San Diego

Holy Cow I'm behind on blogging.  I haven't even got on blogger in a month and a half.  Life has just been so busy recently.  I wanted to blog about our amazing trip to San Diego before I forget all the fun things we did. This was the first trip I've ever taken without the kids so I was a little nervous about leaving them. Tagg's parents were awesome and agreed to take the boys for us so I was much more at ease knowing they'd be in good hands. We left early Tuesday morning and had a very relaxing flight.  I forgot how stress free flying without kids can be.  No diaper bag, no trying to wrestle with a baby the whole time, no worrying about having enough things to keep the kids happy and entertained.  All I did was read a book a take a nap.  Heavenly!

One of our first stops in San Diego was the Temple.  It is such a beautiful temple and it was awesome to take some family names with us to do their work.

That night we went to the  Padres game.  They were playing the Rockies. Tagg scored some AWESOME seats right behind the Rockies dugout on Craigslist.  Honestly, after getting up at 4 in the morning to catch our flight and the 2 hour time difference between San Diego and Dallas, I was beat. I managed to stay awake through most of the game and enjoyed the perfect weather for a night at the ballpark.

Wednesday we went to the Safari Park. It was like the zoo but featured mostly animals from Africa. One of the coolest things was seeing a baby gorilla that was get this...born via C-SECTION! Can you believe it?  They could tell that the mom was losing a lot of blood and in distress so they sedated her and called in some of the most renowned neonatal specialist in the area. Together, the zoo veterinarians and the neonatal specialists delivered the baby gorilla safely. So crazy! You can read more about it here if you're interested.

After that we did some go-cart racing.  Tagg may have beat me, but only by a few seconds...

We ended the day by snorkeling.  I have only snorkeled in very tropical places so I was expecting to see some pretty colorful fish. It was kind of a let down because the only fish I saw were those little silver ones.  Nothing pretty.  However, there were tons of leopard sharks which made up for it.  It was a little freaky at first, but they didn't seem to even notice us swimming above them.

Thursday was one of my favorite days. We spent the morning at Belmont Park which is a little amusement park right on the beach. Tagg was super excited as you can tell by this picture.

And then this happened about 2 seconds after I took the picture.  That wave hit him pretty hard and made him look like he wet his pants.

We went to The Wave House Athletic Club where we were able to ride the waves on the wave machine.  It was actually nothing like surfing, but we still had a blast.  I never actually tried standing up.  I just did the boogie board but that was tons of fun. 

Tagg was brave and attempted to surf a few times.

This happened a lot.

 But, he finally got it and stayed there for a few minutes seconds.

After surfing we went to the beach and did some real boogie boarding.  I sort of caught on towards the end, but it was seriously so much fun!

We had some amazing fish tacos for lunch and then rode a few rides.  Tagg was super excited to re-live his childhood on the bumper cars.

Thursday evening we went to a movie and spent the rest of the night relaxing and walking around the gas lamp district where our hotel was.
Friday we went to the Zoo in the morning.  I think our favorite animals were the pandas and the hippos.

 Friday afternoon we went to Coronado and rode bikes around the island.

We stopped at the Hotel del Coronado. It was a beautiful hotel and maybe one day when we're rich, we will be able to afford staying there.

Friday night we drove to Sunset Cliffs and watched the sunset.  It was absolutely gorgeous watching the sun set into the water.  What a beautiful world Heavenly Father created for us to enjoy.

I know I said Thursday was my favorite day, but now that I think about it, Saturday was definitely my favorite day! We started the morning by going kayaking in La Jolla.

It was the coolest kayaking experience I've ever had.  We were kayaking right by sea lions! They were probably only 100 feet away from us and a few times even closer when they'd jump in the water and swim around us.  There were a bunch of caves but we were instructed to not go in them since we didn't have a tour guide to help us and the waters were pretty rough. I think there were tons of sea lions in the caves too because anytime a kayak would go in the caves we'd hear the sea lions barking like crazy.

 If you zoom in on this picture you'll see a bunch of sea lions sun bathing.

After kayaking we went to the Midway. It is an amazing ship. Unfortunately we didn't have tons of time so we only saw a portion of it. You could spend a whole day there and still not see everything probably.

 Tagg had fun playing in the airplanes.

Saturday night we went to Sea World.  I'm so glad we decided to go.  We have season passes to the Sea World in San Antonio so we weren't sure if we wanted to spend our time at the Sea World in San Diego but it was way better than the one in San Antonio.  There are a lot more hands on things plus a lot of the animal enclosures are where you can see the animals wether or not a show is going on. You can see my excitement here with seeing the killer whales.

Plus they had like 15 dolphins in the dolphin show.  They would have them all doing jumping tricks at the same time.  It was awesome.  They also have black beluga whales called pilot whales. They were so cool. The white beluga whales don't perform in the shows.  They have a separate enclosure where you can watch them. If you look close you can see the pilot whales here.

And the best part of the whole trip was being able to touch a dolphin! So amazing! I feel bad Tagg missed out but he did a great job filming and taking pictures.  That cute little dolphin just swam right up to me and let me pet it. It was awesome.

We left Sunday afternoon but we first stopped in at the Mormon Battalion Museum. Tagg and I were the only ones there so we got a private tour.  Here's Tagg dressed up all ready to join the fight.

 And of course we had to pan for gold before we left.

One thing I want to remember about our hotel is the elevator.  When we were taking our bags up to our room we saw this sign.

It really was the slowest elevator ever! We usually took the stairs up 7 flights because it seemed to be faster than waiting for the elevator.  The elevator was just like what you see in old movies where you pull the door open and then there's another door you slide open before you can get in.  Well, Tagg thought it would be a really great idea to try opening the sliding door one time while we were moving.  Not such a great idea.  We got stuck inside the elevator for 10 minutes while we waited for someone to come reset it. Also, there was no air conditioning in the elevator. Good thing we had a cell phone with us because we had to call the front desk to tell them we were stuck since there was no emergency call button. After that we decided taking the stairs was a safer and quicker option.
It was such a fun trip and I'm so glad I was able to spend some time with just Tagg.  It was nice to relax and not have to plan everything around nap time and bed time. I think I ate fish or shrimp tacos every single day.  I wish I could find a place here in Dallas that does shrimp tacos like they do in San Diego.  So yummy! And, it was actually easier than I thought to be away from my boys for that long. However, I was so excited to get back home and see them late Sunday night. They were both asleep so it wasn't the "run into my arms and be so happy I'm home" that I had pictured.  Griffin actually seemed a little confused when he woke up the next morning and also a little mad at us for leaving. A huge thanks to Ned and Gena for taking such great care of them and thanks Tagg for planning an amazing trip.