....but it's awesome

thanks for putting up with yesterday's pity party.

moving to orange county has been hard

... but it's also awesome.

seriously-

this place is amazing.

there is SO much to do.

we have been having a lot of fun exploring all the cool stuff around us.

for one, irvine is full of parks.

i mean FULL.

there are at LEAST 8 parks within walking distance of our house.

so great.

and....

we have a community pool. and spa.

swimming whenever we want is pretty great too.

there are so many neat things to see here.

and we haven't really even scratched the surface.

we've deemed tuesday nights 'explore the oc' nights.

between tuesdays and the weekends, we're hoping to find lots of amazing things right in our area.

here are a few things we've already experienced:

the great park

last friday we headed out to the great park in irvine.  

apparently it is eventually going to be the largest park west of somewhere.

right now it is pretty barren, except for....

 the FREE hot air balloon ride!!!

we got there and signed up.

we had an hour wait, so we rode the carousel.

(it was free, soooooo...... we rode it a lot)

(this is her tiger face)

finally, our pager went off and we got our tickets.

the kids were SUPER nervous.

we did a lot of reassuring.

it was awesome.

the balloon goes straight up and then comes back down.

as soon as we started going up and they realized they were safe, 

the kids were really excited to look out

you could see all around the area.

so cool.

when we got back down, the kids wanted to ride it again.

we had to promise them we'd go when someone came to visit.

(hint, hint!)

 santa ana zoo

in my attempt to keep busy,

i took the kids to the zoo yesterday.

since we have fresno zoo passes, 

we got in FREE! 

that's my favorite price.

i apologize to all the santa ana zoo fans.

but fresno has it ALL OVER this zoo.

the biggest animal we found was a camel.

jackson was VERY disappointed that there were no elephants.

(although it sounds like from fall-spring they bring them in on the weekends for elephant rides.  

what?  we will definitely be doing that! when does fall start?)

so, we had to look for other cool animals.

i had no idea, but we found 

blu & jewel 

from the movie rio at the santa ana zoo!

(okay, we all know it isn't the REAL blu & jewel.  but my kids were SO EXCITED. 

 we had to walk by those birds about 5 times.)

he wanted his picture taken in front of blu & jewel :)

it is next to impossible to get all 3 of them to even look at the camera, let alone smile at the same time

around the corner from 'blu & jewel', bella found 'nigel'

(another character from rio)

i love how excited proud of herself she was for finding him.

 (yes, that is a bald eagle. in a very small cage.  not even close to 'nigel'. but she was sure it was him)

this zoo does have cute little farm.

you can feed the goats.

oh, what fun!

and what orange county attraction is complete without a carousel?

(seriously, i feel like i should have a merry-go-round in my living room with how many carousels there are around here!)

it was a little pricey for my taste, but after the lack of elephants, there was no way i was keeping them off.

especially since bella got to RIDE JEWEL!!!!  :)

charlotte rode a chicken (?)

and jackson rode baby jaguar

we finished our trip with a little train ride and one last trip to see blu & jewel.

and lots of promises to come back and visit them :)

last night we picked up daddy at work and headed out to corona del mar to check out their beach.

charlotte literally goes sprinting towards the ocean.

i think we have a beach baby on our hands.

even jackson is starting to love the ocean.

yep, orange county is pretty awesome.

i think we're going to like it here.