San Diego

While Mike was in Japan, Natalie and I went to visit my family in San Diego. This was my first trip alone with Natalie. She did really well on the way over, sleeping nearly the whole way. The flight back to Texas was a little more challenging since the flight was diverted to El Paso because of a medical emergency on board. The flight eventually took off again, but the unscheduled stop made the journey a little more challenging.

But we're back in Texas now, happily reunited with Mike. And now that Mike is playing with Natalie, I can share some San Diego highlights.

The best thing about being in San Diego was introducing Natalie to my grandmother.Of course, Natalie also met other new people. My friend Jen Em came down from Seattle for a short visit.We took advantage of Jen's visit to do some touristy things. First, we attended the holiday lights parade downtown - we "attended" in that we went to a nice restaurant on the water and ate lobster as the decorated boats sailed by.Later during Jen's visit, we continued our holiday lights experience with a trip to the San Diego Botanical Garden to see their holiday lights. This was a totally fun event, complete with a bonfire for roasting marshmallows and a Celtic band singing holiday songs in Spanish.Before we hit the holiday lights, we were joined by some good friends at my new favorite San Diego restaurant, Kaito Sushi. (I must confess to eating there again during my visit since SYL and I also went there to celebrate her birthday)Jen and I also took Natalie to the aquarium. Natalie also got to meet our good family friends:(for some dumb reason, I didn't get pictures of everyone, so we'll have to let the food pictures stand in for the missing folks!)Here's Natalie with SYL:And here's Natalie with her first kitty cat:She wasn't that interested in the cat, but later in the trip she saw a dog and laughed and laughed. A girl after her mother's heart!

We also did some holiday cooking. Here's uncle Eric with some plum pudding:And here are some cookies I baked:(not pictured: the delicious chocolate cake made mostly by Eric on Christmas Eve)

In typical San Diego fashion, we walked on the beach a lot, including one night with a lovely sunset.Also, after many years of talk and just under one year of knitting, I finally finished Eric's sweater vest:Here are just some random cute pictures from the visit:Okay, this post is already long enough, so I'm going to stop now. Look for posts coming soon about our trip to San Francisco as well as Natalie's five-months-old post.

Here's the whole San Diego album (available here):