Cal-ee-fornia

Like the schmuck that I am, I failed to take pictures while on our trip.  It never occurs to me in the moment to snap a photo, and then I always regret it later.  The one event I did photograph was the Sacramento Zoo but that's only because they had giraffes.

We went to visit Myke's sister, Christina and her husband, Chase after not seeing them for a few years – 2 since we saw Christina, 5 since we saw Chase.  How terrible!  (Our excuse: they just recently moved to California after living in a far away land called Wisconsin.  We never made the journey out there because we are jerks and nobody vacations to Wisconsin.  Hence, many seasons have passed since we’ve seen them.)  The really wonderful thing is that even though it’s been a while, we just picked up where we left off as if no time had passed at all.  That’s the true test of a good relationship.

Since a lot of our family reads this blog, I have to leave out the part where Chase and Christina bored us with their conversation and inflicted torture by forcing us to watch the movie Anchorman 2.  So I won’t say that.   

Instead, I will say that we had such a good time with them!  (Sincerely, we did.)  We didn’t do anything extravagant, but we were together and it was perfect.  My absolute favorite part was sitting around talking and catching up.  Chase grilled for us almost every night and we would sit in the backyard eating and talking in the warm air.  Exquisite.  (Sidebar: because of this delicious grilling, we bought a grill as soon as we returned home.  It’s a very exciting story that I will share later.)  As the week went on, I wished more and more that we lived right next door.  I would love to have Christina as my stay-at-home-mom bestie.  Come on, Christina, Oregon is nice…

So the zoo ended up being the most fun for the kids and adults.  It is a small zoo but the perfect size for little kids.  Right across the street is a place called Fairy Tale Town which was essentially a giant fairy tale-themed playground.  It really was a lot of fun.  Despite all the neat things to see, I was most excited about the giraffes, of course.  Eva was enthralled with the animals and it was cool to see her excitement.

I don’t know what it is about giraffes, but I love everything about them.  They are so cute.  I never get tired of looking at giraffes.

Eva was enamored with the zoo map because it had a picture of a lion on it.  She kept looking at it and saying, “Roar!”

I especially enjoy this shot:

At Fairy Tale Town, Eva loved sitting on the horses, which was a little weird since they were stationary.  She didn’t care though.  I think it’s because she recognizes them as horses and was happy to sit there neighing.

Incidentally, Fairy Tale Town has a monument in my honor.  I was very flattered and then demanded to know why I haven't been receiving a portion of ticket sales.  Someone is looking into it and will get back to me.  This cheese should be very wealthy soon.

It’s kind of hard to see, but the plaque says, “Cheese Stands Alone.”  If you don’t understand this reference, please feel free to educate yourself about my long-standing assignment as The Cheese.

It was a long day in the hot sun and before we even made it back onto the freeway, this is what happened to Eva:

That’s proof of a good day.

We did lots of fun things throughout the week but I have no pictures.  No sense in discussing those other events. 

Many, many thanks to Christina and Chase for being so gracious and opening up their home to us.  They even let us bring our dog!  The food was divine, the company was excellent, and we left being very grateful to have them as family.  We love you!

And now back to real life.  It kinda stinks.  (Except for our new grill…)