hanging out with the songs

christine and her kids made the long drive over to spend a day with us last week.  it was so fun to see them again and squeeze in a little time to chat with christine while we kept an eye on our five kiddos.  we started out with a tour at the cabrillo marine aquarium that esther set up for us.  it was really crowded there that day so we spent most of our time in the darkened rooms looking at different aquariums.

some of the cool and weird things we saw:

look!  an albino sea cucumber.  when our tour guide, ms. paula was talking about it, christine exclaimed, “hey!  we eat those at the chinese restaurant!”  uh, i don’t know about you, but i’ve never eaten one of those and don’t feel at all inclined to do so in the future. 

peering in to the touch pool…

afterward, esther joined us for lunch!

we spent the rest of the day at the beach. i didn’t get to take pictures there, but the kids (for the most part!) had a blast playing in the sand and water.

we ended the marathon day by going out to dinner with esther and eugene.  after nixing christine’s initial restaurant suggestion (looked too fancy for our casual, kid-friendly selves), we ended up at nam’s red door vietnamese restaurant.  um.  not our favorite place, for sure.  long story short, everyone agreed it was one of the worst restaurants we’ve ever been to!  it took FOREVER for our food to arrive and the kids were all starving and totally tired and grumpy by then.  what else could we do but crack jokes and laugh about it all?  but then we felt bad because it was an older couple running the restaurant by themselves and the wife was doing ALL the cooking. 

heh heh, good times nonetheless!  thanks songs and nahs for a great day.  let’s definitely do it again soon!