In Review: November

November sort of crawled by in "morning" sickness misery. Plus, the preggo hormones kicked in and I did a crazy-pregnant-lady thing and chopped off all of my hair.

Well, it wasn't ALL of my hair. And I didn't do it personally. The lovely Chelsea did it. And she did a pretty darn good job if I say so myself.

The morning after my extreme makeover we headed to see Dr Layton and he told us the good news - there really is a baby in there! We saw the heartbeat and got a picture of our little bean to send out to the family. Baby #2 is expected to arrive on or around June 24, 2014.

Upon leaving the doctor's office (no easy feat as our car had died while we were inside - the good doctor himself had to give us a jump) I pulled a surprise mini-vacation out of my pocket and handed it to Ammon. Onward to San Diego!

We pulled in to the hotel late that afternoon after driving through many rainstorms (how often does it rain in Arizona?! Oh yeah, only when you're trying to cross the state - on a day that your car died - and your husband had no previous plans of doing so...sigh). We unloaded our stuff and headed out for some local dinner at The Pier Cafe.

Pretty good seafood in an AWESOME location. But we were tired and I was sick so we didn't enjoy it as much as we normally might have.

Normally we might have tried to see a few things that night too, but it was back to the hotel room for this sick lady. That was a-okay with Ammely. She was over-the-moon happy to do laps around the bed, and the room, and pull open all of the drawers, and pull out the notepads and wave around the TV schedule...you know, all the things she can't do at home. This picture was taken the next morning, but it gives you an idea:

The big event of this miniature vacation was a trip to the San Diego Zoo. This Baysinger really enjoys Zoo-going and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to see the world famous San Diego Zoo.

This zoo is HUGE. I don't think we saw half of it. If ever we were to do this again, I think I'd prefer to do a 2-day pass. Then maybe you'd have a better chance of doing and seeing everything you want to do and see. Plus you maybe wouldn't be so thoroughly exhausted at the end of your day of fun.

Still, we had a ton of fun here. We broke in Ammely's brand new monkey backpack leash...which worked great!...for the first ten minutes.

...and then we may have gotten her feet tangled up in the leash and she may have gone crashing down onto the cement and she may have landed on her head.

So we made a detour from the hippos to the help where our little girl got a brief examination and an ice pack for her head.

It turned out pretty well all things considered. She had a bit of a bump on her forehead but other than that she just needed some love through the next few exhibits.

We took the opportunity to see a couple shows while we were there too - very nice to sit down for a little while and very nice to see the animals in a way you normally don't see at their exhibits.

Did YOU know that dogs and Cheetahs could be best friends? Ummmm...neither did we! That's why you have to go to the shows! - To learn those kinds of facts.

The zoo isn't all about the animals though. There's also the grub.

And the local plant life. This interest passed from father to son to daughter I believe. I think picking up leaves off the ground was Ammely's favorite part of this zoo experience - ha!

And the awesome rides.

By this point we were ready to leave. So we took a picture to prove we were there and headed out to our next adventure.

The beach at sunset. A first for Ammon. A love for Brelynn. Fun for the whole family.

After her little dip in the ocean, we decided it best to head out and warm her up. Again, we took one last picture to prove we were there...

...headed up to the walk and cleaned off our feet and wrapped up the Ammely.

From there we headed to this lovely area for some dinner.

Once again, this is somewhere I'd love to have been able to spend a little more time. But we were tired. And hungry. And at least one of us was pregnant.

So we took a little walk through Little Italy to our destination: Filippi's Pizza Grotto. We ordered our pizza to go but this place was really cool. If we'd felt up to it, I would have liked to have actually stayed to eat. You walk through a meat shop to get back to the restaurant (the meat shop reminded Ammon of grocers in Russia) and once you're back there, the restaurant is adorable! Very Italian (obviously). Plus, since we ordered ours to go we got to wait next to all of the pizza making-action. Can you see that behind Ammon and Ammely?

They made SO many pizzas SO fast - it was fascinating to watch.

It was a night of strange hotel movies and pizza for us. Too tired to even go to the pool.

The next morning it was time to say goodbye - but not before we left our mark.

November was also home to Thanksgiving - but I did not take any pictures. You'll just have to trust me when I say that it was great. Lunch at Grandma and Grandma Hatch's and dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Lords. Amazing food and company all around. Beautiful weather. 

We also bought a few more trees and played outside. I mean, it's November right? Sledding in the backyard is totally feasible, right? 

Anything is possible folks. Even backyard sledding in the Arizona desert.