Our Vacation!

Joe and I stayed with our friend Jared in San Diego for a week on vacation and it was a lot of fun. Well... the vacation itself was fun, but the traveling was terrible! I advise everyone to choose any airline but Delta. First, we arrived at the airport @ 11:30 for our 12:30 flight on Saturday. At around 12, they informed us that there was a hydraulic leak on the plane and that they would let us know when it was fixed. Long story short... 5:45 pm was when we left Indy. We were supposed to get in San Diego @ 7:00 but ended up arriving @ 11:15. At least they bumped us up to first class from Atlanta to San Diego.On Sunday we went to Skyline Wesleyan Church and caught up with some friends. Afterward, we went to an authentic Mexican place for BIG burritos! Delicious!
Monday, Jared took us to the top of Mt. Helix which was a neat way to get a view of San Diego in it's entirety.

We also walked the dog-friendly beach in Coronado and got ice cream.

Tuesday we went to the San Diego Zoo.

I love the pandas!

After the our zoo trip, we went downtown to get pizza before the Padres vs. Dodgers game. The pizza was delicious, but we were disappointed to find that our tickets were for Wednesday's game and that we arrived a day early!

On Wednesday we went to the Wild Animal Park & saw the new baby cheetah!

There was a new butterfly exhibit that was awesome! It had brightly-colored birds and tons of butterflies that would even land on you! Every time a butterfly landed on me I would try to take a picture but it would fly away before I could get a shot.

This gorilla was hilarious! He got a cardboard box and put it on like a shirt! We were laughing at his "monkeying around." There were a lot of zoo puns that day. "The lions seem to be the 'mane' attraction!" "Those lions should take more 'pride' in their appearance and do something other than 'lion' around all day."
Jared took this picture of us and I thought it turned out pretty good, until I noticed that palm tree in the background that looks like Joe got a crazy new 'do.

After the Wild Animal Park, we went to In-N-Out so Joe could taste it fresh. *I brought him some In-N-Out burgers a couple years ago from California, but after an 8-hour plane trip, they weren't very fresh.*

Wednesday night was the game and it was really cold! We were up pretty high in the stands and it was only about 50 degrees and very windy. Joe is pointing to Manny Ramirez batting for the Dodgers. Padres lost 2-5.

We nixed going to Disneyland on Thursday and decided to rent bikes and ride around the entire island of Coronado instead.

We also went up to Mt. Soledad and looked at San Diego and La Jolla. Very pretty.

On Friday, we went to the Body Works exhibit, which displays human cadavers preserved in plasticine to show anatomy in science and art form. It was fascinating! Cameras were not allowed in the exhibit, but this is the exhibit banner. I researched this exhibit for a paper I wrote in college that had to discuss a controversial science-related topic (i.e. Botox, cloning, stem cell research, etc.) and give my opinion according to my Christian world-view. The exhibit had not yet come to the United States and when it did we had always missed it. We were excited to find that it was featured in San Diego's Museum of Natural Science in Balboa Park. I was sure my Aunt Renee would be jealous to find out that we went, but to my surprise she informed me that she already purchased tickets a while ago and they are planning to go to San Diego to see the exhibit next month!

Our vacation came to an end Saturday, when we arrived at the airport @ 5:30 am to catch our 6:30 flight. Delta canceled the flight due to weather but failed to call us before we got there! After waiting over 2 hours in line to get re-routed, we were given tickets to go to Minneapolis/St. Paul leaving at noon and from there to Indy arriving at 10 pm (6 hours after our original arrival). Boycott Delta! Viva la customer service!