Sunny San Diego

Amber and Kate are spending the night at Grandma's and Grandpa's tonight, so I finally found a moment to look at the photos from our San Diego trip. It was so fun to relive our trip a little. I love photos!

Shortly after arriving, we went to Pacific Beach. Both of the girls became mermaids.

Amber and I wrote in the sand.


This might become one of my favorite pictures ever. It does my heart good to see Richard happy.

This picture should be treasured forever. I love the role Rich plays in the lives of his daughters. A wonderful sister in our ward approached him last sunday to tell him she adores the way he watches his daughters.

Here's proof that Kate had a happy childhood. The energy that this photo captures makes me smile.

Jessica has just begun to eat rice cereal this week, but I think her first solid was sand.

The waves have probably washed this writing away, but it's etched forever in my heart.

We spent Halloween day at the San Diego Zoo. Jessica was a kitten.

Kate was a pirate.

And Amber was a ballerina kitty.

I was fascinated by the koalas, pandas, elephants, & gorillas. Kate & Amber were fascinated with the sculptures they could climb on and the sky ride. Rich was unfascinated, but humored my interest in the zoo. Somehow we managed to walk the same pathway in the zoo 5-6 times, and miss about 1/2 of the trails. I never did massage his feet like I agreed to.

Amber was rather grumpy until she finally got to go back to ride the quarter rides at the end of the day. I think we could find quarter rides closer to home.

Saturday was spent at Sea World. It was so great! The shows were Rich's top priority, so we hit the 1st show of the day early. They picked Kate and Rich to be the audience participants. They got to feed and pet the dolphins. They gave Rich a new wife (a dolphin trainer/cast member) for the show. In the show she trips & falls into the water & then grabs onto the dolphin for a ride. I captured the show on the video camera. I tried to use the LCD at first, and have a great video of the palm trees, due to the glare. The next few minutes are bouncy, due to Jessica trying to help by tugging on the cord of the camera. Finally, the lady behind me offered to hold Jessica and we got some good footage (but no still photos). Amber & I were so excited for Rich & Kate, as well as a little envious. We chose not to buy a $35 photo they offered us.

Jessica was just amazing. She wore this smile most of the day every day. She slept intermittently. We should take this girl on more family vacations.

This is the "Lost Kid Feature" at Sea World. It's a parent's worst nightmare. This climbing, crawling, playing, sliding feature is enormous and has multiple exits!!! Whose stupid idea is that?!? I was a little nervous about letting the kids go, so I told them to stay together and tried to watch them. Both proved impossible. I found Kate after 15 mintues of searching, but after an hour of searching we still couldn't find Amber. We called out the employees to help us search. Amber eventually came sauntering out happily and didn't understand why dad said, "Okay, we're done. Let's go to the hotel." I didn't want to be punished, and it wasn't really her fault they built a stupid kid maze. (Though she really did linger too long). Rich had a terrible headache and wanted to go, but dug into his heart and found an amazing amount of charity and stayed at Sea World with us so we could do the things that were a priority to me.

I love amuzement park rides. It was so kind of Rich to let us stay. I hated the guilt I felt waiting in line for this rollercoaster with Amber, but I loved the 90 seconds on the ride. (I'm still not sure the 90 seconds of pleasure outweighed the 20 mintues of guilt, but Rich insisted. I chose to accept his kindness). The look on Amber's face shows how she really felt about the ride. Of course, as a memory, it was really fun.

We visited a light house Sunday morning before our flight left. I love the picture of the girls dancing on the ledge. They dance every possible moment.

So, if you're read to the end of this travel-log, here's a laugh for you. Be warned, you may not want to travel with me. We arrived at the Salt Lake airport an hour early (that's really two hours early, right?) for our departing flight, because we were going off of Kerri's memory instead of checking the itinerary. Ha ha. Wait, it gets better. We were really tight on time getting to the airport for our return flight. We just couldn't figure out why everyone was so calm. We got to our gate just minutes before it was suppost to depart and they hadn't even begun boarding, but they said the flight was on time. We were boggled. Then, the time on my watch and on my cell phone were different. I figured it out while sitting in an airport bathroom stall. . .daylight savings!