Ladd Photos

Connor decided to be the Pillsbury Doughboy, which was a hit with all his teammates and their parents. He even can do a pretty good “who whooo” when you poke him.

Connor had a morning baseball game with the Crush. Then we headed down south to celebrate Hector’s 10th birthday.

A fun day riding rides and checking out the awesome Halloween decorations.

Some photos from the last game of a good season. Next up is the Winter Ball season with Del Norte.

Connor and I visited the animals at the Safari Park while practicing our photography skills.

This museum was much larger than we expected. They had diagrams and dollhouses, metal airplanes, model ships, and more little engines than you could imagine existed. The amount of time and skill it must have took to craft such intricate creations is amazing.

Connor is a big man on campus at Oak Valley Middle School and Gavin is an upperclassman at Del Norte High School.

We had never explored this museum before, which was way out in East County San Diego. The museum was filled with lots of interesting minerals, fossils, shells, and animal specimins. There was a large collection of native artifacts from many different groups of peoples throughout the Americas.

After getting our fill of the museum, we went next door to the Water Conservation Garden where we wandered around and explored the grounds.

Day two of the tournament in Perris. Gavin started off pitching a gem in the first game. Then, in the bottom of the 1st, while up to bat, he took a fastball right off the elbow, knocking him out of the game.

A trip to the ER and a few x-rays later, his elbow wasn’t broken, just severely traumatized. He will be wearing a sling for a week, but should make a full recovery.

Gavin is playing for Crush again this summer. These are a few shots from the first day of a two day tournament in Perris, CA.

Our flight home to San Diego had a long layover in Las Vegas, so we had time to leave the airport and explore the Strip.

No trip to Minneapolis is complete without a visit to the largest mall in the United States. It had every store you could ever imagine, and small theme park in the middle.

We spent most of the day walking around downtown Minneapolis, hopping between buildings via the sky bridges and exploring the architecture.

In the evening, we visited our 20th MLB stadium, watching the Twins beat the Tigers at Target Field. We happened to catch Brooks Lee’s MLB debut, who is the son of the Cal Poly head baseball coach. After the game, we enjoyed an awesome fireworks show.

Our family’s multi-year quest to find a moose was finally successful! The zoo also has a cool elevated walkway, a large collection of goats, and many other interesting animals. We finished our time at the zoo by having the boys take a ride on a camel, which was a first for both of them.

After dinner, we went to take a look at the Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul.