Happy 26th Birthday!!!!

Holy cow! What a crazy week it's been!

I flew out to Little Rock on Monday afternoon and spent Tuesday through Thursday training and working on-site. I caught a pretty nasty cold in Little Rock that is still lingering... My birthday was celebrated several times while in town! My boss's boss brought in these delicious gourmet cupcakes and milk to help celebrate my birthday. I had a peanut butter & jelly cupcake - and as weird as it sounds....it was DELISH! On my actual birthday, my former boss took me and the Tampa ladies out for a yummy Italian dinner. Good time, good times - but I missed Chris SO much on my birthday. We cut the night short, so that I could head back to the hotel to pack (my flight departed the next morning at 6-something AM). Here's how my day of traveling went:
-Wake up at 3:30 AM AZ time to get ready for the day, check out, and take a taxi to the airport
-Work from the airport for about 45 minutes until it was time to board
-Take a short 1 hour flight from Little Rock to Dallas
-Go to my gate in Dallas
-Change gates in Dallas
-Notified of a 30 minute delay for maintenance
-Notified at 10:30 AM that my 10 AM flight to Phoenix was being canceled due to maintenance issues
-Call Corporate Travel in a panic - told there are no other flights with seats available in DFW until 6:45 PM.
-Yelled at Corporate Travel that I needed to get home ASAP for a Dr. Appt
-Thanked Corporate Travel profusely for booking me the last ticket on a Southwest flight that departs at 12:30 PM and stops in San Antonio before heading to Phoenix
-Paid (actually Alltel paid) a ridiculous amount for a taxi to transport me (as fast as possible PLEASE) to Lovefield (the other airport in Dallas) for a flight that departs in about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
-Arrive at Lovefield with less than an hour until my flight departs
-Go through security
-Arrive at my gate as they start boarding the plane.
-Take-off and fly to San Antonio
-Switch seats to be closer to the front of the plane when we land in Phoenix
-Yelled at by some lady who claimed I stole her seat
-Rolled my eyes - and moved up another row.
-Take off and fly to Phoenix
-Got a bloody nose
-Became incredibly nauseous during the descent into Phoenix...
-Threw up in a barf bag
-Landed in Phoenix at 3:30 PM AZ time.
-Grabbed my luggage, ran to the car, and SPED to the doctor's office
-Arrived 5 minutes late for my appointment.

I can't imagine why my blood pressure was so high when they took my reading! :o)

We didn't have the opportunity to hear the baby's heartbeat. The doctor's office likes to wait until after 12 weeks to listen for a normal pregnancy. Oh well - next appointment it is. We did find out some great news - we will be able to have a traditional birth if all goes well AND we will also be able to breastfeed if that is something we choose to do. Yay! Such great news! Other than that - everything else seems pretty normal. No weight gain yet - actually at a loss - but have no fear....I'm sure it will come eventually. I will be 11 weeks tomorrow - which just means one more week or so until I'm officially out of the 1st trimester! PTL for His blessings so far!

Chris took me out for a quick bite to eat after my appointment, and we went home. I was SO exhausted!!!! There was a cake waiting for me at home - and Chris broke out the surprise: he planned a weekend getaway in San Diego starting the next day! He made hotel arrangements, planned on things we can do while in town, and made Honey's kennel reservations. What a wonderful surprise! We went upstairs to pack - and then I literally passed out. I realized later that I was so tired when packing for the San Diego trip, I didn't do a great job of packing clothes that I would really want to wear in San Diego - but oh well!

We woke up around 6:30 AM the next morning, got ready, packed the car, and dropped Honey off at the kennel. Five and a half hours later we were in beautiful San Diego at Mission Beach. What a gorgeous beach! Here are some of the pictures:




After Mission Beach, we went to Sunset Cliffs. We were there for over an hour watching the surfers and listening to the waves crash into the cliffs. We were too impatient to wait around for sunset, but here's some pictures from the Cliffs:






Chris booked a great hotel right on the Marina. This was our view from our windows and door:


Plus, we had a visitors every morning and evening right outside our door:




Sunday, we went to the San Diego Zoo. I will have to say that in Omaha, you are quite spoiled with a fabulous zoo. I don't know if I would say San Diego is so much better than Omaha - it's a different zoo experience complete with ski-lift type things that take you from one end of the zoo to the other and guided bus tours...but the animals....same at both zoos. Plus in Omaha you have the Jungle, Aquarium, and Desert Dome. SD Zoo has something very similar to the Lied Jungle - but not to the level of the Omaha Zoo. Anywho, we had a great time at the zoo...and some of the fun things we got to see that we either haven't seein Omaha or just thought were pretty amazing include:


















(I loved the Pandas if you couldn't tell!) :o)

We had been keeping up with the Cardinals game via my cell phone the entire time at the zoo. When we left, we stopped by an ice cream shop, picked up an ice cream cone each, and watched the final 2 minutes of the game. And crazy enough to say: The Cardinals are going to the SUPERBOWL! What???? :o) I'm excited for them! I'll wear my red on Superbowl Sunday.

So...we decided to head back to the cliffs to watch the sunset before heading out to dinner. We figured it was named Sunset Cliffs for a reason, right? What a beautiful, beautiful, and romantic experience. The pictures don't do justice, but here are few we took:








We had a great dinner in the Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego. We found a really cool shopping complex right next door, but didn't buy anything. We finally went home, so we could pack to leave the next day.

On the way out of town, we stopped at Imperial Beach (south of San Diego). Not my favorite beach by any means....but we can check it off the list now! There was definitely a difference in the population in Imperial Beach, but while walking the pier, we ran into a fun little guy:




After that, we hopped in the car and drove the 5.5 hours home! What a great birthday surprise!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!