Birthday weekend!

 This Friday was my birthday, so I planned an entire weekend of fun things!

First up, while Mitchell was at work on Friday, I went to the big mall in Ontario which I haven't been to before. It was huge and had a lot of outlet stores, so I was able to get some new shoes and a bag for starting work, as well as some fancy chocolates and bubble bath. 

I made it back home in time to freshen up and drop my bags off before picking Mitchell up and heading to the food lab. I'd invited the group from the lab and we all had dinner together (I had an eclectic mix of sushi and horchata). We were then taken to a mysterious location...

We got out of the car and it was the world's largest paper cup! Who knew it was in Riverside? With no lights, signs or anything, just on the side of the road. They chose here to sing me happy birthday and held out a phone light instead of a candle which I had to "blow out".

On Saturday I wanted to go back to the zoo and see all the things we hadn't gotten around to last time. After the night before, we woke up kind of late (about 9am) and then the traffic to San Diego was pretty bad, so we didn't get to the zoo until noon. But we did get to see everything! We saw hippos pressed right up against the window of their pool, tigers, giant Galapagos tortoises and grizzly bears! We also went back to see the red pandas as they're our favourites. Because it was lunar new year this week, they were putting on special displays with their Asian animals and we saw the keepers do some training and hand feeding the little red fuzzballs. 

These have been here since 1927!

Just like a puppy

I got a big chocolate sundae and then we took the tour bus around the park. This was fun because we got to see all of the park and the animals we hadn't seen that day, like the polar bears, in twenty minutes.  

On Sunday, it was finally warm enough for a proper beach day! We had a lazy morning and then the traffic was bad again (I think we must usually start out earlier in the day) so we didn't arrive on the beach until nearly 1pm. We were visiting Dana Point for the first time, and I'd found a little nature centre to park at which led onto some trails and took you down to the beach, but that part of the reserve is closed on Sundays! So we had to take an alternate route, which still gave us great views of the harbour and the ocean. 


We got down to the sand and ate our picnic and read our books in the sun for a bit. It was about 25 degrees and with the light breeze from the ocean, the perfect weather. We walked along and it's quite a long beach to explore, with lots of families and people surfing. The water is still cold, but I did stick my feet in briefly. We'd heard some sealions when we parked, but we couldn't see any when we got to the beach, but we did see a pod of dolphins! We counted about seven of them. 


It was a lovely day and it's nice that the hot weather is back and we can take more beach days!

Lots of love

Emily and Mitchell

xxxxxxxxxxx

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