Emily's 10th Birthday

For Emily's 10th birthday we went to Sunsplash to celebrate and to of course enjoy the water rides, which were pretty fun. I hadn't been to Sunsplash in years. There was a lot of people at the park, but the lines were pretty reasonable. I was scared a few times before going on the water rides, but it never stopped me from actually going through with the rides. I think Stealth is the most intimidating ride since it looks like you will just fly off the ride, but its actually not the scariest ride I rode on.

We also had dinner at BJ's for Emily's birthday.

I think Emily's favorite thing to order at places is spaghetti, which is pretty basic.

For dessert, Emily had a pizookie. It was my first time trying it and I thought it was alright.

Emily' got a chocolate oreo cake for her birthday. Originally she said she wanted a ice cream cake, but she changed her mind.

I didn't like the cake too much, so I only ate a thin slice of it.

Emily also wanted to play some games with us, so we went to Elk Grove Park to play. We ended up playing Clue, Jenga, and Apples to Apples.

Overall, I think Emily had a really good birthday. She got to do a lot and had good food and company.

Independence Day 2014

On July 4, 2014, it was the national holiday, Independence Day. It's usually one of my favorite holidays since my family takes it more seriously and we always end up getting good food and doing more fun things.

My mom prepared BBQ food the day before and my dad just grilled everything. By the time I woke up that morning everything was ready to eat.

As if I didn't have enough food that day, my friend also made me 2 tortas. It was very nice of him to make me tortas. It's not often friends make food for me.

Later on in the evening, me, my sisters, and my 2 cousins went to Elk Grove Park to watch the firework show. I wanted to go around 7pm, but my mom thought that was too early since it started at 9:30 p.m.. I didn't want to go around 9ish because that would be too late, especially since we don't know the area or what's the crowd is like at the park. So, we ended going around 8ish and we weren't even allowed to drive all the way to the Elk Grove parking lot, which was $10 for parking. My mom dropped us blocks away and it took us 15 minutes to walk to the park.

 While we were walking to the park, there was lots of people walking on both sides of the street.When we got to the park, there was lots of people. It was already pitched dark.

The firework show didnt start until after 9:30 p.m. The beginning of the firework wasn't that exciting, but I'm always happy to see fireworks.

I wished my phone had better quality of the fireworks show, but my phone doesn't have good lighting at night. There was many times during the show when I thought it was going to end, but it didn't, which I'm grateful for.

After the firework show, we walked back to the car and went to my cousins place to light the fireworks we bought.

We didn't get much fireworks this year, but I still enjoy having our own fireworks to light and view.

Morning glories aren't the most vibrant fireworks, but they are definitely the most fun to hold and mess around with.

 

We ended our firework show with Oblivion, which was a good ending as it lasted pretty long and was the best out of all the fireworks we bought. I wonder what's in store for next Independence Day. Maybe next year, we will get more fireworks :).

Not hiking to Alamere Falls, but on Limantour Beach

 Last Saturday, me, Janet, Chen, and Ricardo went to go hiking at Alamere Falls.

 

The drive there was around 2 hours or so. We drove past the Arch Rock trail area.

When we got there, it was pretty windy and still gloomy.

I read a review on Yelp that the location is right on point to the Alamere Falls trails, so I navigated to that address. No one looked up the directions to actually hike the place, so we just followed a trail that we saw when we got off the parking lot. That trail led to Limantour Beach.

We decided to walk down the beach and hoped it as just a few miles walk away.

Janet spotted jellyfish at the beach, which I thought was really cool. 

Since it was still gloomy and the sun wasn't out, the beach looked dark and kind of dirty. But as soon as the sun came out, the beach looked all blue again.

There was a point in which I went ahead and my friends decided to stay at a spot. I wanted to see if we could reach the Alamere waterfalls since we had been walking for quite a while. When I reached the spot, I wanted to check, it wasn't there. I asked some people about Alamere Falls and they told me it would take 2 hours to get there from the beach and that the hiking trail was faster. That was when I decided to head back.

 My friends discovered an awesome boulder while I went ahead of them.

When me and my friends were resting, I was digging in the sand for no reason and out came a larvae. My friend put the larvae back in the sand and a few minutes later I found the larvae again.

We headed back to the parking lot, but this time we headed up a trail since it would be faster.

When we reached this sign, I wanted to follow it and not assume that the parking lot was down the trail. I wanted to make sure we didn't waste time, but my friends wanted to go to the trail and continued walking. We asked 2 people who we just saw and they said they saw the parking lot 30 minutes ago. After walking for 10 minutes, I still had my doubts and saw 2 people again and I asked them if the trail was heading to the Limantour parking lot and they said the trail was going inland and they were heading to the parking lot too.

I think walking along the dry sand is very hard, especially if the same is on an unstable surface. So, it was very exhausting. The sand sinked in every time I walked on it. Even the sand on the beach sinked in, but it felt nicer to walk next to the water on wet sand. I didn't like the sand here too much. I did like that it didn't stick to me too much though.

I'm kind of bummed we didn't get to see Alamere Falls, but maybe another time!