Scott and Jen in San Diego

Scott attended the 2015 North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society conference in San Diego, California. The conference was a good meeting but this post is about the other stuff we did in San Diego.

The first day we arrived, we arranged for a special sand castle building lesson from a professional sand sculptor.

Jen and Kristine dumping in heaps of sand and water

Mixing is an important step

We made a 3 tier design.

Now that the forms are made, it's time to sculpt.

Always work from the top down.

Scott actually did his share of the work, but also took most of the pictures.

Check out those arches.

3 hours later...

All done!

We got to tour the Midway- an aircraft carrier museum.  This particular plane is called the cougar.

Seals gathering at the coast of La Jolla

We rented bikes and spent a day riding around Balboa park visiting museums...

... and gardens.

We learned about the local history at the Mormon Battalion site.  

We even got out of San Diego long enough to take a fun hike in the mountains.

Grant's Birthday

Grant is 6!

We went to the zoo for his birthday.  The pandas were his favorite.

The pandas were definitely his favorite.

We had an Ewok birthday cake

#sharethegift

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Break

Not being big fans of Black Friday shopping, we came up with last minute plans to get away as a family over the Thanksgiving Holiday.  We went up to Waynesboro, VA and got a jumpstart on winter with some recent snow.

Skyline Drive was closed because of the weather, so we parked at the entrance and hiked in a bit.  We hiked up the Appalachian trail a ways and had a fun snowball fight in the woods.

We visted Grand Caverns and saw some amazing things underground.  

The caverns also gave us something fun to do that was a bit warmer.

We also enjoyed the heated pool at our hotel and took in a movie while we were there.  It was a great trip.

We got back on Saturday with enough time to do some leaf cleanup in our yard.

Happy Halloween from the Realm

Laurel really wanted to be a princess this year.  So, we built our theme around that.

Clark is a knight to defend the princess.

Sir Spence is another knight.

And Grant is the fire breathing dragon.