Good morning!

Quick Note: It was brought to my attention that this post was not up and running on Sunday. I posted it Sunday morning but for whatever reason it wasn’t working properly, so I am re-posting it today in hopes that you all will be able to see it! Hope it works! Enjoy!

So if you have been following along for the last two posts you know that on our third day in California we woke up with a bit of a hangover. Now a tradition between Elyse and I throughout our friendship has been me making my famous pancakes! They’re just regular pancakes really but Elyse says they’re the best. Matt and I woke up first had some coffee and after watching an episode of Game of Thrones I made my way into the kitchen. It was my first time cooking in California and for me it was sort of a surreal experience. I kept imagining what life would be like here. Same routine different view. Pops was outside reading his book while Remmi laid at his feet, out the window there was a huge hill in the backyard and the doors and windows were all open so that the cool air could come in. I just kept picturing how hot it would be in Florida if we kept all the windows and doors open. For the record, I believe that was the day when it was record temperatures in Florida. Something like it hit 100 degrees for the first time since 1998 or some nonsense. HA HA SUCKERS! I’m just kidding! Love you guys!

Elyse and César were finally up and the house began to smell of buttery pancakes, feeling like death warmed over I’m sure, Elyse came in and snagged a pancake off the plate. Today we were going to the San Diego Zoo. I was super excited. Elyse said she had discounted tickets which was cool because last night took a small hit to my bank account that’s for sure. After a slow start we headed towards the zoo around 1pm, we got there only to find out that Drunky McHangover forgot the tickets in her car. We drove her dad’s car. Yeah. Exactly.

After some good old fashioned smack talk we walked back to the car and pops said he would meet us half way so we decided to take our first trip to an In and Out Burger. DUDE. YUM!! If you ever get the opportunity to go… do it! One thing I really liked about this place was that everything was super fresh, like I watched them cut my fries before making them. Pretty neat. So after we ate our massive burgers we walked across the street to suffice my need of coffee with some Starbucks. We met up with pops and got our tickets and headed back to the zoo.

The San Diego Zoo is huge, the park was closing at six so we had roughly three hours to walk around and you would think that would be enough time. It’s not. Elyse and César were our tour guides because apparently they come here all the time so we plotted out which animals we wanted to see and went from there.

First up was the Koala bears and it still amazes me that they can sleep sitting straight up in the tree, knowing me I would have went to roll over and fell right out. We met a very hyper flamingo who kept running the length of the fence just showing off in front of the crowd who was eating it up. There were lions, giraffes and elephants, oh my! Saw a kangaroo sleeping on his back in the sun, reindeer and a mama leopard and her baby playing around which I got some great video of. We of course stopped by the snake house so Matt could see all the creepy crawlies, but my personal favorite part was when we came across the cheetah… and the cheetah’s puppy. That’s right folks there was a dog in the cage with the cheetah! Of course I panicked just a smidge but then I saw that the San Diego Zoo pairs these wild animals together as part of a buddy system. How stinking cute is that?

Ok so I may or may not have made it clear in part one of this series that I am not a big fan of heights. You know… the whole Ferris wheel fiasco. Anyways, there’s this sky view thing that is included with your ticket. I am happy to say that without any prescription medication or mass quantities of alcohol, I got into this tin bucket with the others and was lifted into the air to where you could see the entire zoo. Now I’m sure when they read this they’re going to call me out anyways so I may as well tell you that I sort of freaked out a little bit, but in my defense I think I did pretty good considering we could have plummeted to our death at any moment into the gorilla pit!

But once we got up there it was actually really beautiful. You could see all the animals and to the right just outside the zoo was this big church with brick walls and a huge white steeple that contained a stained glass window. The sun was starting to set and the sky was turning this pretty orange and pink color, it looked like someone took a big paintbrush and put light purple streaks in between to break up the color. We had a little more time before they closed so we tried to go see the new baby hippo but they were hiding out. So we stopped by to see the pandas. Where we witnessed one with some serious bowel movements and I’ll let your imagination wander on that one. Let’s just say: projectile. I did get a really great picture of one snoozing in a tree though and it reminded me of those lazy day posters you see hanging in offices. I felt like it should read “hang in there , the weekend is just around the corner!”

After a long afternoon at the zoo we made our way back to Elyse’s where her family was waiting for us. Elyse had a cheese themed birthday party, there were nachos, mac and cheese and a birthday cheese cake topped with fruit. It was great seeing her family, some people I hadn’t seen in what felt like forever and I was glad Matt finally got to meet everyone I had talked so much about. We drank, we played fetch with Remmi and Selene (Elyse’s cousin Josh’s German Shepard who Matt was in love with), we took shots of the decadence Aunt Maggie bought the day before and my face made that weird contortion again as I tried to be cool and drink it down fast. I watched my best friend open her gifts while her family and friends gathered around to celebrate this wonderfully weird little person. And it hit me… we only have two days left.