Coronado

This summer, I have been seriously lazy. I used to be such a morning person. 9:00am used to be sleeping in for me, there was no way I would be able to stay in bed longer than that without discomfort. Then I started college and especially student teaching where I had to stay up way late getting lessons planned and then wake up early to go to class to teach all day, just to stay up late again (see the cycle?) and then it didn't matter what time I woke up, I was still tired. I was no longer a morning person. So this summer, without anything I HAVE to get up for, I usually don't. Yikes, it a little bit worries me that my body now knows the 10:00am hour really well. Without an alarm, that seems to be the time that I naturally get up these days.


So today when I woke up at 5:00am to go walking with Mom, I was pleasantly surprised at how awake I was :o) Alright, at first I was not way awake and I even laid back down on the couch when I realized Mom wasn't ready to go yet. And even as we started our walk I was yawning and slouching. But I picked up before we even hit the end of the street. It turned out to be a pretty nice walk. I got to retrace my old stomping (running) grounds a little bit and Mom and I had some good conversation- except when she started singing primary songs, I could have done without that :o) We walked for about an hour and a half and then I had to jump in the shower to get ready for my day with Dana.

Dana took off work today so that she could show me a good time! I did get a little worried, however, in the beginning when it looked like Dana took the day off to run errands. We went to Wal-mart to try to find some fabric that I needed so that she could make me some pillow cases for my classroom, but we didn't find any right away so we went to Kohls. I wasn't in a shopping mood and there weren't good enough sales for Dana so we didn't last very long there either. Next stop was Target so Dana could fill her prescription. The only problem was, we showed up to Target 45 minutes before the pharmacy opened so we had to dilly-dally around the store until she could fill her prescription. So we looked at clothes, make-up, and I learned some juicy secrets about Dana. Finally the pharmacy window opened, we got Dana's pills and then we got some jamba juice and headed out to Coronado.

Oh my gracious, Coronado is so beautiful!!! Once we got there, Dana and I had no idea what we actually wanted to do there, we just knew that it was a good idea to be there. We parked down R.H. Dana Avenue (stood for Real Haught Dana) which is the road by the Hotel Del. We looked around the hotel for a little bit, sad to see that we weren't allowed to go up the stairs, but it was pretty enough in the lobby and garden areas. After walking through the hotel we walked along the beach. We went over by the tide pool area (crapy tide pools, the only things there were crabs and flies) and the sand had lots of gold flakes in it. I commented about how you know you're at a nice beach when they can afford to just go out and sprinkle gold on the ground. That's what I call high class!


After the let down of the tide pools we decided to just walk along the beach. Ah, it's so pretty! At noon-ish we went back to the car to pick up our lunch and headed back down to the beach. After lunch we decided to just walk around. Dana initiated the slug bug game, but no worries, I finished it :o) It was funny because for the most part I wasn't really trying, but since she pointed them out, I started noticing them more. The best was when we were back in the car and I was looking down at the directions and right as I looked up a slug bug passed us and I called it. I'm not quite sure what was so funny, but we both were laughing pretty hard about it.

I'm in the car shopping market, but have pretty much no idea how to car shop or what to look for, so I've been keeping my eyes open to cars on the road and I've been talking to everybody about what to get. Dana and I were talking about cars on the drive home and I asked if they just let you test drive whatever you want. She said yes and then asked if I wanted to go try it out. Yes please! We went to the Auto circle and checked out the Honda Fit- eew, not my choice, but Josh is border line obsessed with it. It's a pretty hideous car and we found out that it's made pretty cheaply too. We looked at the Civic a little too. The guy wasn't super helpful though so we didn't get to test drive anything and we headed out of the Honda place. Onto Mazda it was then. Oh my gosh I got to test drive the Mazda Miada MX-5 and I pretty much am a fan of that car! I also test drove the Mazda 3 and I like that one too. I've got to do a little more research, but according to the Mazda guy, the Mazda is as durable as the Honda Civic (what my Dad wants me to get).

After car shopping Dana dropped me off and I got some stuff done at the house before we went out to dinner as a family. Dana has newly become a fan of sushi and so I promised that I'd go with her when I came down. Kim, Ben, the boys, Mom, Josh, Dana, and I tried to go to a place in Poway, but their stuff is half off on Monday nights and it's supposed to be a good place, which means there were a lot of people and we didn't have reservations or time to wait that long. We drove to a different one in Rancho Bernardo instead. We called to see if they could hold our group of 9, and for sure they could. When we showed up, it was empty. We ordered several different rolls of sushi and just shared them around. It was all pretty good stuff. But, the most impressive part of the whole thing was that Roman ate sushi. What a little stud. He said he wanted to try fish so Josh passes him over a raw chunk of fish and little mister studly stuck it in his mouth and ate it. And he didn't just eat the one piece, he tried at least one of the sushi rolls. It was a nice dinner. Good food, and good company.

Apparently it's grunion mating season. Dana told me that Monday and Tuesday, from 10pm-midnight, would be a good time to go to the beach if I wanted to see the grunion run. So, we piled up some wood in the blazer, grabbed s'mores stuff from the store, and went down to Moonlight. Unfortunately no one remembered that at Moonlight bonfires have to be put out at 10pm. So when we showed up at 9:30, right in time for the cop to announce that rule, we were a little disappointed. We made do though. We hurried and lit the fire, toasted our marshmallows over the open flame (as compared to toasting them over the coals like you're supposed to), and then at 10pm, Josh threw the rest of the wood on the pile and we walked away- Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not what you're supposed to do, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be in charge of putting out your own fire. Whatever, we headed down the beach to wait for the grunion.

We waited an hour, but the grunion still hadn't come. I was enjoying it because it was so beautiful on the beach. The stars were out and bright, the waves were soothing, and the sand was soft. But, Kim isn't used to staying up that late any more and so she really was not feeling waiting another hour to maybe see the fishies. We headed back home without having a chance to see the grunion run. I guess that's okay, because if you remember, I woke up at 5am and when we left the beach it was 11pm, and I was the one driving.

A long day, but it was so great!