California Trip: San Diego

For spring break this year, we did the biggie: a trip to California!!!  Two of Tony's sisters, Angela and Haley, and their families, as well as Tony's parents, also came on the trip, so the kids were able to have all this fun with their cousins, too!  It was an amazing family vacation, and there is way too much to tell and way too many pictures to show.  I will try to condense it into just two posts, one for our San Diego fun, and then another for Disneyland/California Adventure.

We arrived in San Diego Monday afternoon around 3:00, which gave us some time to play at the beach.  After two days of travel, the kids were ready to have some fun.  We stayed at a hotel right on Pacific Beach, which was so nice.  It was kind of chilly that day, low 60s with a cool breeze.  I didn't even get into my swimsuit (I'm such a wuss), but the kids were excited enough to be tough about it.

These smiles say it all.  We LOVE the beach!

 Connor spent most of his time working on this fun project.  He started out all alone, but as it went on, more and more kids got involved.  In the end, Connor and Caden got to be buried.  That night, even after his shower, I noticed one of Connor's ears still full of sand.

The next morning, we headed off to Sea World.  I didn't take many pictures there, but we loved it!  Since we knew we were going to ride plenty of rides in the next few days, our priority at Sea World was the shows.  We watched the dolphin show (my fave!), a whale show (amazing animals), a pet show (cute and fun), and a sea lion show (hilarious!).  The dolphin show was our first of the day, and we sat right up front to get a good view.  We were warned that we were sitting in the soak zone, but we thought we might just get some incidental splashing or something.  Not so.  The dolphins actually swim around and splash you on purpose!  Rude!  Luckily Brady was sitting up higher with Grandma and Grandpa.  We got completely soaked!  I didn't have a dry spot on me by the time it was done.   Everybody still loved it though.

Mylie showing off how wet she got. So much for doing hair that morning.

We also rode some rides and saw a lot of animals there.  We saw sharks, manta rays, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, sea otters, seals, sea lions, tons of fish, puffins, and penguins.  They also had a baby crocodile that the kids could touch.  They thought that was pretty cool, and the girls were even brave enough to touch it.

 Connor and Jaxon

Before we left, I told Connor I would ride a rollercoaster with him, so he chose the Manta.  It was such an exciting ride, but as I stood up at the end, I realized my phone was no longer in my pocket.  Dang.  That was probably the only bummer of the week, though.  We had a great time in San Diego and would love to go back sometime and spend more time there.