Babymoon '09

In all my reading up about pregnancy and babies, I learned a new word - babymoon. Turns out all the best research suggests taking a trip with your husband before the little one arrives. Nate has been wanting to take me to San Diego since we got married, and our plans to do so have been foiled multiple times, so once we finished school and I hadn't gone into labor, we packed up the car and took off. We had a blast! Highlights:

This awesome view of San Diego from Coronado Island - we are thinking of moving there if anyone wants to join us. What a cool little island!

Nate getting to snorkel in La Jolla Cove - he saw a giant ray of some sort, schools of fish and other cool things - all in 63 degree water! EEEK! The baby and I decided it would be best for us to watch this adventure from the relative warmth of the beach.

Nate's other favorite thing in the ocean - riding the waves - he caught some good ones. And sunsets on the beach are always beautiful.

We didn't really get the colorful cows, but Nate thinks my "hippie shirt" matched this one, and its all about fairness. If I have to have a picture with a weird looking fake cow, so does he . . .

We tried to make the trip slightly educational - can we say "tax deduction"? So we went to the Cabrillo National Monument that honors some guy named Cabrillo who was the first explorer to land on this part of the continent. We saw some pretty cool tide pools, but the barnacles didn't make the photographic cut.

The San Diego Temple is gorgeous - and it was a quiet day there, so they were happy to see us for a session.
Coronado Island - wow it was chilly that day! There was a guy creating really cool sand art on the road near the famous Hotel del Coronado, but Nate wouldn't let me take a picture.

Look at that belly . . .

We took a harbor cruise on the "Lord Hornblower" and saw lots of cool military ships, and this funny statue, as well as lots of sea lions. I'd tell you what kind of ships these are but they all kind of look the same in the pictures - and let's be honest, as soon as the captain stopped explaining, I totally forgot. They might be destroyers, so lets just imagine they are.

With every good thing comes some bad, so let me share a couple of low points of the trip: We spent our first couple of nights on the wharf, and our hotel was fine, then we moved to Mission Bay to another hotel which has the honor of being the sight of most of the low points of the trip. On our first night at hotel #2, we went down to the hot tub for a few, and decided it would be in our best interest to shower afterwards. I was just getting out of the shower when the fire alarm went off. Yep, pregnant lady in a tiny towel. I took time to put on clothes, and quickly brush out my hair - which Nate was not so happy about (the hair, not the clothing), and then we got to stand out in the parking lot for about 30-45 minutes while the fire department shut off the sprinklers which some guy had set off in his room, and flooded the three floors below him.

Another low point for the hotel- its elevator which stopped working a couple of times. We were on the top floor - which was only the third floor, but when it was time to check out and we had to carry almost everything down the stairs, it was not our favorite.

I can't remember any other bad things so I guess that's good - we ate well, the baby obeyed his daddy and stayed where he was, and the car didn't give us a repeat performance of our last trip to California so we made it there and back on schedule. I am going to jump on board with all the research and highly recommend babymoons:)