We haven't been up to much exciting lately. We've found a place to live in Virgina, rented our house in California out, scheduled the movers, bought the plane tickets, etc. So now we're pretty much just waiting for the big move. Robert leaves on Memorial Day for Virginia so he can start his first day of work on June 1st. Meanwhile I'll be staying behind to supervise the movers June 1 and 2, clean up the house, and then Julia and I are off to Utah for another week to go to the Sandberg Family reunion before we join Robert in Virginia.
So we have a week and a half of normalcy and before everything changes. We are all looking forward to this new stage in our lives, a little sad to be leaving, but since we'll be back in two years it's not so hard to say goodbye.
One thing I'm really going to miss is Claremont Hills Wilderness Park. It's a city park at the base of the mountain that is just a five mile hiking loop around the mountain. Julia and I like to go up there and go for a walk. I feel like I haven't taken advantage of this park enough, we just started going in the past few months. It is a great workout carrying 25 lbs of baby and pack on my back. We usually only make it a 1 1/2 mile up the mountain before Julia has had enough and we turn back, but that's honestly a good enough workout for me.
When the trail levels out I let Julia get down and walk. Yesterday we went and when we had maybe 1/4 of a mile left when I let her down and figured she might be able to walk to rest of the way. What was I thinking? Not that the distance was too far, but Julia just gets too easily distracted. Every time someone would pass us going the opposite way we were going Julia would turn around and try to follow them and talk to them. She would also take two steps see a rock, bend down and pick it up, walk two more steps, see anther rock, bend down and pick it up. Then when her hands would get full she would drop a rock as she tried to pick up another, so she took even longer because then she was trying to pick up both rocks. I had to teach her how to put them in her pockets.
If you look closely at the picture below you can see she's holding rocks.
Remind you of anyone Mom and Dad? This was me when I was a toddler, with a bag full of rocks that I collected on a hike.
We also went to our first and last Dodgers game of the season this week. Sadly we won't be able to anymore before we leave. We arrived an hour before the game started and watched batting practice, and then made it through three whole innings of the game before Julia started to have a meltdown (it was past her bedtime) and we went home.
Last week we went down to San Diego one last time to see my cousin Katrina and her family. We went to the new Mormon Battalion Visitor Center in Old Town San Diego. It was a cute little visitor center. They gave you a tour with interactive video clips about the Mormon Battalion. Here's what I learned: The Mormon Battalion marched 2,000 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa to San Diego in 1846 during the Mexican War. By the time they go there, the war was over! So they stayed in San Diego and helped build the city (before eventually moving on to Utah). Some made their way up to Sutter's Mill and were there when gold was discovered. Their wages from serving in the military went to help the rest of the Mormon Pioneers cross the plains to Utah.
At the end they have little things for the kids to do, like finding gold (or splashing the water in Julia's case.)
You can also go up the tower and get a bird's eye view of Old Town, which is the historic district of San Diego. Mostly it was a lot of vendors and restaurants, with a few historic buildings mixed in.
