San Diego

We got up Monday morning and headed to the San Diego Zoo. It is such a beautiful zoo with tons of plants and even though it is built into a canyon, they have an elevator, hop on and off buses (known as kangaroo buses) and the sky ride. It is just an awesome zoo and I'm glad we got to go. We started right off with a bus tour just to get a feel for the zoo and it was cool. Then we just walked around all day seeing animals. 

 

 

The koalas were awake and eating and were absolutely adorable. The polar bears were eating inches away from us and were so amazing to watch, plus there was a zoo person there talking all about the polar bears so we learned a lot too. The tiger was pacing right in front of us, the cheetahs were staring us down and walking around, the lions were sleeping but at least in a place where we could easily see them and the orangutans were right in front of us. The leopard growled at us and the sea eagle (with its 10-foot wingspan) was flying around and it was amazing. We saw lots of flamingos, small birds, huge vultures and penguins. Also zebras, lots of beautiful giraffes (they're one of my favorites) and a rhino playing with a ball. Also hippos and elephants and monkeys. The gorillas were all sleeping but that was really the only animal that was disappointing. We rode the sky ride a few times and had lunch and there was a cool kid play area that we let Emma and Brandon explore for about 20 minutes and we looked in the gift shops. It was a cool day with lots of really neat animal encounters. 

 

 

 

 

   

When we were done we went to Old Town, which is an area I've always loved. It would have been awesome to have one more day in San Diego so we could have gone to Seaport Village and seen the Midway and the coastal part of it but we had run out of time. Anyway, we went to Old Town and went to the Mormon Battalion visitors center and luckily it was still open so we got to take a quick tour. It was really fun and a great way to spend 40 minutes. I loved interacting with missionaries and having my kids learn some history and how church members really helped out building early San Diego. Then we went and had dinner at a delicious Mexican restaurant and then next door was a t-shirt place where we loaded up. We ate a lot of churros on this trip and we ranked Disneyland as having the worst (tasted like cardboard and were cold) and then Del Tacos got first place for Josh but Lily and I really liked the ones at the restaurant because they were filled with some apple goodness that we both liked. 

 

 

It was late so we went back to the hotel to get all packed up and Josh took our rental car back to the airport and we got to bed. Our flight was kind of early Tuesday morning but the San Diego airport is awesome and everything went so smoothly that we had plenty of time for breakfast. It was our 19th anniversary that day and even though we were traveling with the kids it was nice to be together for the day. We flew to Denver and Josh got pizza at his favorite place there during our layover then we flew home and it was nice because we were all in the same row. We landed and got to our car and drove home (with a quick stop at Chick-Fil-A for dinner) and made it home about 9:30. Kids were in bed by 10 and then the big kids were up at 5:45 am for school the next day. I was worried about jet lag but they all handled it really well and we only had to make it through three days of school/work before the weekend. The kids really are amazing travelers and did so well the whole trip. When I got up Wednesday morning these flowers and a super sweet card from Josh were waiting for me. He's quite a guy!

It was such an amazing family adventure/experience and I'm so grateful we were able to go and make it happen. Josh and I are already talking about what's next!