San Diego Joey Reunion 2008

Captain's Log June 27th 2008 reguarding June 19th - June 23rd

Aww, family reunions :)
David and I began our vacation from work Thurs. night after we got home. Our good friend Marissa Decker from Holbrook AZ was visiting the Valley of the Sun and stopped by to visit with us. We had a good time, though our visits never seem to last long enough to catch up on all the excitment in our lives. But we did manage to eat dinner together, and she brought cookies for dessert, yummy! David left towards the end of our visit to go pick up Melissa and Jack from Brad's Dad's house in Glendale. They arrived just about the same time Marissa had to leave.

David and I had the opportunity to chat with Missy and play with Jack while we were packing for the days to come. Sadly we didn't get to leave the apartment until after midnight. eek! We headed for Eloy, where we would all sleep for the night so that we could leave earlier in the morning and caravan together. David and i slept up on the loft in the house, it was really HOT, HOT, HOT up there and we suffered with it for a few hours before we realized that we could bring a fan up there to cool the place off. The fan seemed like a heaven sent at 3 in the morning :)
We awoke in the morning refreshed from the rest we received, we helped to pack the cars and gather items, and people, together. Jack and Miss were settled into the back seat of our car, Rosie. I took my place behind the drivers wheel as David nestled in the passenger seat with the laptop. David had planned to work on side website projects during the drive to Cali. (that's why I got stuck driving!) LOL! We left, following Wendell and Marilee and not 3 miles down the road their car had a tire blowout (a fantastic way to start a vacation!). So we waited a few moments while David and Wendell replaced the broken tire with the full sized tire that the always-over-prepared wendell happened to have packed.

We decided to drive through Casa Grande and wait for the "broken" tire to get repaired so that we would be prepared just in case something else happened. While we waited on Wendell at the Auto shop we got a car wash, topped off the gas tank and bought snacks for the rest of the trip. Once we got on the road we drove straight to Yuma and boy that was a long drive. We met up with Levi and Pracilla, (just a few weeks shy of 9 months pregnant!!), for lunch at a hole in the wall fish and chips place, it was yummy. We also had the opportunity to see where their new house is being built. Wewalked through the model of their home and took pictures, t'was fun :)

We topped off the gas tanks again in Yuma and continued our trek to San Diego. David took over the driving of Rosie from that point. I think i immediately fell asleep and the next thing i knew we were pulling into the hotel we would be staying at, i love when hours fly like that on car trips! We checked into our rooms, our room consisted of 2 queen beds and we shared our room with Marilee and Wendell. Melissa had a room just for she and Jack one floor above us and Brent, Bridgette and Gaia were in the room right next door to ours. We barely had time to change our clothes and relax a little before we took off to meet up with the rest of the family at Balboa Park. By the time we figured out where in the park they were, Balboa Park is H U G E, Everyone else in the family had already arrived. We were welcomed with hugs and conversation. Sara and Dave hosted this reunion and they were so organized, they did an amazing job! It was Soooo fun to see Ann, Rob and Sophia, i hadn't seen Rob in about 3 years and i hadn't seen Ann and Sophie since our wedding last August.

The park was a good idea that allowed all of us to relax and catch on eachother's lives. We ate sandwiches with soda, the kids played on the playground and most of the adults took turns playing bocce ball (i may have spelled that wrong). Before we left back to our rooms for the evening we had the tee-shirt ceremony. We were all full of ooohs and aaahs as our shirts were unveiled. Bridgette and Melissa did a Beautiful job at creating the shirts this year. Our theme for the reunion was "Joey", which a fun old story from a past reunion when David was pretty young. At that particular reunion the family got together to vote on name ideas for the reunion. I think David thought that naming a reunion was like naming a puppy because his idea was to call the reunion Joey. As his idea was read aloud to the group an eruption of laughter came followed by so many votes that it would have seemed they had found the perfect name, however moms have VETO power and she decided that it would be called something else. Anyway in honor of that memory this year we had out first official Joey Reunion. Therefore all of the conveted shirts had Joey written accross the front in big, bold, black letters.

The back of the shirts have to do with a beloved family past time, the game "Paper, Rock Scissors". It seems that whenever the family get together they always end up playing this particular game. the first couple games go pretty nomally but then it takes a spicy turn when the players begin to create their own elements to use in the game in order to be the winner. So we all had our own favorite wild card drawn on the back of out shirts. I will now attempt to remember what each family had on their shirts:

Marilee & Wendell - Rock
Brent - ?
Levi & Pracilla - ?
Ann & Rob - Paper
Sara & Dave - ?
Bridgette - ?
David & Rachel - The Humunga Cowabunga from Down Unda
Melissa & Brad - Fire

I wish i had a picture of each of the drawings on the shirts to post b/c they looked great!

The next morning we met for breakfast at a cute little corner restaurant called Hob Nob Hill. We were all dressed in our Joey shirts. Breakfast was reallly yummy. i had to excuse my self for a bit to go take a breather outside...due to anxiety maybe? i'm not sure but i just had to get away and take a few breaths and have a couple moments to myself. David came to find me when the food was brought to the table. I loved being on those beautiful streets in the nice weather walking hand and hand with the most important person in my life. Those few moments were perfectly memorable.

We then drove to the San Diego Zoo. LOL, the Zoo's parking lot is sectioned by animal signs and we just so happened to park int the Kangaroo section! So out walk this big group of people with Joey on their shirts, it was quite comical. We bought our tickets and then David and I went straight to the sovenier shop to purchase hats due to the heat and our fair skin. I got a red visor with a zoo logo on the front. David got an Indiana Jones/ safari type hat, it's pretty dang cool :)
We all met just inside the gates and got to witness a bird show where they released all these beautifully colored Tucans, i beleive, and they flew across the park to another trainer at the other end, it was awesome. Pretty birdies!

We made our way around the park making sure to see the Bonobos (It's so adorable to hear Sophia talk about these monkeys!). We enjoyed walking around in our Joey shirts, listening to the chatter all around about our shirts from other zoo visitors. We got a few questions about the shirts including explanation of the story behind them, whether or not we were all from Australia and some one even took my picture b/c her husband's name was Joey and couldn't come to the zoo with her and her girlfriends. We were the talk of the zoo, lol i remember hearing "there go all those joeys again" and similar comments. it was fun.

We had lunch at the zoo and afterwards those with babies and a handful more left to go to Dave and Sara's to put the babies down for a nap. Marilee, Wendell, Brent, Ann, David and I stayed so that we could ride on the air tran to go to the polar bear exhibit. Those bears are HUGE! they didn't do much but sit around, one almost got in the water to show us his swimming skills but he changed his mind i guess :) the observation room for the exhibit had a huge window where the upper half showed us the dry/land area of the bear exhibit, while the lower half of the glass allowed us to view below the water in order to watch the bears swim. it was a cool setup but we didn't get much of a show. We rode the air tran back, it was fun to be that high but so scary at the exact same time, i was white knuckeled by the time we got back to dry ground. I could have kissed that ground :)

Our remaining group left the zoo and went to the motel. We met up with everyone else later on after we rested a bit from our long walk in the heat across the zoo. We all met up at Soup Plantation which is similar to sweet tomatoes here in phoenix, a salad bar do-it-yourself kind of restuarant. It was good, we all stuffed ourleves on salad, it was quite yummy. We then stopped at Target on the way back to the motel because that particular place didn't offer shampoo and stuff in the bathrooms, so we got it ourselves while we were at Target. David and i Bought Shampoo, Conditioner, body wash, a loofa and some snacks. We waited for Marilee and Melissa to finish with their shopping and we went back to the motel to shower and such for church the next day.

We were woken up early by Marilee, got dressed and headed to the church where we met up with Ann and Rob, Brent, Melissa and Jack, and Wendell and Marilee. Wendell's Daughter Shari and her family attend that ward and we got to see and visit with them a bit. It was a really nice Sunday sacrament meeting that included a gorgeous musical number with a duet of Violins and also a few really nice talks about couples going on missions. The spirit was really strong, it's really nice to know that wherever you go the church is the same, that same relaxing and comforting feeling and friendship of other saints.

After church we went to the hotel to change then met everyone at Dave and Sara's. we waited for Jack to wake up from his nap and in the meantime played with Sophie and Gaia who were already awake. Those two little ones are quite entertaining. we finally got to beach after what felt like FOREVER, i guess it was all the anticipation of going to the beach :) We set up our 3 umbrellas and sunblocked everyone, except me (i forgot!). the little kiddies played in the sand building sand castles with Grammy (Marilee). while the rest of us went body surfing in the waves. Our family friend Joey showed up after a bit and he let use his boogy boards, they're like body surf boards, that was so much. Well, it was fun until a wave took you under and you start to panic because you can't tell which way is up and which way is down. but overall we had a blast! It was so fun to smash into your family members while riding the waves :) David collected seashells with me, however the shells were slim pickin's. the waves were so strong that you could hardley grab them before the wave took it back out to the ocean. But we managed to get afew for the collection in our guest bathroom :) David Found a sand dollar and it's a beautiful purple color.

When we got back to the hotel we noticed that we had gotten a little bit of sun. The weather was about 78-80 degrees and it was an beautiful overcast day, very cloudy. So it didn't seem like we were getting sunburned, but BOY were we! After dinner at Sara and Dave's (Jack in the Box) we played with the little ones some more. I feel like i really got to bond with Sophia, she is such an doll!!! I love her angelic little voice :) After"play time" we went back to the hotel. David and I were both SUPER sore from our burns and it was a pretty tough night trying to sleep and take showers and care for our burns. But somehow we made it through and the next morning we got all packed up and loaded in the car.

We met the rest of the family at the botanical gardens for breakfast, we had a really nice time in the beautiful atmosphere. David and I opted out of walking around the rose garden due to the fact that we were both terribly sunburned and wanted to stay in the shade. After the family returned from the rose garden we all met up to walk through the actual botannical garden, it was beautiful and exotic. we headed back to the car and said our good byes, espescially to Ann, Rob and little Sophie. We won't see them for a few years due to their moving to Korea. The drive home was nice and peaceful. It was only david and I in our car because Melissa stayed for a while more to come home later with Bridgette. We followed Marilee and Wendell to Yuma, (after they stopped a few times to pick up some good sized rocks to take home to Eloy "Paradise"). After Yuma Dave and i took a different highway that would be faster to get to Phoenix. I think i slept most of the way from Yuma to home.

Overall the trip was really fun, it was great to bond as a family. The memories will last forever.