Jeff's 40th Birthday Celebration, Part II

The devoted Mr. Garland's birthday celebration activities!

First of all, Jeff got to take a 3 hour tour with our daughter S on the Privateer Lynx, a tall ship that currently docks in the Oceanside Harbor. Jeff and S had a great time, learning about the stern, bow, portside, starboard and the War of 1812. The only glitch to their outing was that their digital camera took a dive into a bucket of water aboard the ship. Oops. Killed that camera.

Secondly, we took a day-trip to San Diego, with several stops:

• UCSD. We drove through the University of California campus at San Diego (UCSD) and of course had to see the engineering building. Many, many years ago, I visited UCSD with my mom when I was deciding on colleges. So thankful that I ended up at Cal Poly, but UCSD wouldn't have been bad either. Perhaps one or more of our kids will attend some day.

Plugging in the gps coordinates.

Found it! The geocache loot box.

J (our 4 year old) took this shot.

Z (our 2-year old) took this shot of Jeff and I. Not too bad, right?

You're probably thinking, "What?!? You let your kids, let alone your 2-year old use a camera?" Perhaps that's how we end up with submerged digital cameras. Ahem.

• Mt. Soledad. Jeff grabbed his GPS on the way out and we completed a clever geo-cache on top of the peak. What a beautiful cross, with amazing views.

• Mission Bay. Wow, we really need to come back here with our bikes.

Now this cracked me up... a historic 1800s light house, well maintained... and it had a 120W lightbulb as it's light source. Now that's technology for you!

• Point Loma Light House (1855-1891)/ Cabrillo National Monument. There is an "old" light house and a "new" light house. The new light house is in operation so you can't visit (it didn't have much character anyways), but the old light house was open to visitors and it was amazing. Turned out the tower of the light house is only open to visitors 2 days per year. 2 days per year!!! And we happened to be there on one of those two days... what luck! The park rangers were dressed in 19th century outfits, so classy. The view from up top was amazing. The tide pools were also very fun.

• Fort Rosencrans National Cemetary. This was the kids' first experience in a cemetary, and it was good to talk about what cemetaries and wars were all about, esp. with the Veteran's holiday just last week. We're so thankful for our veterans!

Whew, all that in one day. Boy I really needed a nap (but didn't get one). It was such a fun and memorable day for all of us.