Spontaneous Trip to San Diego

Jake came home around noon on Friday with a crazy idea to get out of town. He has been working very, extremely hard for months and months and needed to get away. So, we very quickly planned some rooms in Vegas and San Diego and packed up and were out of town by 6:00 pm. (If you know us, you know we are not the spontaneous trip-taking kind, so we are very proud of ourselves that we were able to let go and...go). We drove to Vegas Friday night and stayed the night there. Then got up that morning and took off for San Diego. We spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in the San Diego area and drove all the way home Tuesday (good driving Jake and good job kids for putting up with carseats and seatbelts all day long!!)

This is us at the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park.

This is Jake trying to convince Zach to reach out and touch the sting rays at Sea World. I think the word STING rays probably doesn't help. With my future kids, I'll call them ray fish...

This is me and the boys after the shark exhibit. There is Zach doing his best shark mouth. Luckily for all of us, he doesn't have as many teeth as the guy behind us.

Cute Cade on Dad's shoulder.

Most of his time, however, was actually spent right here in the stroller. I don't think he minded too much.

Zach makes a good orangutan baby, huh?

Elephants are always the animal Zach wants to see first when we go to the zoo.

The polar bear exhibit at the San Diego Zoo is really cool. Zach loved climbing on the silver statues. He was the only kid that got to the top of the tall one (thanks Dad!)

He liked the polar bears so much that the souvenir he chose is a little polar bear named Arca. She is his "very best friend." See how nicely he carries her and takes care of her? He always tucks her into her own bed before he goes to bed.

On the way to San Diego Zach watched The Lion King 2 or 3 times, so the whole trip he was looking for animals from the show. He found Pumba many times, Timon, Zazoo, and hyenas. We never saw a baboon, which disappointed him, but when he saw this lion, he called him Simba. We almost met the whole cast...

And this is Cade's impression of a pouncing lion...

And, of course, we played at the beach.

We all got our feet wet, even Cade, who cried when the cold water hit his feet. Poor guy!

Sand castles and "lakes"

Zach had a blast playing in the sand and water!

While we were all down at the water, I left the diaper bag open sitting back with our stuff and a seagull pulled everything out of it and stole our snacks! Sneaky thief!

On the way home, we asked Zach what he liked best about the trip. He said the park, which might mean the Wild Animal Park, but probably means the park in St. George we stopped at for lunch on the way home. Then we asked him what else he liked and he said, "toilets." We did use a lot of different toilets... Glad we could go create good memories of toilets as a family.