Beach time!

It would appear that Gray is his father's child. He loves the beach and would stay all day, every day if he could. I, on the other hand, am so pale that too much sun is never a good choice. That and I'm not really a fan of being covered in sand for hours up to days (in the car, in your bag, in your scalp) after each trip. I try to be a good sport and go occasionally, but I would much rather just look at it than actually play in it. 

Pacific Beach is a tourist haven in the summer months, so we are usually driving around looking for parking or wading through a ton of people for a place to lay our towels out. I prefer going later in the season on a week day. There is generally less people out and the weather is usually nice enough to go at least a couple weeks out of every month. The one thing that is strange about the beach here is that it can be FREEZING in May, and warm in November. It is usually warm all summer, all year really, but the weather isn't 76 and sunny all year around like San Diegans would like for you to think it is. I literally wore a hoodie in late May this year to watch Josh surf. 

This particular day there were tons of dolphins in the water. It seems like I see dolphins fairly often down there, but Gray totally missed them this day. I originally saw one fin and got a little freaked out (I even know that if you see a shark you are generally ok. It's when you don't see them that you could be in trouble.) then I saw about 4-5 more pop up. They were surfing and playing along the beach. Josh surfs with them often enough, and I'm pretty jealous about that. Maybe not jealous enough to surf with him... 

Not sure if I shared these two photos below before, but I just love them so much it can't hurt to re-share them. California has beaches different from anything I've seen on the East Coast or the Gulf, but they are all beautiful in different ways. Pacific Beach is no different, it just happens to have a different vibe than most of the beaches in San Diego. 

Yuma

Josh went to Yuma for about a month for some weapons training. He was ultra busy, but Gray and I drove out into the dessert to visit him one weekend. A month isn't that long to be gone, but I think it's not fair to Gray or Josh for them to be separated for that long when we are so close (about 3.5 hour drive). 

Breakfast with Daddy!

Yuma is basically alone out in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't super easy to find something that we could do fairly quickly outside without melting. Josh had a roommate, so we didn't want to just take over while he was trying to study. That lead us to the Yuma Territorial Prison! It was a very interesting museum/prison from the 1800s. It was a very inexpensive little place to visit, and we all enjoyed it. Naturally after we looked around for about an hour, it was way to hot to stick around. We we went to a little sports bar and watched some football in the glorious air conditioning! 

Gray's sad prison face. 

Cells out in the middle of the dessert.
I'm getting hot just thinking about this place in the summer. 

Gray loved this bell because it was incredibly loud! 

After a day in Yuma, we turned around and came back to San Diego. We got to see some great friends that just moved out there and spend some time with Josh, so it was a great trip. If Josh has to go back out again for more training, I'm going to check into some indoor activities because it's too hot in the desert to spend much time outside. :) 

This is always my favorite part of the drive.
Imperial Dunes just over the California state line.

Exhausted after an action packed day!
Passed out in bed with his Bible and his Daddy! 

Fletch claims his Daddy's spot when he isn't around to do it himself.
We really need to buy Fletch his own bed... 

Boyz II Men!

I heard about a Boyz II Men concert coming to San Diego several months before it actually happened. It was the weekend after my birthday, so I thought maybe Josh and I would go together. The USMC had other plans, and sent him to Yuma for a month, which left Gray and I to do something fun all on our own. Luckily he is too little to have any opinions so I got to plan a super fun birth-week celebration which included a 3 day trip back to Disney and a Boys II Men concert in Oceanside! 

A friend wanted to go with us to the concert, so we got in line and accidentally found he house from Top Gun!! It's all fenced up so you can't go in, but it was still pretty neat to see. I did a little google research to see if it was the actual house and found out that the other houses on the street had been torn down or moved, but this one was saved due to its 15 minutes of fame. There are plans to move it to another location, but it hasn't been moved yet. 

On to the concert! It was in an open air concert venue, right next to the water. The Oceanside pier doesn't give good concert views, but I'm sure it still sounded nice to those lucky people who were on the pier that night. They sang for close to two hours, and they sounded amazing in concert. I was also impressed that after 20+ years, they still have all those fancy choreographed dance moves! 

Passing out roses. The 40-50 year olds were loving it! 

Gray on stage after the concert ended.

The venue has stadium seats, so we sat down with Gray instead of fighting the crowd for a closer view. Gray danced, ran, drank lots of water, and whined because it was hot, but I think he did a pretty well at the concert. We did go stand close to the stage (within a few feet of the Boyz) a few times, but Gray was more interested in dancing than watching the concert. Not a bad first concert experience for the Monkey.

Disney (Part 1)

Josh was spending about a month in Yuma, so we decided to take Gray to CarsLand as a little family day away before he left. We took Gray to Disneyland in March (after Josh's deployment) but CarsLand didn't open until the summer. Gray was freaking out about the commercials every time he saw them, so we wanted to take him to see Mater and McQueen. 

Of course we hit the high points and saw lots of characters in our one day visit. We rode Midway Madness (Toy Story ride), which is maybe our favorite ride. Gray met Goofy, Donald, Buzz, Woody, and McQueen, Mater, Red, and DJ from Cars. We had to hop over from California Adventure to Disneyland to ride a few things, but we spent a large portion of our time in CarsLand. 

Next in line for Midway Madness! 

Midway Madness is a 4D arcade game. It's excellent! 

Buzz! 

We did a few random rides before heading to CarsLand because we weren't sure Gray would ever be ready to leave. We took him in the main entrance (there are several ways in) and I'm pretty sure we blew his mind. He stopped in the middle of the street and just stared, then started pointed and yelling "CARSLAND!!!"

If you have ever been to Disney, then you know that they do everything (literally everything) in the theme! The bathrooms had little cars on them to tell you boy's vs girl's restrooms. Flo's was a diner with a huge rear view mirror on one wall. The flowers made from reflectors from the movie were scattered around town. Sarge's had a flag and mail box outside. It was like walking into the movie. There is a little glass case with the three piston cups that Doc won, hidden Mickeys, lots of fun Mexican stuff in Ramone's. They really did a great job making Radiator Springs real for fans of the movies. 

However, there are only 3 rides and Gray was too short to ride on the super cool McQueen (racing through Radiator Springs) ride by about 1.5"-2". We LOVED CarsLand, but I felt that it fell short in that regard. It looks amazing, but I wanted more. More rides (at least 4, but 5 would have been great) and maybe a museum like in the last movie. It was awesome, don't get me wrong. The other major problem with CarsLand is the sheer number of people. The other parts of the park would be fairly dead, but the lines at CarsLand were crazy. There were people everywhere! 

Frozen in disbelief. 

Sarge's Surplus

Mater at the Cozy Cone. 

Inside Flo's V8 Cafe!

Waiting on lunch at Flo's.

View from Flo's.

Ramone's. 

Luigi's.

Luigi's Tire Ride. 

McQueen and Mater drive down main street to the Cozy Cone and switch out for pictures. 

Stanley. 

DJs Dance Party! 

Mater's ride. 

And maybe his favorite part of the day...
Meeting his two favorite Disney characters!