In the beginning of July we drove to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon it is quite a tripe not so bad time wise but the difference in landscape, as we leave Yuma and head west to Phoenix the landscape is rocky mountains and lots of Saguaros and other cactus spicies, after Phoenix it is still desert and slowly as you start decending towards Flagstaff the landscape starts to change from beige to little green to GREEN, I love green!! Then you see the prarie and then trees and forrests, the change is rapid and so beautiful.

When we arrived at Flagstaff we actually saw a little bit snow on the side of the road!!

In mid June we drove to San Diego to attend a Swedish Midsummer fest held at Balboa Park.

 We arrived early so we decided to browse around in the park first to enjoy the green scenerey and being able to be outside with out suffering heat stroke. While walking around in the park we met a lady and her parrot, she asked if Ella wanted to hold her and so she did. I think that the pictures will speak for themselves.

Denis and Ella enjoyed looking at the fountain and trowing pennies in it. With the stroller we couldn’t get to close to the water so we enjoyed it from a distance.

At two that afternoon we walk over to the House of Sweden  – http://www.sdhpr.org/Countries/Sweden.html

and enjoyed some Swedish små kakor (cookies) and enjoying the midsummer celebration, first on stage with choirs and gammel dans – after that it was time for the midsummer pole dance – it was a lot of fun and unlike Sweden we where guarantieed good (to hot for dancing) weather but still it was almost like home…!!

Instead of giving Ella a whole bunch of toys this year we decided that a trip to San Diego’s Sea World would be a great gift -  she loved it, she got to choose between breakfast with Elmo or Shamu…

What can I say she loves that red monster, Elmo!

After breakfast we moved on into the park and saw and did lots of different things like: Watching the Killer Whales through the wall of the big glass pool, that was cool, only a few inches between us and them.

We moved on to the Dolphin pool, Denis and Ella tried to touch the dolphins and succeeded.

The biggest event of all was of course the Shamu show in the big pool, that was great but with the sun and heat the girls thought is was a bit too long… still a great show.

There are so many things to see and do a tSea World, here Ella is holding a Sea star and on the other picture she is posing infront of the pink flamingos.

We all went on a cabel car ride while at Sea World much to my dislike… but Ella really wanted to go and oh well we all survived.

A few pictures from the pool, I will post more of these soon, since most of you “back east” are still wearing winter shoes and jacket we really don’t want to over do it and tell you that it is only 28C in the pool…

 Ella and Emma are showing off their teeth… or not, Emma has 6 of those tidy whity ones now.

Emma loves her singing puppy she got for christmas and she is showing it by laying on the floor cuddling with it and moving with the music. She has also reached the ago of I’m walking by holding on to things… She will have to hurry up if she is going to beat Ella’s walking a week before her first birthday, she will need to be taking those steps the next couple of days… not betting any money on that though

Going out to dinner, got to dress up a little bit… and then have lots of fun…