San Diego, California

San Diego

The first full day in San Diego we spent at the beach which was right across from our hotel. Instead of looking for pretty shells, we looked for rocks. There are millions of beautiful, smooth rocks on the shore. They don't feel great when the surf crashes them into your shins, but they are awesome to look at on the beach.

Eli playing in the surf. The water is really cold compared to East Coast beaches. I didn't go any further out than my knees, but it was cold. In fact, the weather was the coolest of anyplace we had been all vacation. It was between 68-72 the whole time. Compared to the 111 degrees we saw in South Dakota, that was downright chilly.

As you can see, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves, just the way I like it.

Doug has really made a name for himself in San Diego.

This was the only day spent at the beach. Sadly, both Peyton and Doug have little to no melanin in their skin which means that even with sunscreen, they go from pasty white to fire engine red in no time at all. It is a really viscous cycle of white, red, peel, white. Luckily, our hotel had bottles of aloe gel for sale. It actually caused the cycle to be reduced to white, red, white!

The World Famous San Diego Zoo

HUGE CAVEAT - I know the San Diego Zoo is world famous. It's a wonderful facility that has awesome programs for endangered animals and plants. But honestly, once you have seen bear, bison, elk, deer, condors, etc. in the wild, it's a bit of a let down to see them in small cages. So I ended up taking most of my pictures of the boys and the statues of animals in the park. Way more interesting I think.

Here is Doug getting a bear hug.

And here is Peyton with his favorite pose.

        And Eli being mauled by the bear.

Peyton being weird with a prehistoric bird.

Eli riding a prehistoric cat of some sort and Peyton trying to look smexy.

Here is Doug, Eli and Peyton with some sort of Fred Flintstone looking early elephant.

Eli, don't panic, but I think there is a spider behind you..................

Now for the crazy looking plants from the zoo. 

In some parts of the zoo, I felt like I was in the movie Land of the Lost. The plants were so strange; even the ones that weren't strange were freakishly large, like this aloe. For perspective, look to the bottom right of the photo. That's a person's head. This plant was probably 7 feet tall. I can't get an aloe plant to live long enough to have to re pot it. 

Another very weird looking plant. I think it ate the plant in the middle.

Just another interesting type of cactus.

 

And now for the animals...

I don't think this alpaca is dead...but it made for a funny picture.

 

Padres Game

Since the Padres stadium (Petco) and the zoo were minutes away, we left the zoo and went to see a Padres (that's FATHER or FAJA) game. Doug got seats in the "all you can eat" section of the park.

Here is a view from the park. I wish I had gotten a picture when Yonder Alonzo was on the jumbo tron. He is our favorite Padres player. We didn't even know who he was but decided he was our favorite because he, like Peyton and Eli, probably never found anything personalized with his name when he was a kid either. He also hit a home run that night to help the Padres win.

I'm sure something is going on here, but I don't remember what it was.

 

Here is Eli looking very ZZ Topish. Don't you think so? I mean start humming Sharp Dressed Man and see what you think.

Another Petco Park shot.

And another. We had a great time at the game even though we are not really Padres fans. Eli bought a foam finger and tried to get on TV between innings, but unfortunately, they opted for scantily clad women, drunk men acting like idiots, or the Mexican baseball team from Tijuana. They were there; yes they were.

 

LEGOLAND

I know this is what everyone has been waiting for. We did indeed go to Legoland, California. It is a theme park based on Legos. It is geared toward younger kids, maybe 3-13, but Peyton liked it too. It does have rides and games as well as shows, and Lego displays. I was pleasantly surprised.

Here are the boys and I with Doug getting ready to go in to Legoland. No, actually, two of us are real and two of us are Lego. Can you spot which is which?

 

And wouldn't you know it, one of the first displays is of Las Vegas. Yay.

They even had miniature versions of the Excaliber. It would have been better to stay in the Lego version, I'm sure.

 

Here is the Lego version of New York, New York.

And the Luxor.

There was also a model of the real New York, complete with Times Square which is such a misnomer because clearly it should be called Times Triangle.

The Chrystler Building

 

And Rockafeller Plaza complete with ice skating rink.

And what Lego display would be complete without a model of New Orleans, and a Mardi Gras Parade. Kids love that stuff, right?

Oh and the above ground cemetery and funeral. Not creepy at all. Oh I think I see Angelina Jolie and Brad Pit in there Bazillion Dollar home in New Orleans.


And just when you thought it couldn't get any nerdier.....

 I will let the photos speak for themselves, mostly because I don't know what any of this stuff is and if I call Boba Fett, Jango Fett or something crazy like that I'll never hear the end of it.

I do know a Sasquatch when I see one....and this place looked really Squatchy to me.

Poor Eli, getting choked by Darth Maul and his dad doing nothing but videotaping it. Clearly I would have been no help because I don't even know who Darth Maul is. I first spelled it Darth Mall then Darth Mal before looking it up to see it was Darth Maul.

Again, here is Peyton being attacked by Darth Maul in a very Matrix kind of way and Doug is video taping the whole thing.

The Walk of Fame

I was surprised to see that Shakespeare was shorter than I thought.

Eli is going through a "finger in the ear or nose" of statues phase. I hope he grows out of it. But it could be worse I guess.

Yeah

Here are a couple of the rides; there were many more but I got tired of taking my camera out of the bag. I am such an awesome mom.

 I will leave you with this photo of Doug and Eli, and I dare you to try and get this image out of your head.

There are no words.

Las Vegas - Family Fun

Alternate Title- We are the Worst Parents in the Universe

Doug and I visited Vegas a total of one time prior to this visit and that was to attend the Eagles concert at the MGM Grand in November of 2011. I have to say that was a great visit, but we were without the boys, and we only stayed two nights.

We needed a stop (place to spend the night) between the Grand Canyon and San Diego, so Doug booked a room in Vegas. By all internet accounts, the Excaliber was touted as the most kid friendly on the strip, so he booked our room at the Excaliber.

Now, the drive in was horrible because we kept running in to horrible rain and wind. The Forerunner was hydroplaning and Doug pulled into Vegas with white knuckles. We found the Excaliber easily and eventually found a place to park. In the parking lot on the way to the hotel I warned the boys that there would be a lot of people called "barkers" who would try to give them pamphlets and flyers and try to talk to them. They were to ignore these people and take NOTHING they were handed. It was a good call because immediately inside the hotel there were barkers. We came in through the back so we had to wind our way through the casino in order to get to Tower II where we were staying.....yeah....Doug told Eli to look at the carpet as Doug led him through. Peyton was allowed to look straight ahead, but he could not slow down or stop. He had to avert his eyes if he saw anything.

We got our room key and checked into our room. Finally. We were so tired from the long and difficult drive we were just ready to crash. But once we got into our room it was clear that housekeeping had not cleaned properly. There was still food in the fridge, trash in the room, toiletries in the bathroom. You get the picture. I called the front desk to have us moved and while Doug went to get the new keys, I wouldn't let the boys take their shoes off or sit on the beds. We just looked out the window across the street at New York, New York and watched the crazy people riding the roller coaster while it lightninged.

We were moved a couple of rooms down to a room that had been cleaned. By that time everyone was starving so we decided to try the buffet. It was the worst buffet---probably the worst food---we had ever had. It was also very expensive, so we felt even worse about the whole experience. To try to recoup our losses I took a bunch of chop sticks and fortune cookies for Eli to give away as souvenirs. Sorry if any of you reading this get one.

Anytime we were out of the room it was a carefully choreographed maneuver to avoid images that would forever scar the boys. I'm not even kidding. It was not at all like Doug and I remembered. It's like when you think about a movie you have seen years ago and you never remember the cursing or nudity until you watch it again with either your kids or your parents and you wonder HOW you could have missed it all.

The only upside to the whole experience was that we found a Krispy Kreme in the Casino. We got two dozen doughnuts and two Krispy Kreme hats. It's amazing how much better any situation is with Krispy Kreme.

The next day we walked down the strip to the giant M&M and Coke stores and then drove by the Pawn Stars pawn shop before leaving, and not a moment too soon. While it wasn't our most shining moment as parents, we managed to make the best of it and get both of them out without gambling or drinking issues, tattoos, or emphysema.

Here's Peyton at Pawn Stars. The line to get in was all the way down the block, so he didn't get to go in there. The building is surprizingly small too.