San Diego

For Labor Day weekend, we had a fun vacation planned in Oregon. We were going to drive down the coast, look at lighthouses, try to surf (Dan was bringing a wet suit), see seals and whatever else there is to do. But, a storm moved through, and so the day before we left, we decided to head down to San Diego instead. It was a great idea! We had so much fun in the sun!

Seth was such a good boy in the trip. He ate and slept great. He spent a lot of time in his stroller, and he loved it!

Finally a good smile caught on camera!

On Monday, we went to the SD zoo. It was huge! And very confusing.

Emma especially liked the statues of animals (as you will see we have tons of pictures with them).

The elephants were one of their coolest exhibits. Ah, it's got me. How in the world did I get in this predicament?

They also had some huge hippos in a big lake. They looked like they were running in slow motion, only they were swimming under the water.

We got to ride the skyfari.

Emma thought it was awesome. Not scared of heights at all.

She really liked all these litte cut-out face thingys. So, everytime we passed on, she went to stand in it and yelled "take a picture." We have lots of pictures of diffferent Emma's.

On a huge turtle.

How could we help comparing this zoo to the Omaha zoo? Well, the verdict is out, and here it is: there are good things about both. Overall, we decided we like the Omaha on best, just because it has such a variety of exhibits, and each one is so fun and easy to walk through. The SD zoo was neat because it was out among all the tropical trees and plants, but the actual exhibits were not as good.

My sweetest little vacationers.

Emma wanted her face painted so bad, we let her choose to do that or get a toy. She had some really cool purple butterflies on her cheek for the day.

Very serious business.

On Sunday we went to the beach. It was a hit!

My beach bums overlooking the Coronodo beach. It was so pretty. There were little gold sparkles all over in the sand, and it made the waves sparkle, too.

And oh, the sand. I could hardly stand to look at her rolling around in it. But she loved it so much.

Eww.

Seth loved the beach, too. He sat on the towel and just talked and talked.

He's on the verge of giggling. Maybe in the next few days. Right now he just gets super excited and gasps and snorts.

We also saw the temple on Sunday.

Emma found a fence overlooking the freeway and thought everyone needed a show. She sang (yelled) a mix of primary songs at the top of her lungs. It was very entertaining (for us, anyways).

Thankfully, because of the temple, this little guy will be mine for always.

We liked our hotel. It was pretty clean, and the kids slept great. What more is there?

And on Saturday we went to Sea World. Shamu was just so amazing. Emma loved it, but she wouldn't turn her back on him for anything - just a little too spooky.

She liked the starfish. They were reawy, reawy, reawy pretty.

They were fun because you could pick them up. I was surprised how easily she did this. I thought she would be scared.

It was so stinking hot on Saturday! I thought I was going to die. Not to mention food and drinks cost an arm and a leg. Luckily we had water, but it was miserable. Poor Seth was very hot and sweaty the whole day.

We bought Emma a little sun hat, because the part in her hair was getting very red. She didn't turn out burnt at all, lucky tan little girl. I can't say the same for me.

Emma doing a fishy face. Shamu face.

Emma helping Seth do a fishy face.

The aquarium was pretty cool, but not as cool as the one in Omaha (you know we were comparing).

The teenie munchkin hanging out while Emma went on some rides. He's clearly not amused.

This was his little house for the weekend.

Emma played in the little sea-port themed playground.

The rides were her favorite part. It had me thinking we really should have gone to Disney Land, until she freaked out about an animatronic fish in one of the exhibits, and then I decided she probably needs one more year. The girl loved going up, down, around, but had a fit when a fish tried to talk to her.

Watching Shamu. I'll admit it, I loved it. I think those huge, graceful whales are just amazing.

Did I mention it was sunny and hot? Ahh!

The day that we left, I woke up and started combing Emma's hair. Low and behold, she had given herself a haircut. A good three inch chop right in the front. I did my best to even the other side up, but I am no hair stylist. I pull her hair back almost every day, so it's not that bad. In fact, the layers make her hair look just a bit fuller. And trust me, I know that it could have been 100 times worse. So, all in all, a pretty good first haircut.

The only other incidence of the trip was the drive home. I don't think we've ever made a cross-coutry drive without some sort of mishap. Our car quit running about an hour out of San Diego. We were able to coase into an exit, and find a Big O Tire (does this sound familiar? the same thing happened on our last drive from Omaha last Christmas). Big O fixed the problem, but it put us about four hours behind schedule; we got home at two in the morning and Dan had to work at seven. It also doubled the entire cost of our trip. My poor van has just about seen it's last days. Right now, the door is taped shut, the steering creaks, and I just had a flat tire this morning when I woke up. The thing has been pretty faithful for who knows how many 16 hour drives to and from Omaha, plus whatever else it went through before it was ours. And, I'm sure we'll just keep driving it until it becomes impossible.