San Diego Vacation

This past week we took a trip to San Diego. Peyton's spring break is a little too close to when the baby is due, so we decided to take him out of school for a few days so we could get one last trip in before the baby comes. We were glad to have Grandma and Devin come along too. We flew on Jet Blue and the boys loved the plane ride. I think they loved having there own TV's to watch the most. It made it really nice because they didn't make a noise the entire time.

On Friday we headed to the San Diego Zoo. The boys really had a good time seeing all the different animals. I think I liked going to the Zoo more than Disneyland (when it is busy) because it was a lot more laid back and we didn't have to stand in great big lines all day long.

Noah's favorite animals at the zoo were the Giraffe's.

We had fun taking a tour of the whole zoo on this Safari Tour Bus.

Peyton's favorite animal at the zoo was the Cougar.

Noah is always trying to be so funny. I didn't notice until after I had taken this picture that Noah had his fingers up the Gorilla's nose.

I didn't quite catch it on camera here, but I think the elephant really wanted some of Devin's Doritos because he swung his trunk over this fence and his trunk came within a foot of hitting Devin's head. It was pretty funny.

The boys really enjoyed looking at all the giant snakes. Since I am deathly afraid of all snakes, this was my least favorite section of the zoo.

I remember when we went to the zoo when I was younger I really loved seeing these giant turtles. The kids thought they were really cool!

The animal in this video clip is called a Tapir. As we were walking by, it looked like a very boring animal until Grandma noticed something strange swinging around. At first we thought it was his tail or another leg, but soon realized it was something else. This boring Tapir ended up giving us a pretty good laugh!!

On Saturday morning before heading to the beach, Mom and I were able to talk Phil into driving us to H&M. We really love the clothes and prices at H&M and have fun shopping there. We did pretty good by only shopping in the store for an hour. I think on our last girls trip to California we spent a good 2 or 3 hours in the store in LA. In the shopping area they had a fun water fountain. Devin and the boys had a great time running through the water.

After our H&M shopping trip, we headed to a couple beaches. First we stopped at a beach that was close to the border of Mexico. Phil wanted to walk as far down the beach as he could so he could see if there was a fence that divided California from Mexico. We decided on just helping the boys find seashells instead.

Noah absolutely loved playing in the water. He has been to the beach before but I don't think he remembered it. He loved running through the water up to his ankles. But of course he got sopping wet when a wave that he didn't see coming took him down. He didn't mind it though and thought it was funny.

We then headed over to Coronado Island to check out the beach there. It was a much nicer beach and had beautiful white sand. Uncle Devin talked the boys into letting him bury them in the sand. Noah wanted to trick his Dad (who had left to the bathroom), by completely covering his head with the bucket so Phil wouldn't know where he was when he came back. When Phil walked up Noah surprised him by shaking the bucket off his head. Noah thought it was hilarious. He couldn't stop laughing.

Peyton was the next one to be buried in a big hole that we found on the beach. After burying him, Devin decided to make Peyton dig himself out. With Noah's help he was finally able to get free. Devin loves to torture the boys sometimes.

The boys really liked staying in the hotel. In fact Noah thought it was our new house. He didn't want to leave. He loved his makeshift bed that we made for him on the chair. I think they loved the hotel so much because of the swimming pool. Even though it wasn't very hot when we were in San Diego, Phil and the boys went swimming several times and had a blast.

We also went to the Wild Animal Park. It was raining when we first got to the Park but cleared up pretty quick. I loved all of the beautiful plants and flowers that they had throughout the whole park. I wish we could plant some of them in our yard. Oh well :(

Peyton and Noah were excited to get up close to a baby alligator.

Noah is really an animal lover and was so excited to go inside the Bird Aviary. Noah wanted to hold one of the birds so bad, but none of them would fly onto his arm. Finally a nice guy gave Noah a little cup filled with nectar which finally attracted a bird to Noah's arm. I have never seen him so excited! We found out on this trip that Peyton is completely freaked out by birds. He wanted to get out of the cage as soon as all the birds started chirping and flying around. It was funny to hear all the reasons Peyton was giving us as to why we needed to get out of the cage with all the birds. He loves getting close to all the wild animals but is scared of birds. Go figure.

Noah had a lot of fun feeding these huge deer. He really doesn't have any fear of animals.

Our hotel was only a few minutes away from the San Diego Temple, so we decided to take the boys to see it since they had never been to this temple before. It is definitely one of the most beautiful temples!

I got this great picture of Mom at the temple. As you can see she got a little sunburned on this trip, even with her two coats on. She applied sunscreen to her nose and face several times but still got burned.

We had so much fun on this trip. It was great to relax and have fun with the kids. Our next trip probably won't be until September when we head to Disneyland!