San Diego: Part 2

It was a drizzling day at the San Diego Zoo, but we decided to brave it and we were all glad we did.

It was at the zoo that Sybil said "Mama" for the second time. 

Both times were in reference to MY mother, not her mother.

We had a wall-sit competition back at the Schmitt house.

I was the first one out at 10 minutes but there was CONSIDERABLE cheating all around.

Accompanied by CONSIDERABLE smack talk.

Lexi gave Claire a beautiful manicure...

Claire sacrificed the manicure in the name of the stage. 

She slipped me the nails right after her performance. 

Soldiers don't wear nails.

We went to the Sand Diego temple, but the Christmas lights had already been turned off. 

As we drove up, Elijah said the temple reminded him of a tooth.

Lexi had taken the babies home to sleep while we went to the temple. She had prepared sandwiches for us. The sandwiches were made with croissants that the Schmitt family had deemed "too hard to eat" a week before. She sent a picture to these Schmitts of the Udalls partaking. I add this bit not to shine a bad light on anyone, but because it highlights a Udall mantra: thou shalt not throw food away.

On New Years night we had a mini birthday celebration for the January birthdays.

And played some minute-to-win-it games.

The Cup Stack

How many sick notes can be stuck in a minute?

Finding candy in whipped cream

On this trip, the girls learned that even though Iris is missing half of her teeth, she is still quite capable of grinding all of them extremely loudly while sleeping.

I caught up on all of the past posts during a marathon: David, Elijah and I were doing a Rocky marathon (since the girls went back to school before Elijah).
I am finishing this very last post because David took Sybil and Iris to New Orleans for 5 days. It has been wonderful to have time with just the older 2: almost like a honeymoon with them. And a honeymoon with my dormant organizational obsession. Very dormant.
Taking Sybil was a very last-minute decision. The morning of the flight, David claimed he was "excited," but quickly fell into morosity. He later said he was "excited like a man going to the electric chair." Soon after I dropped them off, I got a message from him: "Our trip began with Sybil making a jail break escape once we got to TSA. She took off fast and furiously, the TSA agents told me to speed through to catch her. At least they didn't taze her." And then a few texts after the first leg: "Iris is awesome. Sybil is wild." And "Sybil has become a mean drunk."