As is hopefully clear by now, my favorite activity is travelling, and my girls and their families are my favorite people to travel with. In mid-April, I had the pleasure of going with Steph, Mickel, Kaiya and Teague to San Diego for some fun and sun. It was a fabulous trip!!
Steph and Mickel arranged for two hotel rooms ... one for them and one for Grammie and the kids, and that worked wonderfully well (thanks again guys!). A king-sized bed theoretically should be large enough for the three of us, but what I discovered is that it doesn't matter how large the bed is ... Kaiya and Teague will still sleep weird. Here they are sleeping cross-wise, leaving Grammie a tiny sliver on the side.
We went to the San Diego Zoo, which I haven't been to since I was about 14. And I really don't have any clear memories from that trip, so really it was like my first time. It's a great zoo. My favorite by far was the Giant Pandas. As I understand it, there are only a few zoos in the US that have them, so it was a real treat. And we were smart enough to head straight for them when we got there. I noticed later in the day that the line to see them had grown significantly. As it is, you are not supposed to really stop and look for long - the line is designed to keep moving. But they are relatively close to the viewing path.
Here are some more favorite shots from the Zoo:
Peacocks and Flamingos
Help! A Saber-Tooth Tiger got me! LOL
This shot is for my sister, who raises tortoises. She hasn't had one long enough to reach this size (she would have had to start in a former life).
I love the name ...
We also went to Legoland. When we first got there, I wasn't sure that it was going to be very great. It was like $85 to get in, and the first couple of rides we went on were hand-powered. I kid you not - one was a very tame roller coaster (think toddler tame) that you had to peddle, and the next was an also-toddler-tame drop ride (like the Rocket at Lagoon) that you had to hand-over-hand pull yourself to the top for a very slow drop. We had heard that Legoland really isn't about the rides (though we did find some better ones later), but that wasn't a good start. But the Legos ... it turns out that it is totally worth it for that! You just can't imagine the things built with Legos. Here's one example, the US Capitol. This was made with over 380,000 Lego pieces! And there were tons of other equally amazing pieces. It is incredible.
We had a little beach time ...
And some time at Balboa Park. This is a shot of Teague participating in a magic show.
We stopped by the San Diego Temple, which, as with all LDS temples, is gorgeous.
Steph and Mickel bought the kids some pretty awesome kites, so we spent some time flying them.
On our last day, on the way to our afternoon flight, we stopped at the Mormon Battalion Historic Site, which was really cool. As you can see, Teague is pretty good about volunteering for stuff, as our guide told us about the typical "uniform" for the Battalion. Afterwards, we panned for "gold."
