday, we made the trek down to San Diego.  Beautiful drive!  After a quick stop at Jeremy and Kathy's place to rest and recharge, we headed over to the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier named for a critical WWII battle.  

The kids had fun looking at the different parts of the ship and trying their hand at knot tying (thankfully, they have a daddy who can teach them!).

They even got to earn their wings:

As you can see, Verity's not so sure about this guy.  He was really sweet and helpful though.

After the Midway, we got to spend some time with Jeremy and Kathy.  Unfortunately, I was sick for most of it, but it was still nice to hang out (we forgot to take pictures again!).  We enjoyed pizza and ice cream together, and then stayed up late chatting.  While we were at their house, Micah lost his first tooth!

Thank you, Jeremy and Kathy, for letting us crash at your place and for taking such good care of us!

The next day, we went to the San Diego Zoo!  We got there later than we intended since I was not feeling well, but we still really enjoyed our day.  The highlight of the trip for me was this little guy (can you guess what he is?):

It's called a pangolin, which was an animal that we had read about in a couple of our books.  It was so cool to see it for real!  We also got to see a serval, which was featured in a National Geographic Magazine for Kids... again, very cool to see! 

The zoo is pretty spread out, but thankfully we were able to ride the bus so we could see more of the zoo.  

We saw leopards, jaguars, and lions from the bus (which Ethan loved!) as well as...

 ... meerkats, a polar bear, a tapir, and four crazy Kolmuses riding a bronze hippo :-).  

Ethan's favorite, by far, was the tiger!  Actually, Ethan's love of tigers and big cats was one of the main reasons we decided to come down to the zoo in the first place.  He was so excited!

We really had a great time in San Diego!