I've been a complete slacker.

As Melissa so appropriately pointed out in a recent comment, it is high time for another post. So here is a truckload of pictures from a little jaunt we recently took to San Diego with the extended Banks family. We hit Sea World, the Wild Animal Park, the San Diego Zoo, the pool, and we also did some shopping sans children. It was so fun yet so exhausting, relaxing, and incredibly memorable all at the same time. What a week it was.

Here's the whole crew at Sea World.

These next few were taken on the Sesame Street rides at Sea World. I'll be honest and say that I didn't mind taking Anna on them one bit. Being the youngest of my big family, I feel like I missed out on a few classic kid things because I was probably too young to appreciate them when everyone else in my family was doing it, like how I was 5 when we went to Disneyland. I don't even remember it. So now I get to live out my dream of going on the lame-o kid rides by going with Anna. I enjoyed every minute. And look how much she loved it.

Me, Anna, Trevor's sister Natalie, and Anna's cousin Jedrik. I think this picture gives you a perfect example of how Natalie and I often get mistaken for real-life sisters. People just see a mass of curls and think we're identical. (Also, I LOVE Jedrik's face in this one.)

This time, we were accompanied by Trevor's brother Devan. Gotta love the vomit-inducing tea cup rides.

This needs no explanation.

Trevor's brother Matt, Anna, Trevor's dad Randy, Devan, and Jedrik at the Wild Animal Park. At this point in the day, after trekking across the entire park, we were almost too tired to care that we could see a few giraffes about 6 miles away. But now it seems cool that we were actually that close.

Notice the gorilla to the left of Anna. Not the one in the purple shirt.

At the San Diego Zoo.

I cannot get enough of this picture. We decided to head to the zoo, just the three of us, and we got there at 6 after a long day — only to find out that it closes at 7. We ran like the wind to see as many animals as we could, and I think this picture accurately expresses our fatigue and general indifference at seeing the animals before us.

We took this umbrella stroller wherever we went, but Anna almost never wanted to sit in it. She pushed it everywhere and even harassed a duck or two by chasing them with it, which entertained me to no end.

Awww...

Weird stuff

One of the great mysteries of my life has been this: Don't you find it incredibly weird that there are parts of your own body that you've never seen? Yes, organs and bones to be sure. But there are even parts of my own back that my eyes have never looked at. My own back! I feel like I have a right to know what my own back looks like, but I've never been able to take a really good look at it in all my 27 years.

And you know what else is weird? Tin foil. Isn't it strange that there are companies that manufacture small rolls of extremely thin pieces of metal, and then we buy the rolls at the store and use it to cover food and other things? A thin piece of metal? That's so strange to me.