sea life aquarium

we headed to legoland a few times on our trip.  and they have a small aquarium that we stopped at first.  it was nice, cause they have lego designs all over, and building stations, and touch tanks, so the kids were pretty happy.  it was a nice aquarium, but a little small.

joe loves this picture!  i think it's goofy!

Introducing!!!

This is just a quick post (long overdue!) to introduce

Jacob Marcus David Jackson
August 27, 2012 3:05 pm
8 lbs 3 oz 20" long!

It was a fast labor thankfully! We got to the hospital at 11, didn't see a dr till noon and had the baby at 3!

We both bounced right back and have been feeling really good so far!

He is a good baby, loves to sleep. Doesn't like to poop too much. Smiles a lot while he's sleeping, which is so cute! And he sticks his tongue out a lot!

Jonny and jessy just adore him! They want to hold him all the time, I have to keep reminding them that we have him forever so we don't need to fight over him.

We feel so blessed to have him in our life and have almost forgotten what it was like before he was here!

do you know what i've got 5 of?

pics to come!  but i love this song!  and now we have 5 people in our family!

a sister

and 2 brothers

and a mother

and a pop!

to the temple!

sunday after church, we headed to the san diego temple.  i love the grounds around it, they are so pretty!  we packed a lunch and enjoyed the peace that is there and then walked around a bit.  actually, it wasn't all that peaceful that day, there was a big van with a flat tire being changed, and a toddler who had fallen and was scrapped up pretty bad, but all the same, it was holy ground and a great place to spend some time on a beautiful sunday afternoon.

jess took the picture, can you tell?

then we drove west toward the seal beach and tide pools.  we come here every time, but the kids are still amazed at the seals and sea lions that just lounge around on this part of the shore.  

here they are climbing out on the rocks toward the seals, they won't get too far, but it's an adventure for them all the same!

and then we climbed around on the higher rocks, exploring the tide pools.  there was quite a collection of wildlife in there to observe!  jonny loved this part!

california here we come!

the kids and i took our long awaited california trip in april!  daddy was supposed to come along, but he got stuck at work, and totally missed out!

we flew out of columbus (don't ask) really early in the morning, so we stayed at a hotel the night before and took a taxi to the airport.  before bed, the kids swam for a bit.  

when we arrived, we had a long car ride back to aunt elisa's house, but we enjoyed the ocean views and other cool things to see, and talked about all the things we wanted to do on our trip.

our first day, we went to the beach.  it wasn't exactly a warm day, so there wasn't a whole lot of swimming, if any, but we liked playing on the sand.  and one of these days, i really need to learn about the tide.  we had just set up our blanket and were getting settled in, and a wave came right up to us!  we tried to grab as much as we could out of the water, but somethings ended up wet anyway.  oh well, only take to the beach what can possibly get wet! 

he's showing us the tunnel he made, see his hand poking out?  the sun was too bright in his eyes for a good shot.

before we headed home from the beach, we hiked along these cliffs.  they were pretty amazing!  this is joshua tree state park, if i'm not mistaken, and the rocks are very soft here.  jonny liked taking small rocks and throwing them onto other rocks and watching them explode!  we tried to find a path up to the top, but it kept eluding us, and we (or at least i) was getting very tired of walking!  but they were really cool to look at! and they come right down to the beach and out to see!

we passed someone flying this enormous kite on the beach!  it was kite on kite so high into the sky!  i am not that skilled in my kite flying to be able to handle that one!

scouts on the circle

since both kids are in scouts this year, we thought it would be really fun to attend 'scouts on the circle' day in university circle in downtown.  the four museums there, the history, art, botanical and historical society, all had special discounts for the scouts (and leaders) and special activities for the kids complete and earn patches.  it was a really great way, if not a little exhausting, to see all the museums.  

we spent a lot of time at the history museum, which we normally go to, but the traveling exhibit was all about mysterious creatures, which jonny is totally into right now!  he just made reports on the loch ness monster and bigfoot, and had done a great detailed drawing of a chinese dragon.  so he was all over the place trying to learn new things that he hadn't already learned from the books we've gotten.

one idea of the abominable snow man

here we are in the botanical garden, where they release the new butterflies each day.  the kids all got to hold out their hands and the keeper would place one on them until it dried it's wings and took off.  jonny was really lucky and his butterfly stayed on for like 10 minutes!  we finally had to brush it off so we could continue with the rest of the museum!

jess posing with the tulips in the gardens.

we also went to the historical society were we learned about the differences between life today, and life 200 years ago, from transportation, to cooking, and lighting our houses.

then the hardest activity came at the art museum, it was a scavenger hunt.  now, if you recall, we haven't been to the art museum since one fateful day like 4 years ago, when jonny walked on some kings carpet, yea, no joke! so, i very carefully stated all the rules of the art museum and teased that jonny looks different now, so they will still let him go in.  we ended up teaming with some older scouts to find everything on the list.  they really enjoyed the museum though.  maybe we can go again in another couple of years and spend some quality time there! ;)

it was a really fun day!  and they love the patches, cause when you put all 4 together they make a bigger picture.  we will definitely be going again next year!

jessy's first tooth!

we were watching general conference on april fool's day, and jess all of a sudden, said her tooth came out!  now, if you have read any posts about getting jonny's teeth out, you'll understand my confusion at her calm manner in telling me that it came out!  she's a brave girl!  and was very excited!

here is the note she left for the tooth fairy that night.  

the second tooth was just a few weeks after, also on a sunday, she points out.  and again, without the drama of my number one child!  

it is funny though, because a month or two before this, she said to me before brushing teeth one night, that there was a bump of something stuck in her mouth that she couldn't get out.  she thought it was a piece of popcorn or something.  we went to the bathroom, and i had her open up wide, and i just started laughing!  it was her new teeth already coming up behind the baby teeth on the bottom!  she was so excited to have big kid teeth!