Mimi and Jack

Jed and I took our official babymoon vacation last weekend. Because traveling is so uncomfortable for me, we didn’t want to go too far. We settled on San Clemente. It’s only an hour away, and Jed had never been.

Jed really wanted to take the train up, because he loves trains in general, and the Surfliner train in particular, but it only stopped up there once a day, and we wanted to arrive a lot earlier than 4 pm, so we drove. We took our time heading up there, taking the Coast Highway and stopping at Pannikin in Encinitas. Or Leucadia. It’s right on the border, so I’m not sure which town it’s in. We also stopped at my old house in Carlsbad and had a little nostalgic trip down memory lane. I did, anyway. Jed just tagged along.

Our first stop once we arrived in San Clemente was the San Clemente State Beach, where Jed at least got close to the train.

While it initially seemed cool that the train went by right when we were near the tracks, we discovered that the train goes by all the time. Loudly. But it was cool this first time.

The beaches are beautiful in San Clemente. A little flatter and calmer than down by us. Because it’s the end of September, they were pretty empty, too, which is always nice. I hate tourists at beaches, even when I am one.

Isn’t he handsome?

We headed into town for lunch at a place that came highly recommended by Sunset magazine, Antoine’s. It was a total dud. We drank our iced tea and high-tailed it out of there. I was very disappointed in both Sunset magazine, and the residents of San Clemente, since it is apparently very popular with the locals. It had one good thing going for it though: soft, crunchy ice. A current pregnancy obsession.

While Jed waited for me to finish my drink, he tried to take as many bad pictures of me as possible. This is not hard to do. However, I got ahold of the delete button pretty soon thereafter. I like this one, though, because, look: cheekbones! (You can barely see these at the moment, as I have pregnancy face most of the time.) Also, freckles! But ignore those.

And then Jed wanted to show off his cheekbones, too. Or something. To be honest, I actually have no idea what’s going on here.

Anyway, we bailed on Antoine’s, and, after spending some time on Yelp and Chowhound, found a great place called Nick’s. We ate a lot of beef there: prime rib au jus for me and some complicated tri-tip concoction for Jed. Delicious. 

Also, the best homemade ranch dressing ever. It might even compete with BYU Creamery’s ranch, but then it’s been years since I’ve had that.

We were so stuffed after this meal that we weren’t hungry again for about two days. Seriously.

Jed got to practice being a cool surfer from the 60s on the way back to the car with some random alley installation art.

We then headed to our hotel. It was pretty difficult choosing a hotel in San Clemente. Your options are either generic, like a Best Western, or cute and quaint. However, most of the cute, quaint hotels were in amazing locations, but were totally run-down and cost a fortune. We opted to go that route anyway. We stayed at the Beachcomber Motel. The room was totally ghetto, with gross old furniture and the tiniest shower ever. (I kept bumping my belly in it.) However, the location and the view and the grounds were amazing. 

Here’s the view from our window.

Our room was basically 100 feet away from the bluffs over the beach. We looked directly out on the San Clemente Pier.

Here’s the view (taken the next day) from the pier looking up at our hotel:

The train ran right under us, which was not the most fun thing late at night, but still cool to see. We had private lounge chairs, and a really great fire pit right on the edge of the bluffs.

The view at night was just as amazing, if not more so. (Thanks to Jed for these awesome night shots. He’s a pro at using long exposures.)

We had a quick, small dinner of Thai food (we were still pretty stuffed from lunch), and then made s’mores at the fire pit with some of our hotel neighbors. It was a beautiful night.

The next morning, we met up with new San Clemente resident, Scott, for some breakfast at the Mimosa Cafe, where Jed accomplished this amazing feat:

Then we hung out and played tourist in town for a while.

You may have noticed at this point that I am not in these pictures. I haven’t been super excited to see my fat face and super prego body in pictures, so I don’t turn the camera over to Jed too much at the moment. Because when I do, this is what happens:

And yes, I am wearing a dress over jeans. It so happens that the shirt I packed to wear, that fit me a week earlier, didn’t fit me anymore. Typical.

We spent the rest of the day slowly heading back to San Diego via the Coast Highway. We stopped at a coffee shop in San Clemente (coffee), the Trestles Surf Outlet in San Clemente (surf booties for Jed), H&M in Carlsbad (baby clothes!), the flea market in Encinitas (nothing), Nytro Multisport in Encinitas (swimming wetsuit for Jed), and finally returned home.

So that’s it. No more vacations as a family of two. I couldn’t be happier.

Last Friday, I took Jed on a surprise date. This is rare. I am not creative and I am lazy. It’s a bad combination for surprises. Poor Jed. 

However, I felt inspired when I heard an ad on the radio for the Poway Rodeo. I enjoy rodeos, and I hadn’t been in a while. Jed, on the other hand, had never been to a rodeo. How un-American! 

I told Jed to wear warm clothes and boots, and he saw me bringing a blanket, so I think he thought we were in for some sort of picnic. He got pretty confused when we headed up to north county, and then even more confused when it became clear from traffic and the people in orange vests who were directing it that we were going to some sort of event. The giveaway finally came in the form of some people all decked out in their country finest.

The rodeo was everything I could have hoped for. We began with some down home cookin’.

While waiting in line, I discovered that I had put my shirt on inside-out. I can blame this on pregnancy somehow, right?

Speaking of pregnancy, holy cow: I have a huge belly.

We used our time waiting in line to check out rodeo groupies, a term I had to familiarize Jed with. This is a terrible picture, because I was trying not to be obvious, but this is a pretty good definition:

Note the following: Sparkly jean pockets with see-through lace shirt, sparkly giant belt buckle, mini skirt with cowboy boots, etc. That’s rodeo groupie style. What really cements their status, though, is the fact that they were talking to a cowboy who was in the off-limits area, meaning he was a real cowboy. I should’ve been a rodeo groupie.

After getting our bbq, we went in, found a seat in the crowded bleachers (that “excuse me, oops, sorry” game is a little more awkward when your belly is big enough to smack everyone in the face), and settled in to watch the show. Jed was able to get a couple of really awesome action shots during the buckin’ bronco riding:

Here is a list of the events we saw, according to Jed:

• Buckin’ broncos
• Tie a little steer
• Mutton busters
• Barrel race
• Team steer lasso
• Chase a steer and grab his horns and rassle him down
• Mexican horse dancing
• Bull riding

I can’t decide which event name I like better: “tie a little steer” or “chase a steer and grab his horns and rassle him down.”

One of my favorite rodeo events is always “Mutton Bustin’.” This is where a small child holds on to the back of a sheep for dear life and the sheep runs around. The winner of this event, seen below being interviewed and refusing to kiss the rodeo queen, rode the sheep all the way across the entire arena and partway back again. Blew the rest of the competition out of the water. I still think my favorite, though, was the THREE-year-old who participated in this event. Three.

Some other highlights from the night included hearing the announcer talk up the eligibility of a particular steer wrestler (including a clip of “Single Ladies” being played by the DJ), and then saying, “Never mind, ladies,” when he failed to get his steer, the multiple teen/amateur barrel racing girls who were faster than the pros, and the announcement about the lost Chinese foreign exchange student ending with, “If you see a lost-looking Chinese fella, send him to the entrance gates.” 

Oh, and waiting in line multiple times for the porta-potties. Gotta love being pregnant at the rodeo.

I asked Jed to sum up his first rodeo experience for me. He said, “Joyous. Made me proud to be an American, which I’m saying with zero irony. It was a great cultural experience. The little steers made me sad, though. And when the horse tripped and fell.”

We actually have a picture of that:

I agree with Jed. I feel like the rodeo is a weird snapshot of part of America, and definitely a cultural experience. I alternate between embracing it and being embarrassed by it. I feel some serious sympathy for a lot of the animals, but I also relish watching what some of the horses can do, and I think they feel proud sometimes. It was really fun to go with Jed.

I’m very proud of my surprise date.

Jed already did an awesome job posting about our blackout here, but I thought I’d add my perspective.

At 3:30 pm on September 8, my alarm went off to wake me up from a quick nap. I snoozed it, and when I woke up at 3:39, I noticed immediately that the fan wasn’t on. (It was a very hot and humid day.) I got up and checked the light switches and realized that our power was out. Just as I was thinking that running multiple fans in the heat may have tripped our breaker or something, I got a text from Mandy asking if the power was out. Mandy lives less than half a mile away, so it didn’t seem too strange that her power was out too, although it squashed my hopes of fixing the problem by flipping the switch on our breaker box. Immediately after my text from Mandy, Jed texted and said that power was out in Hillcrest. Being that Hillcrest and Pacific Beach are about ten miles apart, I began to think we had a problem. It didn’t take too long to discover that power was out all over San Diego, and even south to Mexico, east to Arizona, and north to Orange County.

I tried to remember if there had ever been a power outage like this. (We later learned that nothing of this scale had ever happened in San Diego.) I cancelled my tutoring session, and Jed came home early from work. Fortunately, he had ridden the Vespa in, and was able to avoid the crushing traffic caused by stop lights that didn’t work and a mass exodus by everyone in the city home from work. 

As many people have noted, the blackout turned into an opportunity for a fun evening with neighbors and friends. Jed ran down to the corner market to buy some overpriced cold drinks with cash. We planned to spend the evening grilling on the deck, but dropped by our elderly neighbors’ house first to check on them. We were surprised to walk into an impromptu party. The neighbors were drinking wine and eating hors d’oeuvres (that was hard to type) with some other neighbors. We ended up staying until dark.

We then came home and grilled by candlelight on the deck. We happened to have a battery-powered radio (thanks to Jed’s mom leaving one here last time she visited!), and so we were able to stay updated on the power situation. We learned that the earliest we could expect power was the middle of the night, but that it might take a full 24 hours. With that news, we went to bed planning on a beach day Friday. 

The power came back on at about 1:00 am, so our beach plans were squashed, but after attempting to sleep with no fans in the heat, I was happy to have power back. Other than the heat, the whole experience felt like a great adventure.

I’ve been really fortunate to have avoided swollen feet throughout this pregnancy. (I feel especially fortunate after seeing this one pregnant lady at our infant CPR class yesterday - ouch.) However, on a day like this…

…this was necessary.

At least Jack likes my pregnant feet.

Last Thanksgiving, Jed’s family came to town and generously bought us zoo passes. We realized that we haven’t used the passes once since then, and so off to the zoo we went. I had been wanting to see the new elephant exhibit since they finished it about a year ago. Of course, we couldn’t find it on the signpost.

After consulting the map, we made our way to the elephants. We were distracted by some local wildlife along the way.

We never figured out what this warthog was doing. But it stayed this way the whole time we were trying.

This little meerkat was being the best watchdog ever. (Side note: I thought they were meek-rats for years and years.)

A little bit of zoo trivia for you: the zoo has more insurance on their plant life than their wildlife. 

Kissing animals…of some kind. I have a terrible habit of not noticing the names of the animals at the zoo. But these were cute. 

Our favorite exhibit at the zoo is usually the polar bears. Since we visited on such a sunny, warm day, they were too lazy to provide much entertainment. But I still think they’re pretty cool.

An eight-month-pregnant-lady’s best friend: moving uphill walkways in the shade. Ah.

Hitting up the orangutans on the way out:

I just realized, as I reached the end of my pictures from the zoo, that I have no photos of the elephant exhibit. It was definitely bigger and more spread out than the former enclosure, but was not very exciting. 

Most likely, the next time we go to the zoo we will take a baby with us. Crazy!

Just in time to prepare us to meet our new little one (next month!), we have been inundated with babies.

Heather and Jon brought their nine-week old baby Francis to visit with us all the way from NYC.

Frankie has red hair and is the sweetest little thing. Heather and Jon are so good with her.

Shortly after our visit with the Spencers, Amy brought baby Eli down for a visit from LA. Eli is about five months now, and the happiest little guy.

Check out those big brown eyes!

Such a flirt.

And finally, on August 31, Mandy and Ryan welcomed Rose Lillian Murphy.

Jed came to meet her at the hospital and fell in love.

I feel really lucky to have all of these babies around. They’ll be good friends for our little one, and it’s nice to be reminded of why I’m putting up with nine months of misery. (Especially when our baby learned tai-bo about three weeks ago. Brutal.)