Whale Watching Tour, Boogie Boarding, Fried, Vacation Days 8&9, Baseball, Youth Conference, High Adventure Park, 4th of July, Grand Prize Winner

The day after the San Diego Zoo we had a whale watching tour booked.  Seeing as how well I DIDN’T do on the ka-YACK-ing tour I graciously bowed out of this activity.  I don’t think I would have handled the tour AT ALL.  Aaron and the kids agreed.  So I made sure they all took some Bonine which is some motion sickness medication that is equivalent to Dramamine and saw them off on their drive over to the marina to get on the boat for their tour.  After they left I grabbed a beach chair, jacket, and a good book walked out the AirB&B front door and parked myself on the beach for 4 hours.  What I failed to grab was some sunscreen, though.  DOH!!  However, I thoroughly enjoyed my view while reading my book and occasionally people watching.  It was a gorgeous day!!

Here’s the kids getting ready to board the boat:

Aaron forgot to bring some sunscreen as well.  So if they weren’t looking at anything on the deck they went inside the boat and watched from the window so they wouldn’t get sunburned.  Here’s the view from the window:

Make note how CLEAN the window is in the above picture at the beginning of the whale watching tour.  As the boat left the harbor the waves got BIG.  Aaron texted me this video and we both agreed I made the right choice by not coming along on this tour.  Even watching the video makes me want to ka-YACK--haha!

As the boat traveled out into the ocean they saw TONS of dolphins who swam right alongside the boat.  Daniel captured them on a video, but Blogger won’t download it.  Here’s some pictures from the video, though:

Here’s one from the inside window:

As you can see a lot of passengers were getting sea sick because the window is not as clear as it was in the beginning of the tour--ewwww!  Daniel thought it was raining at one point, but then figured out that the moisture ‘raining’ down on the window was from some sea sick passengers on the top deck.  The right hand corner of the picture shows a regurgitated tomato chunk that didn’t stay down from someone on the top of the boat.  Bleh!

However, their efforts were rewarded.  They were able to see a HUGE blue whale.  A blue whale is about two to  three times longer than an average city bus if you can believe it!!  Aaron and the kids even got to see it’s tail flip out of the water which the captain said NEVER happens. Here’s the tail:

Here’s the whale spouting:

I kept tabs on them while I was reading on the beach.  Here’s where the map told me they were from ‘Find My iPhone’:

The boat stayed out and followed the whale for a while.  It was pretty exciting.  Aaron has always wanted to go on a whale watching tour.  We had scheduled one when we went to Oregon last year, but it got cancelled at the last minute because the weather was too bad to go.  So Aaron was really looking forward to this trip.  After following the whale for about 90 minutes it was time to come back in to the marina.  The kids came and sat back down and immediately crashed.  A big side effect of Bonine just like Dramamine is drowsiness and it really knocked the kids out as you can see:

When they got back we spent the rest of the day on the beach.  Me and the kids did some Boogie Boarding which was really fun.  It took a bit to figure it out, but it was a lot of fun!  Here we are playing in the water:

Noah wasn’t a fan at first, but he came around later that afternoon, though!

Noah LOVES digging in the sand and spent a lot of the afternoon just digging:

It was an amazing day, but I did pay the price for forgetting the sunscreen.  I have a super funky tan line on my legs, hands and face.  Those areas have already peeled twice and looks like they might end of peeling again because I never tan--just burn and peel--haha! Like my leg tan line?!

Sarah was a trooper during our trip.  She still had to complete Weber State Prep while we were gone.  She did it in the evenings by watching the pre recorded Zoom lessons and completing the homework at the AirB&B. She didn’t complain.  I guess that is one nice thing about having Prep virtually this year is that she could take advantage of watching the prerecorded lessons and not miss anything.  

While we were gone G&G T were gracious enough to watch Sophie and take Matthew with them to church.  We were so glad!  It looks like Sophie made herself at home just ask Grandpa T:

And Matthew:

We left for home the next morning.  We stopped off in Las Vegas, but didn’t stay long.  We did visit the Coke store and the M&M store while we were there:

When we got home we were excited to find our very first ripe tomato (albeit very small).  Noah made short work of that.  He LOVES tomatoes!

We got home Monday evening.  It was just enough time for Josh to do a load of laundry and pack to leave for Youth Conference the next morning bright and early.  Tuesday evening Daniel had a baseball game we attended.  His team did great!  Here’s Daniel up at bat hitting the ball:

No rest for the weary!  Aaron was asked to be on the food committee for Youth Conference and I tagged along.  We didn’t go up the first day since we wanted to see Daniel’s baseball game.  However, we wanted to be up at the site by Bear Lake in Idaho by breakfast the next morning since that is what the food crew is supposed to do! That meant we left our home at 4:30 am.  We got there to help with breakfast at 6:30am.  After breakfast the schedule showed the rest of the day would be spent at Bridgerland Adventure Park.   It was a Adventure place that had a ropes course, zip line, huge swing, tubing run, bungee, trampoline, free fall, etc.  After an orientation we started on the ropes course.  There were four levels of the ropes course.  It went from 1 which was easy to 4 which was hard.  There was quite a line for the lower levels so I talked another leader into starting on level 4.  While we were waiting our turn, Daniel went on the zip line:

Josh started on level 4 as well.  Here he is going across one of the obstacles:

Daniel did the ropes course, too:

Here’s my turn on level 4.  Go big or go home, right?!?:

About this time in our activities is when Josh got the official email from the church saying he would be doing Home MTC for the entirety of his MTC experience.  He is a bit bummed by that, but I am not too sad about it.  It means I can have him kind of around for 6 weeks longer than I thought.  It also means I can procrastinate getting all his mission gear for another 6 weeks--wahoo!!  Haha!  He also was notified that his mission start date would be moved up by two days.  He was originally supposed to start on July 21 how he will be starting on July 19th.  That is coming up so FAST!!

Anyway, after that news we still continued on with Youth Conference.  Me and another leader also did the Giant Swing together:

Here’s Daniel tubing:

After spending the day there, we came back and helped to prepare dinner.  Aaron had been in charge of the dinner that night.  He ended up smoking 5 different 10 pound pork butts all day Tuesday.  When they were done he shredded them and seasoned them.  He then vacuum sealed all the meat.  He brought the vacuum sealed bags of meat up in a cooler full of ice.  When it was time to prepare dinner he took them out of the cooler and cooked them sous vide style in some boiling water while still in the vacuum sealed bags.  When they were heated through he opened the bags of meat and put them out for people to make pulled pork sandwiches.  Out of all that meat there was very little left over after all 70 people had eaten dinner.  It was a pretty tasty meal of pulled pork sandwiches, pasta salad, and watermelon.  Everything was very good, however, we did have a bit of a snafu......The night before we had gone to the grocery store and had cleaned them out of all their hamburger buns.  We didn’t think to even check the expiration dates since we would be using them the next day.  That is where we went wrong......Some of the hamburger buns had expired the week previously and were moldy but still on the shelf-----Eee Gads!!  Luckily, most of of the buns were okay, but even without a bun the shredded pork was delicious.  That was a bit maddening, but what can you do!?!  When we got back Aaron spoke with the store manager and they were concerned about what had happened.  They said they would look into it.  Hopefully, that won’t happen to anyone else in the future!!  Anyway after dinner was over and clean up we then did some Minute to Win it games.  This particular game the Young Women leaders put on a shower cap and coated it with shaving cream.  Their partner tried to throw Cheeto balls and get as many to stick on the shaving cream as they could.  Josh and I lost, but it was a fun game.  

The kids loved playing ‘Lightening’ on their downtime.  Here’s Josh and Daniel playing:

Thursday, the last day of Youth Conference was spent at the Clubhouse which had many fun activities. It had a few swimming pools, a Foosball table, etc.  The youth had a lot fun spending time there.  Then it was time to come home.  We got home in enough time to go to Daniel’s very last baseball game.  This was Daniel’s last year to play on the city rec league since he will be too old next year.  Aaron was sad, but all good things must come to an end at some point.  Aaron has been Daniel’s assistant coach almost every year since he started playing back in elementary school.  Here’s the team preparing before their game:

Daniel hitting the ball with Aaron in the background holding his clip board:

Their team played well, but ended up losing by one point.  DOH!!  Oh well second place all around isn’t too shabby.  Here’s the cute couple:

The next day Aaron went to the grocery store to pick up a few things.  He is like a kid in a candy store.  He ALWAYS comes back with a ton more things (usually unhealthy things--haha) than what was originally on the list.  This time he found some Wagyu New York Strip steaks on clearance and couldn’t pass them up.  He brought them home, cooked them and then smeared them with some blue cheese butter. They were pretty tasty!

Last week he also made some BLT sandwiches.  He mixed in some cut up jalapeños in some cream cheese then smeared it on a bagel.  It was then followed by some lettuce, tomatoes, and bacon.   It was pretty good:

Last weekend was the 4th of July.  Since it fell on a Sunday, West Point celebrated it on July 3rd instead.  We picked up Matthew Friday afternoon and he spent the whole weekend with us until Monday afternoon.  We started out Saturday morning by watching the parade with G&G T:

During the parade the Air Force did a fly over which was cool to see:

Sarah got to be in the parade with her dance teams.  Here they are at the beginning of the parade:

Two of the teams danced the first half of the parade and the other two teams danced the last half of the parade.  Unfortunately, we were in the last half of the parade so we didn’t get to see Sarah dance.  We did get to see her ride on the float, though:

After the parade we went over the the 'Party at the Point’.  West Point puts on a fun party in the park for everyone to enjoy.  Here’s our family waiting for BINGO to start:

After a few rounds of BINGO Sarah was the only winner of a T-shirt.  The kids got bored and we stopped playing BINGO.  I took them over to the stage to play in the on stage games.  They had a block stacking competition on a plate which you had to balance on your head.  Josh, Daniel, and Noah did that game.  Sarah and Daniel also did a fling the Cheeto on the pile of peanut butter to see how many they could stick. The kids had fun playing.

While I was with Josh, Daniel, Sarah and Noah at the stage, Aaron was with Matthew still playing BINGO.  The amazing thing was.....Matthew won one of the Grand Prizes on the last round of BINGO.  For the last round they played ’the Worst Card’.  They called out numbers and Matthew didn’t get any that were on his card.  Matthew and another lady were the only two left out of over one hundred plus people to not have any number that had been called found on their cards.  They split the two grand prizes between them.  She got a paddle board, and Matthew won the Trick Shot basketball game.  Matthew was beyond excited!! It was hard to get him to calm down enough to even take the picture his him with his grand prize:

I think it was ironic to win by having the ‘worst’ BINGO card--haha!  We gave Matthew the choice of where he wanted his basketball game set up--our house or his group home.  He chose his group home so Aaron loaded it up and took it over and set it up for Matthew.   What a crazy day!!  We finished off the day with potluck and watching some fireworks with the Einzingers.  It was a great day!!