San Diego, Part I

We're back! We had a fabulous time in sunny San Diego for Spring Break. Brennan actually won a free trip from a contest at work and our kids have been dying to ride on an airplane and we're all obsessed with Sea World, so we thought we'd take a nice short flight to San Diego. We actually stayed in Carlsbad in TWO rooms. It was so nice to have both rooms and the kids were so tired each night they basically just crashed every night so we all slept very well.

Anyway, we left Thursday morning for our big adventure. We managed to herd everyone through the airport, contain them on the plane, ride the shuttle to our rental car and drive to the hotel. After all that, the first order of business was:

the BEACH!

We all had so much fun in the sand and the waves, but then spent quite a bit of time chasing big huge squirrels in these big rocks. Good times.

The next day we got up and enjoyed our lovely hotel breakfast then headed to Legoland. It was fun, but lines were really long and waiting in lines with Ben wasn't awesome. The older kids didn't actually love the long lines either and are kind of ride wimps. There were some really cute wimpy rides that they enjoyed, but they tired out really fast so I'm not sure we got our money's worth there, but we still had a good time.

As I said we're all obsessed with Sea World. We LOVED it. A few years ago we went shortly after there had been a trainer seriously injured or maybe even killed (I can't remember) with Shamu so the Shamu show didn't have any of the trainers in the water with the whales and it was kind of underwhelming. This time, however, was thrilling. I'm fully aware that the music and the guy with the deep voice talking is designed to evoke our emotions and even though I knew they were manipulating me I didn't care it, I got choked up and teared up and I know it's embarrassing, but there's just something that I love about it all. It's beautiful, these gigantic killer whales incredibly trained swimming these people around like they were little birds on their noses. I just love it, we all do. I didn't dare pull out my camera though because we were in the soak zone. The girls had disposable cameras and took a few so if they turned out I'll post them later.

We got to feed these cute little dolphins

A very well received souvenir.

The other great part about Sea World was that we had to wait in line for probably 45 minutes to buy admission tickets so they gave us 50% off which saved us $140!!! Woo hoo. I'm telling you that place is the best.

Brennan told the kids they could each have a night that they got to choose where we ate dinner. For Nate's night we ate at a cute little diner and they had pancakes and cheese fries, nice huh? For Abby's night we of course found a pizza place. Anna chose In 'n Out Burger the last night was Brennan and my pick. It was really fun to have the kids get so into it and best of all it completely eliminated arguing over where to eat. For lunch it was mostly hamburgers and fries on the go and I won't be sad if I don't see either of those things for a very long time.

Some great lines from the trip:

Brennan: Abby, that's the 2nd time you've made me go into high voice, stop it!

We drove through a part where Brennan used to work for a summer. He was waxing nostalgic and was really impressed with this hill that he used to ride his bike up every morning. After about the 4th time he said, "You guys, I used to ride my bike up this steep hill every day!"

Abby said: Dad, you keep saying that.

Brennan: Well, you need to appreciate that.

Nate tried some of Brennan's ribs and couldn't get enough. When I asked him if he liked them he said, "I want tons of these for Christmas!"

I bet you can't wait for part II!!!!