San Diego

What a wonderful week we just had in San Diego.  I don't think we could have asked for more perfect weather.  If I recall correctly, the hottest it got was 78 or 79 degrees.  How beautiful it is to be able to look at the windows and see the ocean waves crashing on the beach.  We started our trip out at 4:30 in the morning.  We picked up my parents and then began the journey.  We arrived to the condo at about 4:00.  Not too bad on the timing.  Of course, the time change helped a bit.  That night we took a walk on the beach.

Day 2 Sunday-

We started the scenic drive.  This is a 59 mile drive.  We didn't make it too far, but the few things we saw were very nice.  We drove along Harbor Island, Shelter Island, and Point Loma.  We stopped at Shelter Island.  There was a little playground that we let the kids get some wiggles out.  This is baby's first time on a swing.  After playing here, we jumped a bit ahead on our drive to Balboa Park where they have a free organ concert every Sunday.  Here they have the largest outdoor pipe organ.

  

Day 3 - Monday - Air and Space Museum

  

Day 4 - Beach Day

Day 5- Sea World

Day 6 - Temple

Day 7 - Lego Land

The kids said this was their favorite thing for the week.  It is amazing how many Legos are in this place.

Mini Land USA was definitely the best part of Lego Land.

  

Having a princess was a plus for Megan.

 This is a Volvo full scale.

 Day 7- The long trip home.  We had a wonderful time!

Taylor at 6 months

Lagoon

We went to Lagoon the other day.  This was the kids first time here.  They were a little hesitant at first but after awhile, they were good with it.  Bryan and I tried to prep them for this by showing them youtube videos of the rides.  However, the videos don't do justification of just how big some of these rides are.  We are to convince them on a few rides to go and ride it once to decide if they like it and then if they don't and the don't want to ride it again, then that's okay.  Good thing we took them on some of the bigger rides before we hit Kiddieland.  They had no problem with the rides in this area.

When we asked the kids what their favorite rides were, Daniel said Wicked.  This was interesting that he said this because of how afraid he was to go on it and then it didn't care to go on it again.  After they both tried Colossus, they both said they hated it, but later that night, Megan said she wanted to go on it again.  Unfortunately, she was unable to go on it again due to some problem it was having.

What a great day!

Arches

This past weekend we were able to take off and go on our main camping adventure, Arches.  I've been to Arches before, but it's been about 10 years.  It was fun to return with my family.  This was by far one of the best and most relaxed camping trip we have taken.  I think it was partly due to the fact that we took five days for this trip.

We arrived on Friday and found our camping spot.  We set up and headed into Moab to get some maps and find out about off roading trails.  We came back and had our dinner.  After that, the kids enjoyed going exploring.  We finished off the evening with some reading of Harry Potter book one.

Saturday-  We headed into Arches.  We were lucky enough to not have to pay the park fee.  We can't remember what the reason behind it was, but they weren't charging anyone on this particular day.  Not that we ever have a problem paying to get into a national park.  It was just a nice surprise.  We headed straight to Delicate Arch.  We wanted to get the long hikes completed before it got too hot.  We were also expecting to have very high winds that day.  The winds were pretty mellow until we got close to the top of the arch then the winds really picked up.  It was a bit frightening with the wind pushing us around and knowing that it wouldn't take much to blow the kids off balance, so we found a nice spot that the kids could lean up against.  After seeing Delicate Arch from hiking to it, we drove down and looked at the lower viewpoint of this arch.  After doing this, the kids were beginning to argue and bother each other so we decided to head back to the campsite to have a bit of a break.

After some rest and some dinner we headed back into the park and to the hike that went from the Courthouse Towers to Park Avenue.  Due to the timing of this hike, we got quite a bit of shade which was nice.  It was a pretty warm day in the upper 90's.  After this hike we drove up and saw Balanced Rock, North and South Windows, and Double Arch.  We added up the miles and figured that we hiked about 10 miles this day.

Sunday-  We decided to take it a bit easier being Sunday.  So we took an off roading trail called Chicken Corners.  Bryan definitely enjoys doing this type of driving a lot more than the rest of us, however, if we didn't go and find these trails there would be a lot of things that we would miss.  This trail travels the Colorado River canyon.  The trail ends about 400 feet above the river across from Dead Horse Point.  We had beautiful weather this day.  I don't recall it even getting into the 90's.  I believe we just stayed in the upper 80's.

Megan asks Bryan to catch a lizard every time she sees one.  This is the second he caught for her.  She asked to hold it.

 Monday- We went back into Arches to finish viewing the arches we didn't do on Saturday.  Bryan wanted to bet a bit more off roading in so we took the dirt road from I-191, Willow Flats, and came into the park that way.  We then headed up and saw Sand Dune Arch, and Broken Arch.  As much as Bryan and I would have like to do the 7.2 mile roundtrip hike of Devil's Garden, we didn't think the kids would like that too much.  We'll have to come back in a few years and take this hike and see all the arches that are in this area.  So instead of doing this, we took another dirt road over to the Tower Arch hike.  We were lucky enough again to have nice weather that stayed in the 80's.

 We saw lots of wild life on the trail of Broken Arch.  We saw about four deer and one rabbit.  I think this was due to the fact that we somehow lost the trail for a bit.

Tuesday-  We enjoyed a nice breakfast and then packed up and headed home.  It was such a shame the trip had to come to an end.  It was so nice just taking it easy.  Taylor was a trooper.  I was a little concerned about how she would take it not being able to lay out or sleep in her familiar surroundings.  Once again, she got to sleep in the tub.  She didn't see much of Arches, she pretty much slept the entire time.  She didn't like being hooked up in the hiking backpack that we have, but once we got her situated and strapped to Bryan, it didn't take long before she dropped off.

It was a wonderful time!

The Zoo

Megan had her Kindergarten field trip to the zoo.  What a great time she had.  What a difference it is to go with a bunch of girls versus a bunch of boys.  I would have expected the boys to be more out of control and not listen very well, but when I compare the two field trips I've accompanied, the girls were by far the more out of control.  After about two hours at the zoo I was beat from trying to make sure I didn't lose any of the girls.  The zoo opened it's new exhibit for the water animals.  It was a lot of fun to see these animals.