San Diego

At the first of July we headed to San Diego for about 5 days with my parents.  We had a great time.  The weather was in the low 70s and perfect, and it was great.  When the kids weren't swimming in the pool we were out having fun somewhere else.  They literally crashed into bed each night.

Our first day we went to Legoland.  None of us had ever been there before.  The kids had a lot of fun.  I think once was enough for me.  At first the lines were really long but by evening it was about empty, and the kids got to go on lots of rides.  Most of the rides are small, but they had a Lego Technic roller coaster that was pretty fun.

My dad and I took the bigger boys on this "ride."  You pull yourself up.  When we were about 15 feet off the ground Seth pushed this big, black button in between us.  It raised the lap bar up.  For the rest of the ride I kept telling him not to push the button.  Doesn't that kind of seem like bad ride design?

Luke waited forever to drive the cars on this course, but he thought it was worth it.

At the end of the day the boys got soaked in the fountain.  They had their shirts off, and we had to put them in the family dryer.

Our next day was a beach day, and we had a blast.  Luke was Mr. Kelp and for some reason Seth was scared of it, so you can imagine he capitalized on that.

Ian liked the sand but wasn't too interested in the water.  He was constantly wandering off and a bit of a pill!

Seth does not mind having sand in every crack and crevice.

I showed the kids how to find crabs when there were bubbles after the wave came...and sure enough they were still there...just like my San Diego beach days as a kid.  Luke was way into the crabs and Ian was pretty excited about them too.

The next day was Sea World.  The weather was not too hot, and the kids loved it.  Luke especially was totally amazed by the animals and took tons of pictures with his little camera.  I thought the dolphin show was way cool myself.

At the end we really wanted to ride the roller coaster, but the wait was 90 minutes.  We decided we didn't want to ride it that bad.

Our last vacation day we spent at two different beaches.  We first went to La Jolla cove and did a little snorkeling.  Both Jer and I love to snorkel and swim in the ocean but California is just not that great.  We've been here before and it was especially murky and wavy this time.

There were all sorts of crabs and critters to be found, and there were a bunch of seals out on "seal rock" that were noisy.

We also went to a beautiful state beach and played in the surf.  The kids had a blast.

Ian once again enjoyed the refreshments most of all.

As the tide came in Luke stayed and watched until every last bit of this sand castle was gone.

This is not a great picture because light was coming down through a skylight and I just had my little camera, but it's the only one we got with both grandma and grandpa.  We all had such a fun time!  Ian was so tired on the way home that he even crashed out on the plane, and we enjoyed some peace and quiet for a minute.