A day at the Wild Animal Park

We headed out early Saturday morning to go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park (aka: Safari Park). We had a great time and fun day!

First stop was the carousel - of course!

Sakura loves carousels - I headed straight for the giraffe, cause I love giraffes -

unfortunately I didn't realize the dumb giraffe was stationary.

Baby anything is always cute, these babies were especially cute!


Our very own little butterfly

In flight

We had two favorite things at the zoo this time, the lorakeets were SO cool, as you'll see below we bought some nectar to feed them and Daddy was lucky enough to get a taker on his food. Sakura was unsure of this flying thing on her Daddy, but she never cried and just starred at him.

Feeding the lorakeet

Not too sure

Sakura was checking out the birds here

We looked around the gift shop a bit and saw these cute butterfly wings.

Sakura is modeling them here for us.

And the back...

Sakura insisted that she wear her backpack once she noticed we had it (I just stuck a couple of diapers and some snacks in it before we headed into the park), so she walked all over the place (and it was HOT outside) with her backpack on. Silly kid!

Pretty bird of paradise at the park

the Zoo and the Wild Animal Park have the prettiest flowers

Our second trip on the carousel

The tie for our favorite was the Butterfly Exhibit. It's a limited time for this exhibit and boy am I glad we got to see it. The butterflies were beautiful and they were EVERYWHERE! Omgosh sooo many butterflies flying around, landing, drinking, just gorgeous!

Sakura wanted to catch one ...

So she tried and tried....

Then she saw this little girl with one, and since she apparently caught it like this,

Sakura tried this way too.

Beautiful butterflies

Daddy has a new friend....a butterfly liked Daddy and of course Sakura wanted to touch him

(she didn't by the way)

As you can tell, I loved the butterfly exhibit!
Um....I didn't take many pictures of anything else ;)

Sakura was pretty funny, she was SO good - she slept maybe 30 minutes on our drive there, so when we got to the park, it was pretty much nap time, but Sakura stayed awake - we did a few things, ate lunch, then the butterflies, then some shops, etc... well at lunch she was feeling a bit grumpy I think - so every question I asked her, she responded NO. Daddy threw in a question - Do you want ice cream? Sakura is no dummy, she said "Yes"... so we finished lunch and figured we'd head to the butterfly exhibit (the tickets were timed), and then find some ice cream somewhere cool .... so as we were walking, Sakura was pretending she was eating an ice cream cone - holding it in her hand just as you would, and licking away. Daddy and I got a good laugh.

Soon it was time to head home - we stopped at the mall first - Sakura did great there too - well a few meltdowns but all in all, she was great. But as soon as we got in the car leaving the mall, someone was OUT cold! Poor Sakura was exhausted. We still had stops to make - Marukai, Mitsuwa Marketplace (grocery shopping for Bachan and Jiichan), and then home....Sakura slept through all of the stops and woke up about 20 minutes before we got home - PERFECT day!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

I can honestly say this was the MOST fun I have ever had on any Easter.

We woke up in the morning, but the Easter bunny hadn't arrived, he must have been running late in our neighborhood .... BUT apparently his little helpers hid eggs for Sakura. I went outside to put something in the car and when I walked out the door I noticed a box of Peeps and a plastic egg. I said to myself, Oh Heather must have dropped these off for us how sweet .... then I noticed more eggs, the front yard was covered with plastic eggs - HOW SWEET is right, Jason (Heather's husband) had come in the middle of the night and 'egged' us - I rushed inside, got Sakura in her Easter dress, woke up Daddy and out we went to hunt eggs - admittedly I didn't think Sakura was going to "get it" this year, but she sure did! It really is the little things in life that are the most special - I just cannot say how sweet and how much we appreciate that Jason (and Heather) went out of their way to make our Easter special - it was just an amazing feeling walking outside and seeing what they had done for Sakura.

We hid eggs over and over and over again throughout the day - Sakura kept saying "more more eggs" every time she would finish, so I would distract her, and Daddy would hide eggs. I cannot even tell you how much fun we had watching Sakura find her eggs. Most of the photos that day are of Sakura hunting eggs, so if you tire of them, feel free to click away.

Finding her first eggs.

EGG!

I mentioned there was a box of Peeps - Heather and I love Peeps...Heather said "If these are her first Peeps, I was photo proof that she ate one" - I took a video of Sakura saying Thank You to Heather and Jason and also a couple of pics too.

Sakura's 1st Peep! She loved it!!! That's my girl!

Sakura took a nap and guess who visited while she napped? The Easter Bunny!

Some goodies from the Easter Bunny - Sakura went straight for the Hello Kitty Pocky, then the bubbles, and then she discovered a Yo Gabba Gabba music CD!

Giving her bunny a love

Eating her chicadee crackers and trying on her Hello Kitty sunglasses

I made a traditional Easter dinner - Ham, etc. and we headed down to Bachan and Jiichan's to eat dinner with them. Sakura got an Easter Basket from Bachan and Jiichan too --- another Hello Kitty basket! TOO cute!

She got a new Hello Kitty beach towel and .....

Stickers! Her favorite!

After we finished eating, we hunted more eggs. Bachan and Jiichan loved watching Sakura hunt eggs, we used to enjoy watching Jessamine and Stephanie hunt eggs, now Sakura enjoys it just like they did!

Sakura was "sad" that there were no "more more eggs" .... it was starting to get dark, work on Monday, so we needed to head home.

Looking for "more more eggs"

Awwwwwww...no more eggs. Time to go home.

Happy Easter everyone!

Treadmill trouble

Well another mishap - ugh!

Thought it would be 'fun' for me and Sakura to take a little stroll on the treadmill but that wasn't such a grand idea. The treadmill wasn't working correctly and didn't come on, then all of a sudden came on FAST and down went Sakura - she got 'trapped' between the wall and the belt of the treadmill - needless to say not good! She is a tough little girl though, she cried a bit then she was fine - just a few burn battle wounds :(

Didn't look too bad right afterwards.

But after her bath - it wasn't looking too pretty :( Poor Sakura - I could only imagine how bad it burned, since she screamed in the bathtub and kept saying Ooowwie...Poor baby girl!

The next morning Mommy bought some Neosporin for kids and slathered it on.

Sakura slept peaceful.

Milk mustache - silly girl - cupcake frosting and milk make everything seem bearable -

even when it's in your nose!

As you can see, Sakura was back to normal in no time - thankfully.

I am just hoping that I don't rub off on her, if there was an accident to happen when I was growing up, it happened to me. I don't want Sakura following in my footsteps!

A trip to the Doctor

Sakura has been coughing pretty much since her birthday so I decided I wanted to have her checked out. Suspected allergies, but wanted "confirmation" so I made an appt. and got her all checked out. Dr. Amon pretty much confirmed my suspicions and suggested Allegra OTC in the evenings before bedtime. Should know more in a few weeks if it works or not. All of her symptoms lead to allergies though.

What else do you do while you wait for the Doctor....I snap phone pics :)

Dinner with friends and Jumping at JumpStreet

Sakura waiting at the bar like a big girl.

We had a great visit with the Galakatos'. It's hard to believe that we met them when Sinclair was just about 6 months old! Wow has time flown. Sinclair is SO smart and has the best personality - she's SO outgoing - quite the opposite of shy Sakura. Sakura wasn't feeling great either, so that made it even worse. Despite her not being in the optimal mood, we still were able to have a great visit with our dear friends.

We met for dinner at our favorite place Oregano's Pizza in Scottsdale, then we went for a special treat SPRINKLES cupcakes - OMGosh talk about delicious!

Sakura was SO shy with everyone - she does take forever to warm up normally but she didn't feel good so she was especially clingy.

Monkey See....

I remember reading on their blog way back when Sinclair was a tiny tot still in Roppongi Hills that she was born to be a Galakatos since she can eat --- she is a GREAT eater, here she was having fun with her spaghetti, we were all laughing so of course she was performing for us :)

Monkey Do....

Sakura attempting to copy Sinclair, but she only had corkscrew pasta - LOL!

YAY for cupcakes -

we were telling Sakura that we were going to have cupcakes and she got VERY excited!

Both girls jumping up and down for cupcakes - pretty cute!

Not sure .....

Sinclair pointing out what she wanted - we discovered after eating our cupcakes and walking out the door, when they locked it behind us that we BARELY made it in time!

Sakura with her cupcake - vanilla - which I REALLY wanted to try, since white cake is my favorite .... I should have taken a picture of this cupcake mere seconds later laid out all over the floor - yep she dropped it! Ugh!

While we were in Phoenix we also tried out a new place near Grandma's house - JumpStreet Indoor Trampolines - VERY cool place ... Sakura enjoyed it a bit, she liked jumping with us, she wouldn't do it by herself, and she HATED the inflatable slides - not sure why, but I took her down a few times just to see if she'd get used to it, she cried though.

Maybe with her cousin David? We'll try again.

Jumping with Mommy first .... but she wanted Daddy to jump :)

Another quick trip, but we had a great time!