We did soooo much driving. When we got back home after the trip my right knee was screwed up for a couple weeks. Walking, sitting, crossing my legs...it all hurt. And was painful. So I am glad the pain went away, but not soon enough. Anyhow....The start of this trip began a month earlier when my mom asked me to research how much going to the San Diego Zoo and getting a hotel in San Diego would cost (actually she wanted to do this trip last summer it just never happened). And then one day early in February I get a call saying mom booked a hotel for the trip. Turns out Sarah had been up at her house and after I gave her some basic price info, they looked up hotels. So yay. The trip was happening.
Wednesday (February 27th) I cleaned up the house, and left later than I wanted too, around 7:30 PM to pick up Jake and Drive up to my moms. We wanted to leave super early in the morning so we figured it would be better for us to sleep over, then to drive early the next morning and meet up somewhere. Jake ended up packing almost everything in the car for me (which of course I way over packed. Mostly on things/entertainment for the kids in the car) and even put all the carseats into the car for me. I have such a sweet husband. He didn't end up leaving my parents til after 11pm. He made it home safely.
Thursday (Feb 28th) We were gonna wake up at 5:00, but since everyone went to bed so super late we didn't end up waking up til after 5:30 AM. We got to Sarahs house around 7:15 AM.
We started driving and stopped off in St George for Breakfast at Wendys and Costco gas. The next stop was just outside of Las Vegas at the Terrible's Roadhouse gas station. They had a really cool store inside the gas station. So much fun things. And some of the tallest candy containers I've ever seen. The next stop was in Victorville, CA. We stopped at the Costco their for gas and got some lunch from the Costco Food Court. The kids didn't really have a chance to stretch their legs before we were back in the car and on the road again.We didn't stop again til we got to the hotel. It took us like five minutes to figure out how to pool into the hotel parking lot. We promised the kids we'd go swimming as soon as we got to the hotel. So we had all the kids help us unpack. My hotel room was a few doors down from my parents room. Which I thought was nice, but also annoying because if we needed to talk we had to walk down the hallway. So after everything was out of the car and we cleaned up as much of the food and garbage my kids tossed everywhere; we got in out swimsuits and go into the hot tub. It was nice outside. Not hot (Cause after all it was the beginning of March), but not cold either. Although the nice lady in the hot tub with us told us it was supposed to rain the weekend we were their. Their was a bump on Williams back that worried me. And so the kids swam in the hot tub, and wanted to jump in the cold pool. So i would hold them by the arms and dip them in the pool and pull them out. And we did this over and over. The kids had a lot of fun with it. After the pool we got everyone bathed and in bed. The kids fell asleep pretty quickly. (Can't remember if I even got to call Jake before I fell asleep I was so tired)
Friday (March 1st): We woke up. Got breakfast from the hotel. Got ready for the day. Since my kids and I were ready before my parents and Sarah, I let Lizzy and William explore/run around the hallways of the hotel. We drove downtown to the San Diego Zoo. We got their about 30 minutes after they opened and stayed til closing. The weather was actually really nice. It didn't even get cold or windy or cloudy or rainy til about 20 minutes before we left.
I think I was more exicted than the kids, because I love seeing animals, but we have a zoo membership and so they see animals at the zoo all the time. This zoo was cool. Lots of big open areas, not a lot of glass. And that made it way nicer than the Hogel Zoo.
My mom made a friend at the front of the zoo so she asked her if she would take a group picture for us. (for both of the Lion and San Diego Zoo pictures).
Look at these zoo tickets. They are super cool.
Our day at the zoo was full of sightseeing and new adventures. We got to start out riding on a double decker bus. Which I'm glad we did. We got to see a tour of basically the whole zoo, which allowed to see animals that we wouldn't have otherwise got the chance to see. Literally we didn't make it see everything in the zoo. So the bus-totally worth it!.
(below: I really liked the pictures on the side of this building, they just were really Interesting I felt. Anyway, the next picture is of and elephant getting a "pedicure." They say because elephants weigh several tons, they need a lot of care for their feet. So they regularly have foot care down in the "cleaning cages."
After the Tour bus we started out at the beginning of the Zoo. First we saw flamingos.
Then we headed down Monkey trail. They had all kinds of monkeys. And the cages were really big, so much space for them to play in. It also made it so they could hide pretty easily if they wanted to because you couldn't see the whole cage from one spot.
Next we went into the Aviary. We saw lots of birds. The kids had a lot of fun running up and down the ramp.
Afterwards we went and saw a crocodile. It was really cool, because the crocodile was right up against the glass. In the pictures you can see Williams hand right next to his mouth.
Next we saw the apes. We got there right as it was feeding time. So we watched this year old Orangutan do summer-salts along the windows to the feeding area. There was a momma with a baby there (the baby was holding onto her stomach area). We stayed and watched for a while. The kids really liked it. They jumped off a rock and chased Oaklee around.
After seeing the apes we went and got food to eat. It was so super expensive. And of course Lizzy didn't eat hardly any of it. And I promised the kids ice cream. And since I was trying a new parenting technique in relation to food (where you don't use "dessert" as incentive to eat, if it's there the kids get to have it even if they didn't eat their dinner well or at all) so even though Lizzy didn't really eat her lunch I still let her have ice cream. After lunch we went and saw Hippos and then Tigers. At one point all the kids ice cream cones had to be thrown away. Because they were so big, I ended up holding Williams and walked a good quarter of a mile looking for a trash can all the while the ice cream was dripping down my hand. I ended up having to have my moms help to change Williams poopy butt While we were stopped at the Tigers, so the picture of the tiger below, is ones Sydney took for me.
We headed down the trail and saw a few more animals as we made our way to the Panda Bear exhibit. Which is what my mother had been looking forward to this whole time. Inside the Panda Bear exhibit we got redirected to the the leopards. And then we wrapped around to see the Panda. William fell asleep in the stroller around this point so he slept for about an hour and a half. The line for the Panda was so long. It took like twenty minutes to get through. But it was so fun to see the Panda. The kids didn't really understand our fascination about the Panda.
We then took a bathroom break. All 3 girls got their faces painted. William was sleeping through all of this. Across from the face painting booth was this giant tower. It had a really, really long escalator and of course an elevator. Dad and I took the sleeping William in the stroller up the elevator, while mom, Sarah, Sydney, Lizzy, and Oaklee went on the escalator. My mom said it zigzagged up the mountian side and then they had stairs to climb to get to the top. Then they had to make their way through a bunch of bird cages to find where dad and I were waiting. It took like fifteen minutes for them to get to us. And the look down over the bridge was amazing.
Then as we walked across the bridge we got to the elephant enclosure, and see turtles, and lions, and camels. Then we really wanted to see the Koala bear and Kangaroos, so we had to walk really quickly to go see them before the sky ride closed. We took a wrong turn trying to get to the sky ride, and ended up running down a really steep "walkway" which of course made me basically pee myself. The kids really enjoyed that. Seeing Grandma run made all the kids run really fast and chase after her. And we got to the sky ride. Unfortunately, the plan had been to go to the sky ride at the front entrance and ride it to the back and then get back on and ride it to the front. But because of our wrong turn we only got to ride from the back to the front. We had to take everything out of the strollers. Fold up Sarahs stroller, and leave the one we rented from the zoo at the entrance to the sky ride in the back of the park.
So Sarah, Oaklee, William, and I rode on one tram, and my parents and Sydney and Lizzy on the other. The view was breath taking. And William and Oaklee really liked it. My mom said the girls had a good time too.
(below: oh ya, at one point Lizzy took my moms bag of veggie straws and sat next to the window and ate them while she watched the animals. It was the cutest thing, and we all had a good giggle over it).
(below:After I woke William up, Lizzy ended up taking a nap for about 30 minutes in Sarahs stroller.)
(below: Sydney got upset that she couldn't ride in the stroller cause her feet hurt)
(below: on our tour on the bus earlier we saw all these places that had Sydneys name on it, so when we got over to this part of the zoo we just had to take pictures with Sydney and the signs.)
(below: here we are running down the hill)
(below: waking Lizzy up to get on the tram)
After this the zoo was closing. So we headed to the front entrance. And of course we stopped off at the gift shoppe. Each of my kids got to pick one toy and one candy. So Lizzy got a purse with Panda twins in it and a twisted candy sucker. William got a zoo train and a twisted sucker. And Sydney got a blue alligator candy and a sucker. And each sucker had a stuffed animals "hugging the sucker," so they each got a mini stuffed animal too.
Overall
I would consider this trip to the zoo an overwhelming success. We got
to see a lot of new things. They had tons of beautiful plants. So many
interesting things to see besides the animals. And the set up of the zoo
was really good. I would love to go back to this zoo.
And
from what I could glean from my kids: they had fun too. I think walking
that much in one day definitely took its toll on them. But they really
had a good time with all the different things to do and see.
We made dinner in the hotel room this night. We stopped off at food 4 less on our way back to the hotel. The stove in my parents hotel room was super weird. It burned some food and they couldn't figure out how to turn off some of the burners either. But we got mac and cheese. I wanted pancakes and scrambled eggs. And they were good. Super delicious. So of course everyone else wanted pancakes too. And the mac and cheese went to waste. And while waiting for the pancakes for the kids to cook I let them run around the stairs and hallways.
The next day was Saturday (March 2nd). My parents and Sarah wanted to go do a session at the temple and so I was going to watch all the kids. The only problem (and one I talked about with Jake on the phone) is that there isn't anything for the kids to do at the hotel and they would get really bored. So Jake and I looked up to see if there was a children's museum I could take the kids too. And there was. So we left an hour later than they had planned, got the kids ready, packed a diaper bag and got everything necessary to go to the ocean after they got back from the Temple. We then headed to the museum, and it was starting to rain. And apparently in San Diego on a weekend when it rains everyone with kids comes to the museum. It was so packed. So anyway, Dad dropped me and the kids off with Sarahs stroller at the entrance to the museum. It took about 6 minutes to get into the door, thats how much the line had already started to form. We got in and paid and headed upstairs. There was a big "jungle gym house" up there that had "secret tunnels" that allowed the kids to get from one side of the playhouse to the other without coming outside. The kids had a blast but it wasn't a good place for Oaklee (she was much to little and it was really hard to keep track of her), so we headed to a more kid friendly area. Sydney and Lizzy (for a few minutes) drew and colored and William and Oaklee climbed and played in the kiddie area.
After playing for an hour, the kids were getting hungry. So we went down to the lunch room/cafeteria area they had. The food was super expensive. Cost like $70 to feed the kids and me. The food was ok. But it was a little on the fancy side because of course its California where everything has to basically be all natural ingredients.
Oaklee took a nap. And she napped for a good hour and a half in her stroller. While she was napping, the kids and I went to a different floor (there were 3 floors in this childrens museum). On this downstairs floor they had a playhouse and a building block area, a rolling ball area, and a dark room where you could draw pictures and then scan them and they would end up on the big screen they had up. But of course the scanner was broken when Sydney went to use it and no workers were in sight. So we left that area without her getting to scan her art on to the screen.
Next we headed back up to the fun house area they were climbing all over since Oaklee was asleep.
It made it really easy for the kids to just go wherever they wanted, but really hard for me to keep an eye on them. Several times Sydney can rushing out of some random area only for me to send her off to find Lizzy and William.
After about 40 minutes in here we headed to main floor. There was an area that was covered in mattresses for the kids to jump on. And foam tires for the kids to play with. They actually loved this area. Lizzy and William took turns putting foam tires on each other. They had a little kid mattress area and a big kid area, so for about 30 minutes Sydney played with the big kids while I stayed out and watch the little kids play. Oaklee woke up and played for a while on the mattresses too and then Sydney came out and played with all the little kids in the little kid mattress area.
After about 4 to 5 hours of being at the museum, my parents and Sarah came and picked us up. So while it turned out to be expensive. I am glad we didn't stay at the hotel. The kids had a lot of fun. And I think the place they loved more than the mattresses was the houses with all the tunnels.
After the museum, we went to Coronado beach. We went up over the amazing Coronado bridge. We got to see big navy ships. And a shipping yard. Lots of sail boats on the ocean. The kids loved the view. It was cold and windy, and I even kept my coat on for part of our time at the beach til the sun came out. The kids LOVED the beach. The sand. The water. Watching the waves chase you up the beach. The seashells. Chasing the birds. William LOVED chasing the seagulls. He actually chased them so far that my dad had to go running after him. They really loved it and didn't want to leave. But Oaklee got cold and wet and everyone was getting hungry. So it was time. The kids ask me all the time if we can go back.
This is everyone crying because they are so tired on the way to the hotel
Everyone fell asleep super quickly.
We also stopped in St George to get food and get a little stretch.
After St George Sarah took Dad's place driving, Dad took a nap in the passanger seat and mom climbed in the back with me. By this point my right knee was killing me. It really hurt. And it hurt for about a week and a half after I got back home. Anyway, while Sarah was driving it starting snowing, and got quite blizzard like. But we made it safely to her house.
Jake met us in Orem, in the Winco parking lot. And I was very glad to have more space to spread my legs.
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