San Diego Day 2! Friday, April 6th - Sea World

Friday we went to Sea World! We had a great time there, and the weather was a lot warmer than expected. We all got a bit sunburned, but not too terrible! There was a swing ride which was a nice surprise, Adam did that one a few times. Lynsey and Brian did a few rides the rest of us didn't, including a wet one first thing when we got there (good thing it was a warm day!). The kids loved the sea lions, and the dolphin show was really good! Better than expected, I kind of wish we could have gone to see that one again, but alas there was no time. Adam was grinning up a storm the whole time, it was really cute! We did a different swing ride as a family a few times, it was very hard to convince Adam to get on any rides at all, but once he was on he really enjoyed them. The Orca show was really cool, although honestly I thought the dolphin show was more captivating. Just seeing Orcas so close up was a really neat experience. 

The kids wanted to do a water ride before we left, and they ended up having to wait a really long time so I hung out with Adam by the touch pools outside the fish aquarium. It was good down time for him, he was pretty much done. The other kids were done after that ride as well, since they got completely soaked! For dinner, we all walked to a nice restaurant down the beach and had a lovely dinner. Great first full day in San Diego!

San Diego Day 1! Thursday, April 5th - Travel/beach day

Thursday arrived and everyone was ready to go! Adam had been waiting for this day for so long, I am curious to know what he was expecting from San Diego. Anyway, we got to the airport without a hitch, although the plane was delayed on the tarmac for quite a while due to a technical glitch. Adam didn't do so well with that unfortunately. By the time the plane actually took off, it was about an hour delayed. Such is life! When we got there, we picked up our minivan and off we went to our rental house. The weather was beautiful! We were reasonably happy with our rental, there were a few oddities but it was so close to the beach and the kids of course wanted to go straight to the beach. We spent some time there in the late afternoon and then came back to the condo for some pizza. After pizza, we went for a little walk on the boardwalk by the beach. The kids loved running around in the sand as it got dark!

Easter weekend

I probably should have done this post before we left on vacation, but that just wasn't happening:-/. We survived our week without Brian - the kids actually did really well. It's amazing how life just shifts when it's only one of you taking care of things, thank goodness for that! We had a nice Easter Sunday, my friend Yelena came over for lunch with her kids and we had an Easter egg hunt. It was fun to incorporate a little bit of April Fools in as well:-). We had the kids find a certain number of each color egg, and then once they had found them all, they could search for the "golden egg". It worked out that they were all searching for the last egg at the same time (apparently I had hid it in a pretty tricky place, a pocket in a sweater hanging in the entrance!). Nathan found the egg first by feeling it from the outside of the sweater, but Lynsey being somewhat competitive (she comes by it honestly!) jumped in and actually physically grabbed the egg first. There was some arguing about who actually got the egg, but Yelena and I both ruled that Nathan found it first so he could have it. Tough for Lynsey to take, but she did get over it!

Brian's parents came on Monday afternoon and Brian came home that night. It was a bit of a crazy day! The kids were thrilled to see Grandma and Grandpa and Daddy again! We didn't do much Tuesday and Wednesday, Brian had to work and the weather wasn't fantastic. That's okay because Thursday we left for San Diego where the weather WAS fantastic! Stay tuned for separate blog posts for each day there:-).