Pencil lead art.

Look at this! I love these, especially the hearts. Dalton Ghetti is the artist and his work can be found here. Amazing! We have a piece of chalk that is carved into a woman that we bought at an art show at the Heard, but I have never seen pencil lead carved like this! Design*Sponge posted about these miniatures today. I would love to see these in person!

Musical Instrument Museum.

Love this guitar!

And this one!

This xylophone is made of rocks!

Octobass - the step to the left is where the player stands to play.

Iranian bagpipes.

This is a G.I. Piano manufactured by Steinway during WWII. They were parachuted into camps and used by the troops!

I left work early on Thursday to go to the new Musical Instrument Museum with Vicki and Faith. It is seriously amazing! There is 75,000 square feet of exhibit space and the goal of the museum is to represent every country with at least one instrument. The museum opened in April and they are still adding to the exhibits. I didn't even get to the American and European rooms! Curators and consultants began collecting for the museum three years ago and they have an extensive collection of app. 16,000 pieces! And, you get a wireless headset that connects with each exhibit to hear the instruments on display. The founder of the museum is Robert Ulrich, the chairman emeritus of Target. So, they have plenty of money to create an experience. And, we knew almost everyone there. It seems like as soon as the job opportunities came up, everyone left every other museum in the valley to head to MIM. Very cool place!!

San Diego Sunday.

View from the Coronado bridge
The Crown Room - brunch at the Del

Cool tree at the Del - Dragon Tree

The Reagan?

Love this statue! Mike and I swear we've seen it before, maybe in Florida.

Outlet mall/casino stop on the way home

Space Age diner, Gila Bend

Anyone tired of San Diego yet? Not me! On Sunday we drove over to Coronado Island and dreamed about being stationed there. If we are, we are definitely living on the island because the houses are amazing and the bridge is a teeny bit scary! I have always wanted to stay at the Hotel Del Coronado but the rooms are like, $300 a night. So, we decided to go to the Sunday brunch instead and it was very yummy! Tons of food and Mike and I kept going back for more. Then we wandered around the beach for awhile. The sand sparkles! There are millions of mica flakes in the sand and it is like glitter. The mica separates from the sand in the tide pools and swirls around like a snow globe. It was the collest thing! And we drove around the North Island Naval Base. Aaron got off the boat there and Rebekah and his parents were there to meet him last summer! We're pretty sure that the Reagan was there too, but we couldn't see the name on it.

We drove back across the bridge and went to the San Diego seaport to tour the aircraft carrier, the Midway. Amazing! And we got to see (basically) where Aaron lived for six months. Those ships are incredible!! The tour is great and everyone needs to do it!

Then (can you guess?) back to Old Town for dinner! Sleeping late on Monday and a long drive home ended the trip. Oh, and we ate at the Space Age diner in Gila Bend. The food wasn't great, but the place is pretty cool.

San Diego Saturday Night.

These markers were on the street in front of the cemetary where they had moved the fence back and built the road. Weird.

Can you feel it?!

So, Saturday we went back to Old Town for dinner and ate at Zocalo Grill. It was delicious. Why can't Phoenix have Mexican food like that? Before and after dinner we walked around shopping and I got an amazing silver pendant. While walking around, we saw ads for ghost tours and since we always do the ghost tour, we had to go.

It was hilarious! Our guide walked us around Old Town and told us about all of the experiences he had had there. The Whaley House is there and according to the Travel Channel, it is the most haunted house in America. We gathered in the courtyard there at the house (next to the most amazing hydrangeas!!) and he explained that there was a strong vortex there between the dead and the living. He had a "meter just like on TV" and the lights kept flashing as he moved it around. He told everyone to hold out their hands toward it and see if they felt anything. Everyone was like, Oh wow, and I can feel it! Hilarious! Mike got a great photo of it. The tour ended with our guide passing around photos he had taken with mysterious things in them, like orbs and rods etc. He swore that a couple of orbs had dog faces in them and were a dog pack running together. Uh, huh.

San Diego Zoo.

Baby Flamingo!

California Condor

Crazy!

Saturday morning we woke up early and headed to the zoo. It is $37 a person! but, Mike got in free (go Army!) and I got a discount, so that was much better. The zoo is huge and it is hard to see everything, but they have a free bus tour that is a great way to get an overview of everything and see alot of the animals. Our favorites were:

• The Laughing Kukuburra - it definitely laughs and it is loud!


• The Gorillas! The baby gorilla hung out next to the glass clowning around for everyone watching. It was the cutest thing. The keepers started throwing carrots into the enclosure and the big daddy gorilla came out. The other gorillas scattered so that he could get his fill first. So funny. They were all walking around with huge handfuls of carrots.


• All of the monkeys/apes were fun to watch, including the ones walking around the zoo!


• All of the baby animals, of course.
  
• There was an extraordinarily long line to see the pandas so we didn't see them, but maybe next time.

We left the zoo around 4pm and headed back to Old Town for dinner. (Mexican food!)

San Diego.

Love this photo!

The biggest Century plant ever!

The Cosmopolitan Hotel (not ours)

We drove to San Diego Friday night to spend the weekend. San Diego was awesome and the weather was significantly cooler than Phoenix! We arrived about 10pm and because our hotel was so close, we immediately walked to Old Town. There were still tons of people around and we walked through the park looking at all of the old buildings, making note of what to see on Saturday. But, it wasn't a late night because we had to get up to go to the zoo!