San Diego and the Zoo

We absolutely love San Diego--what a wonderful city with so much to do! We started out with a visit to Seaport Village for shopping and dinner. A great way to start our week here in Southern California

Sydney's got the poses down, she loves to have her picture taken and i've got a ton of great pictures of this beautiful smiling girl

She had to check out every single hammock swing in this one store...might just have to consider getting one of these with this great smile

Best zoo in the USA! My favorite zoo being the Sydney Australia zoo...but this is definitely one of the best zoos with a wide variety of animals

Sydney and the koalas...in "Sydney's store". all kinds of cute australia merchandise but couldn't resist this picture with all the koalas

Enjoyed a wonderful lunch at Sydney's Grill and Hangout!

And here he is--one of the 3 koalas on display since they are building a whole new Australia exhibit to open next year with lots more koalas and other Australian animals. Will just have to go back and visit them again...

So excited to show my girls a real koala

Sydney loves pandas as much as I do!

At the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park-about 1/2 hr from downtown with lots of great animals and a ton of space. Enjoyed a safari ride, seeing the gorillas, a couple of shows and hike at this impressive zoo. wish it wasn't so hot the day we were there...

getting up close and personal with a lion...

and the real thing...

and playing in a kids area with a model lion

Safari Sydney

panoramic view of the safari. can't wait to come back one day and do the zip line tour over the safari and the roar & snore program here

since going to the "elephant bar" restaurant, olivia loves elephants and got so excited to see them. i think its her favorite animal (for now...-she'll revert back to koalas/pandas once i show her more of them)

San Jose

We started off our California trip with a long weekend in San Jose, California. Spending time with our California family was definitely a highlight of the trip.  We were so grateful for the company and help with the girls.  Sydney and Olivia were just delighted to have the older cousins playing with them and showing them a great time all around San Jose.

Playing with Cousin Allison at the playground was fun for Olivia

Sydney beat Cousin Megan down the slide (she might have cheated and gotten a head start but you didn't hear that from me)

 Older cousins are so much fun and definitely make playground time fun!

Cousins Kaitlyn and Emily showed the girls a great time at the San Jose Children's Discovery Museum

 All of our hands!

Kaitlyn took extra special care of Sydney at the Discovery Museum

Meeting Clifford sure was a highlight...they had a special Clifford the Big Red Dog exhibit which was cool to explore

 While hanging out at Bruce and Lori's, Sydney, Kaitlyn and Emily put on the most hilarious puppet show I've ever seen. The video is too long to post but the creativity of the girls with the dialog and jokes made it one of the funniest things I'd ever seen.

family picture with Clifford during a repeat visit to the Children's Museum--so much to do there and just had to say HI to Clifford again

 and a special hug from Sydney...

water play was fun--olivia got soaked but she sure did have a great time

the girls created beautiful masterpieces in the art studio

 We also visited Happy Hollow park and zoo

olivia wasn't too thrilled with this ride (Kaitlyn and Sydney in the background were having a blast)

We all got to go on Danny the Dinosaur--our family took up almost all the train cars!

Carousel rides are fun

We loved hanging out with Bruce, Lori, Kaitlyn and Emily!!! Kaitlyn and Emily took such good care of my girls and it is wonderful to see what beautiful, thoughtful, amazing girls they are growing up to be...

And we loved our time with Shari, David, Megan, Adam and Allison. It was so wonderful to get to spend time with everyone. Our California family really showed us a good time and helped make the weekend so special.

Aunt Janice=LOVE. So glad we had some special time together : )

California Vacation

 When I started this blog almost 4 years ago I did not imagine that I would enjoy writing it as much as I do.  In the beginning I wrote from Sydney's perspective and wanted to share all the baby highlights and milestones but now it has turned into more of a photojournal for the girls. Although I post many of these pictures on facebook, every year I print this out and create a book to save for the girls and know that as they get older they will appreciate all the many things they have done in their lives and all the documentation to back it up.
Jason had a crazy idea to travel to California for our summer vacation and while I thought he was nuts to travel for almost 2 weeks with the girls, the vacation was fantastic and we got to do a million different things.  Gonna try and sort through my 600+ pictures and capture some of the highlights so here goes....

 Arriving in San Jose airport, the girls are ready for fun! They fit perfectly into the overhead bin storage check in the terminal and had fun playing around. if only they were this happy during the entire flight...





Olivia enjoyed her first lollipop (why didn't i try it sooner into the flight??!) and looked so funny with her blue tongue!

We took the girls on their first college tour. Jason wanted to show they Stanford University and I had lots of fun discussions with Sydney about growing older.  It was a picture perfect day and the weather was fantastic after our very hot & humid DC summer...

olivia especially enjoyed running around the Stanford campus. 

Our California adventure had just begun...lots more in store for the Martin family. and many more pictures to come!

July 2012 pictures

After 4 weeks of camp at B'nai Tzedek, Sydney was all ready to go to dance camp!  She enjoyed another 4 weeks of dancing, arts and crafts and playing with new friends.

She even got to dress up like a princess for a whole week and dance-pure delight! A definite highlight of the summer.

Olivia and I did lots of fun things while Sydney was at dance camp including a shabbat mommy & me at the JCC, Run Wiggle Paint & Giggle class at kidville and playdates.

We took a weekend roadtrip to Winchester to see GIGI! 

Papa, Gigi, Daddy & the girls...a fun weekend in Winchester

Sydney had so much fun at dance camp...i don't have a lot of pictures but snapped some cute videos when I came to pic her up.  Olivia would run to Sydney and then they would dance the last dance together with the older campers and little kids.
And then the girls would come home and dance some more...

21 months!!!

Sydney and her dance teacher Miss Caitlin! Sydney had such a wonderful experience there and we can't wait for more dancing this fall!

She was so proud of the many art projects she made this summer. Sydney got to do many fun things like sand art, painting t-shirts, games and more.  But nothing slowed her down--not even that broken collarbone!

my creative girl decided to decorate the letters in her room to make them more "fancy"

it sure has been a wonderful summer overall and now that camp is over we are all getting excited about vacation and then SCHOOL!