From Sea to Shining Sea - San Diego!

Atlantic

 Pacific

Yes, that's right, we dipped our toes in BOTH oceans this summer!  A short 4 days after landing home from Boston, we set out on a road trip with Daddy to California.  He had to do some training there for work, and since we have family in San Diego, it was a good chance to make a family trip out of it.  Who cares that we've already been gone almost the whole summer, right?  There's one week left, might as well use that one too.

I didn't intend to really spend tons of time at amusement parks and such.  I had envisioned spending much more time at the beach and hanging out.  But, it was COLD and overcast most of the time we were there.  Why am I always wishing for more sweaters on summer vacation?  So, we found this great deal where you can buy a 5 day pass and come and go as you please to Sea World, The San Diego Zoo, and The Safari Park for seriously cheap.  Grace wants to do LegoLand too?  Sure, why not.  Might as well go while she loves Legos.  Long story short - we spent every single day minus Sunday and travel days going to theme parks!  I'm exhausted.  I got sick and came home with absolutely no voice.

Here's a little photo tour of our week at the parks:

LEGOLAND:
was not cheap and not as awesome as we were hoping.  But, I'm glad we went this year.  It is really designed for little kids and the fun factor will decrease exponentially with time.

 Lego Boats

 shooting water cannons

 Lego Einstein.  Who's the dude in the gas station sunglasses?

 um, some crazy robot hand thing that picks up your kids and turns them upside down

Lego Miniland.  This was actually my favorite part of the whole park.  They have recreated New York City, The National Mall in D.C., Las Vegas, New Orleans, and probably a half dozen other major places in the world - all out of teeny tiny lego pieces!  One single structure takes like 600 hours to build.  I'm impressed.

 Oh, and they now have all the Star Wars scenes too.  This is Grace's favorite Star Wars Episode (III) when Darth Vader is created.

 Chewy and R2

 Darth. Vader. Is. So. Cool.

 Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Anyone?  Hattie decided she must ride the pedal sky cars before leaving LegoLand.  No worries - just a 75 minute wait.

Ahh... there is no sweeter success than getting to the front of a line at a theme park for the ride you've decided you must try.

Spent 2 days at Sea World:

 I have always had a soft spot for whales.  I love them.  I think it is incredible that there are such huge and intelligent animals in the world.  I am in awe of them.  We loved the Shamu show.  The kids insisted to sit in the SPLASH zone, and we seriously got wet.  Soaked.

 Fed fish to the sea lions.

 Touched sea stars in the tide pools.  This was the first time Hattie was brave enough to reach her hand in and do it.

Sea turtles... these were some of Harriet's favorites.

The dolphin show - might have been as cool as Shamu.  It was complete with a princess, cliff divers, gorgeous birds, and dolphin water skiing.

 Sea Lion Show - not nearly as cool as the others.

 Shark Tank.  I have to say, I've seen a lot of shark tanks in a lot of aquariums, and our own here in Albuquerque is just about as cool as any of the others.

 Beluga whale.  The day we went to see these guys, it was a chilly in San Diego.  We had just been able to get on the splashy water ride that we had missed before and we were soaked to the bone - even after paying the $5 for the stand-in dryers.  Since the beluga whale is an arctic animal, they have it in an arctic temperature exhibit.  We froze.  We were wet and cold and would have liked to linger much longer to gaze at these incredible whales, but we had to rush out to get warm again.

Slug Bug Shamu!  Grace has been playing the slug bug game heavily for about the past 6 months.  Harriet has been trying, but for a very long time couldn't figure out how to tell if a car was a slug bug.  She finally figured it out while we were on the trip, so the slug bugs were flying (as well as the focus pocus game I made up when we rented a Ford Focus in New England.)  Weren't we delighted to find this awesome slug bug at Sea World!  We took a picture and texted a slug bug to daddy.

Our favorite part of Sea World might have been the Atlantis roller coaster/log flume ride.  We saw it as we entered the park the first day.  There was no line, so we went on it 3 times in a row as fast as we could.  Both kids could not get enough of it.

Then, we went to the zoo.
More turtles.

 Cutest baby hippo ever!!!  Harriet could not contain herself.  It was so stinking cute.

 I love how it was sleeping under water. We watched it for a long time and it did stretch its nose to the air once for a breath.

Pandas!  I have been to the San Diego Zoo before, but I didn't get to see the pandas.  They have a brand new panda exhibit that makes it much easier for the crowds to move through and see them.  You have to be silent to walk past.  We learned that pandas eat 84 pounds of bamboo a day.  That's one reason most zoos can't have them.  The San Diego Zoo grows a lot of its own bamboo for the pandas.  They were pretty amazing to watch and see in person.

Stairway to Heaven.  Seriously.  This zoo is so awesome.  It's built in the middle of lots of hills, but it is so easy to get around.  Too steep?  No problem, hop on the moving outdoor sidewalk/escalator thingy and get to the next level.

There are too many animal sculptures in the zoo.  I spent more time taking pictures of the kids on the statues than I did looking at animals, it seemed.

Lion love?  Just a nibble on the ear... then, yep, a good nature lesson for all.

 I can't remember what this sweet creature is called, but I thought it was so elegant and dainty.  It's got to be related to the giraffe, right?

 More sculptures at the polar bear exhibit.

Little seals.

Sky tram bucket ride.

Our hotel had a zoo shuttle that dropped you off and came back in 7 hours.  I had planned to do 2 days at the zoo, but after 7 hours, we actually did pretty much the whole thing.  We might have missed the reptile house and maybe one other thing, but nothing worth coming back a second day.  Good day at the zoo!

Safari Park.  This one was highly recommended, but we found it to be much less exciting than the zoo.  We hiked about 20 minutes to see the tiger enclosure.  We did see one tiger - a great find for Grace.  He was far away, so we paid to use the telescope which did make it much better.  Still, he wasn't close enough for a picture.

The kids are always game for a carousel.  Here they are riding some of our favorite animals:

We took the safari tram around to see all the savanna animals.  It is pretty cool to see the giraffes just milling about in a huge (hundreds of acres) park.

 But, the part the kids liked most was the lorikeet exhibit.  You can pay for some nectar and the birds will flock to you.  This one landed on Grace trying to get to Harriet's nectar.

 Grace is always very compassionate when it comes to animals.  This guy was molting and couldn't fly to get the nectar.  So she took it to him and let him drink the last of it.

 One more carousel ride!

And, that was it for the theme parks.  We really did a lot on our trip, including seeing much family.  David's brother, Brian, and his family live in San Diego now, so we capped the ends of the trip by staying at their house.  We were lucky to see Alec before he left for Pittsburgh to go to college.  We had tons of fun going with their family to the beach and to some great restaurants.

 Torrey Pines Beach:

Dessert at a swank spot in La Jolla Cove

(chilly!) afternoon at Pacific Beach with Jeremiah, Wendy, and Clare

Our hotel-snob, David, moved us to the fancy Marriott the last day of our hotel stay.  The girls had a great time living like queens in the ginormous pool and staying on the concierge level where everything was quite posh.  We do get some perks out of having Daddy gone half of every month.

A quick shopping trip to Horton Plaza turned into a long game of giant checkers and an attempt at chess.

And, we decided that we should really take our little rocker, Grace, to lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe.   It's so 1990's to eat here, but it was some good nostalgia.  I've always liked Hard Rock.  Grace thought that this guitar shaped like an ax from KISS was way too cool.

A quick stop in Old Town.  Didn't see the historic sites, but we went to the candy store twice and spent at least 50 bucks there.  Who says we don't have priorities?

And a farewell to the San Diego beaches - a stop at La Jolla Cove to see the sea lions.  Yes, the white on the rocks is bird poop.

A final farewell card game with Jeremiah...

And back into the car.  Breaking up the trip with stops in Arizona really made driving 25 hours seem tolerable.  On the way home our stop was at Uncle John's house.  He's a pretty cool dude.  What kid doesn't like an uncle who has a pool and a 3D TV complete with stadium seating?

 And, lucky us, we got to see cousin, Jenifer and her husband Luke.  We weren't able to make it to their wedding, so this was our first meet.  The oldest and the youngest Chapman cousins are in this picture - Jenifer and Harriet.  It's quite a spread.

We have traveled A LOT this summer.  We have seen so many places and done so many things as a family.  It actually doesn't stop here either.  I've got one more trip to blog about for the summer.  I am mostly grateful for this incredible time with my kids.  What we lacked in seeing friends and playing at home was made up a thousand times with the family time we've had.  We have seen every single cousin on BOTH sides of the family (minus one lovely Chapman girl), all aunts and uncles, and all grandparents this summer!  

I am so grateful that I got to have my kids all to myself for the entire summer.  We weren't distracted by anything or anyone.  I literally spent night and day with them for weeks on end, especially as we stayed in places where we all slept in the same room. (no, this wasn't ALWAYS pleasant to be together all the time.) But, now that they are BOTH in school ALL day long, it means a lot that we had this time together.  The girls also became really good friends by the end of the summer.  Yes, they are still fighting, but they are enjoying being together much more than they were in June and are more willing to do things together.  Even though it was exhausting and a little out of control, I'm so glad we packed up and left and didn't come back until the day before school started.