Ladd Photos

My boys love to explore the Natural History Museum.

It was the first time we got to experience the Legoland Water Park. As expected, the boys had a blast.

We finished off the day enjoying the rest of Legoland. It was Connor’s first time driving!

Connor driving:

The boys on the Dune Raiders slide:

We headed down south, first stopping into the San Diego Hall Of Champions at Balboa Park. Gavin enjoys seeing all the baseball memoribilia. Then we continued down to Kristel’s house to celebrate Father’s Day with the family.

We were invited to Jen and Adam’s house up in Alpine to celebrate Jen’s birthday. The boys had a blast swimming and the food was delicious!

We spent the afternoon at the Museum of Man, enjoying the exhibit about monsters of various cultures and digging in mock archaeological sites.

Celebrating Papi’s high school graduation with a BBQ at Kristel’s house.

The family and I enjoying a nice walk along the shore of Shelter Island, on the north side of the San Diego Bay inlet. We saw a sea lion chilling in a small boat launch area.

Congratulations to Papi on graduating high school! All most all of his family was able to attend the ceremony. He is off to UTI in Rancho Cucamonga to study diesel mechanics.

I was on-hand to take some photos of Gavin’s 2nd grade class celebration. All the kids had a blast playing the various games and then enjoying root beer floats afterwards. Connor tagged along with me and got to partake in the fun as well.

We all took a leisurely Sunday drive over the Coronado bridge and along the Coronado waterfront. Connor fell asleep in the car, but Gavin and I were able to take a short stroll along the Coronado shore and look at downtown San Diego from across the bay.

We continued our drive down the Silver Strand and then inland to Eddie and Sally’s house, where we spent the rest of the day. The boys love spending a nice sunny afternoon playing in their grandparent’s backyard.

We had a fun day at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center exploring their new Science Fiction, Science Future exhibit.

I particularly liked the simulated hologram display and an accompanying exhibit of classic science fiction novels, by some of my favorite authors like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Arthur C. Clarke. Gavin enjoyed the robot head that mimicked your facial expressions and Connor had fun drawing a robot.

Towards the end of the exhibit they have a simulated teleporter, like in Star Trek, which we all tried out. Connor tells us nearly weekly he wishes we had a teleporter so we wouldn’t need to drive places.

Gavin and his 2nd grade classmates put on an excellent program. You could really tell how hard they practiced their songs, the choreography they performed while singing, and small speaking parts in between each song.

Gavin was center in the 2nd row, in front of so many parents that it was difficult to even get photos of the event above everyone’s heads. I asked him if he was nervous up in front of so many people, and he said he wasn’t, not even a little bit. He definitely doesn’t get that from me, maybe he is a natural performer?

The evening turned a little sad for a moment, when it was announced that Mrs. Hiel, Gavin’s beloved 2nd grade teacher, would be leaving Turtleback at the end of the school year. She is going to be teaching at nearby Design39Campus. She had spent her entire teaching career, all 18 years, at Turtleback, so there were lots of former students and parents who were sad to see her go.

A video of one of the songs they sang:

Aliciana captured some nice photos of the fun happening at Turtleback Elementary’s Field Day while she helped out. Connor, Gavin, and the rest of the school kids all seemed to really enjoy all the various activities. The teachers looked like they had a blast as well!

We caught an Angels game up in Anaheim and it just didn’t want to end. The Angels ended up losing to the Astros in the 13th inning. By that point, even Gavin was ready for the game to be over. But we stuck around, so that the kids could run the bases, and dream that they were in the big leagues.

The giant Galápagos tortoises were amazing. Some of the ones that we saw were well over 100 years old!