San Diego

James had a workshop to attend in San Diego on Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week.  He invited the kids and I to come along, and we had a fantastic family trip!

Tuesday we woke up early and pulled the kids from bed so we could drive to San Diego in time to get James to his workshop.  The hotel let us check in early (at 9am!) and was serving breakfast until 10am, so I went with the kids to get some food before we went off to play for the day.  Our hotel was very close to the San Diego temple, so we went and walked around the grounds there.  A temple worker even invited us to go into the waiting room so that we could at least step inside the temple. 

February happened to be 50% of museums in San Diego month, but the trick was finding a Macy's department store that still had the coupons available.  I went to one by the temple and found out they were out.  They told me of another, but I called that one and they had just run out the day before.  I finally found one in downtown that had them so got to drive through the city and give myself a bit of a tour.

From there we went to Balboa Park which is amazing!  It is where the San Diego Zoo is, and also has 15 museums and many other interesting exhibits.  We went to the International Cottages, but found they weren't very kid friendly, so went on to The train museum and the Botanical Gardens and then stopped at Pepper Grove playground.

The kids were fascinated with the model trains

The Botanical Gardens were beautiful

and I loved the architecture of the buildings around Balboa Park

By this time I had sufficiently worn out my kids.  They fell asleep in the car while I drove along the pacific coast highway and stopped at Mission Bay park.

We picked up James from his workshop and went to play at the beach, and then, after a complete outfit change for both of our wet and sandy kids we went to Sea Port village to watch the boats on the ocean as we ate dinner and then had a ride on the carousel (something James remembers doing as a kid.)

 It was cold and windy, but the kids just couldn't resist playing in the water

As if that wasn't enough for one day, we then went to Old Town where the Mormon Battalion Visitors Center is.  It was completly redone about a year ago and was incredible.  Brielle was fascinated with the story.  Ethan tried to eat the sand from the floor and drink the water from the gold panning river.  Brielle keeps asking to go back.

Wednesday I took the kids to the Birch Aquarium for the day.  When it was time to go get James, I had a hard time pulling Brielle away, even though it wasn't a huge aquarium and we had seen everything twice. 

 Learning about ocean currents was one of the favorite activities

as was this giant board game

We drove home stopping by a Cafe Rio and then after being stuck in slow traffic decided to stop and play at Disneyland while we waited for traffic to die down.  We took Ethan on the Matterhorn for his first time, I wanted to get him on before he turned 2, because I don't think many 1 year olds have been tall enough for that ride.  He was at least an inch taller than the 35" height requirement