Sea Turtle

Visiting aquariums is the best way to get me out of the house.   We’ve visited the Monterrey Bay aquarium numerous times, in Spain we travelled to Barcelona’s L’Aquarium, and now in North Carolina, we finally visited the largest of the three aquariums in Pine Knoll Shores.

There are aquariums billed as the largest in the world, but I’ve realized that all aquariums, so far, are amazing in their own way.   Monterrey Bay is one of the few that grows seaweed in captivity with their advanced wave generators.   L’Aquarium is the aquarium for Mediterranean sealife.   Pine Knoll is situated near the Outer Banks and is a great resource for North Carolina aqua-life.

When Mark, my father-in-law, invited us to go to Pine Knolls Aquarium, Ciri immediately said of course.   She knew that I have been wanting to visit one of the aquariums all year.   The trip was Friday morning and it was about a three hour drive from Raleigh.

We made the usual preperations for Izzy; diapers, food, blankets, extra clothes, etc..   We were mainly worried about the long drive for Izzy.   She’d been on a plane for longer than that, but we were able to remove her from the car seat.   In this case, safety dictated we keep her buttoned up at all times.   We did have to pull over once each way to change her diaper, which gave her the chance to stretch.   We also tried to get her to sleep on the way there, but she fought it until the last 30 minutes of the drive, even though it was her nap time.   Needles to say, she was one tired baby during our visit at the aquarium.

Daddy Izzy and the shark

The funniest bit about our entire trip, was Izzy and her interest levels.   I had her attached to me with a baby carrier, facing outward.   Everytime we would come up to a tank and I would show her the fish, or the shark, or the otters, I would also pull out my camera.   Instead of her interest directing toward the curious water life, she would stare at my camera and reach for it – not giving any attention to the otters doing tricks in the water for her.   Yes, the force is strong with this one.  

Speaking of pictures.   I find it funny watching other visitors look into an aquarium straight on and take a picture with their flash.   The best practice is to turn off your flash or shoot from a 45 degree angle.   Most of my pictures are shot straight on without my flash.   Sometimes there isn’t enough light, so I need to play around with the aperature and shutter speed.   The awesome thing about my old Canon digital camera (Powershot S30) is that it allows for a full manual mode.   Ciri’s Panasonic doesn’t have a manual mode at all.   Go Canon!

I took tons of photos, as did Ciri, and most of them are on my Flickr.   Ciri has her own account as well.

After the aquarium we headed for dinner.   After some discussing, we decided on Hooters.   At home I realized that we are some horrible parents to take our 9 month old daughter to that type of restaurant.   Then, I realized that they had high chairs, so we can’t be the only parents who feel that Hooters can provide good wholesome family food.

The trip was also the last time Ciriana would be together with her brothers as a family for a long time.   This summer the older of the two is graduating and will head to West Point soon afterwards.   The younger has his plans, but starts his senior year next fall.

We wanted to surprise my parents this past Thanksgiving by arriving at their house unannounced.   The surprise part didn’t work out, but we were still able to visit them.   My parents met Izzy for their first time, and Ciri’s mom met her for the second time.   It was a great 10 days, short, but fun none-the-less.

Lots happened in the short time that we were out there.   So much that I may forget some things, but I will post about them when I remember.

This was Izzy’s first flight, and I am proud to say that she was the most behaved little baby on all of our flights, save the final flight home.   Planning, thought, and luck, helped make our flight fairly painless.   We made sure to have a bottle ready to go to help with the pressure change and had some small food that we could feed her if she got fussy mid-flight.   The cabin temperatures are never the same to me, sometimes their cold, other times their warm, so we prepared for that by bundling her up in clothes that were warm, but easy to remove.   We also took a few blankets to wrap her in when she fell asleep.

We were very lucky on our flight out to LAX.   We arrived at RDU a little before 6 am for an 8 am flight.   When we checked in, the ticket agent explained to us that there was an earlier flight to LAX via Dallas, which was the same exact flight we had, but an hour earlier.   We took the flight and the agent began to check our bags.   One thing about being a military family, you get great benefits when you flash your ID.   We checked a total of two 50 pound bags for free.   That’s not the best part either.   Because it was an earlier flight, not all the seats were filled which meant the Izzy was upgraded to her own seat!   Unfortunately, our return flight wasn’t as lucky and we realized how cool it really was for Izzy to get her own seat.   Because of their helpfulness and caring, American Airlines is now my favorite airline.

The remaining 8 days we spent in California was a whirlwind of memories.   We spent much of our time introducing Izzy to her uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, and more.   We also did a few things around town that we thought would be fun to do.

We visited the Union Oil Museum in Santa Paula where they had a Hot Wheels Exhibit on display.   They also had A View From Space exhibit that was good fun as well.   I got some fun pictures in my Flickr stream.

One of the first food stops we did was In N Out, which I have missed dearly.   In N Out is always worth the wait, though.   We also ate dinner at my uncle’s restaurant in Fillmore, El Pescador.   I love having dinner with the entire family, especially now that our family has grown so much, it’s just so much fun.

Thanksgiving dinner was mostly spent with Ciri’s family, but we spent a couple of hours with my parents at my uncle’s house.   I met up with most of my uncle’s and got to show off Izzy to them and my cousins as well.

The Space Shuttle’s landing in Florida was aborted and it was routed over to Edwards at the last minute.   I would have loved to drive out and watch it land especially since we can get on base where we would be closer to the action.   Unfortunately, visiting family was more important to me than fulfilling one of my childhood dreams.   I’m saddened that the shuttle will be phased out soon and I may never get to see it launch or land before they are retired, but that’s life, right?   Ciri’s family drove out to watch the landing and I explained to her younger brother that he should cherish the time because it could very well be the last landing the Space Shuttle makes in Edwards AFB.

My Dad’s birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year and my mom bought him a 40 inch LCD for the bedroom.   I bought a 27 inch TV when I worked at Circuit City years ago and when I left for Germany, I left it with my parents so they could use it for whatever, that and it had a bad audio amp; it would cut out randomly.   Apparently, my dad moved it to their bedroom and worked out a system for the faulty audio – he would keep a tennis ball next to the bed and whenever the speakers cut out he would lob it at the TV at the right angle so it would bounce back to him after it jarred the TV enough to kick the amp back into service.   We call that fixing it the “Mexican way.”     His new TV is pretty sweet, no more tennis balls!

Everyone knows I want to move back to California, but it’s almost impossible right now.   That didn’t stop us from looking at homes while we were out there.   We drove around Ventura and Santa Paula in different areas trying to figure out where the best place for us to live would be.   The housing market is pretty good right now – not good enough for us to move back, but good enough to convince us that we can survive there if we tried.   Leaving our families was really hard this time around, VERY hard.   So, I made a promise to myself and my little family: we’re going to move back to California in five years.   Raleigh is a great place to live and if we had more family living out here, I don’t think I would miss California enough to move back.   After visiting and leaving family, I realized that we need to move back.   So, here and now, I declare we will be living under the warm sun of California in 2013.

Well, those are the highlights.   It was so much fun visiting the motherland again, and I hope we will get the chance to visit again in June for Ciri’s brother’s graduation.   Oh yeah, he was accepted to West Point!   That’s a big accomplishment for him so we are very proud of him and his efforts.   Chris will also be graduating to Middle School next June and I would love to be there for that as well.     I think this pretty much takes care of everything, but like I said, if I remember anything else, I’ll put it up later.   Peace.