San Diego, Part 2!

On to Part 2, the last part of our wonderful vacay to sunny San Diego (Part 1 HERE)

Wednesday morning we awoke bright and early again to get some more time in the sand or "snow" as Layla called it.

Then we hit the road for Sea World.

We spent A LOT of time here. And I barely took any pictures.

The shows were awesome!

Crazy northerners Part 2. It was maybe 60 degrees that day but the boys went on a water ride.

Not once, but twice. And they were SOAKED.

We were just at the top of the splash zone but luckily didn't get wet at all. The boys were still soaked at this point from their water ride so it didn't really matter.

We had to hit up more rides and then it was time to head home.

Brian and his dad got new shirts from Nana since theirs were soaked. I luckily had packed another set of outfits for both kids so they didn't have to shiver the whole way home!

Miss Sea World Snack Queen

A great end to a great day at Sea World.

For dinner we had to hit up In-N-Out Burger. Yum!

Brian's grandparents that live in Tucson drove in to San Diego so we got to have dinner with them.

Layla got to have a long in depth conversation with her great grandparents. I'm sure it had a lot to do with princesses, dolphins, sparkle shoes, when she tripped at Sea World and got a boo boo, you know, important things.

After dinner we headed back to the cottage and had a bonfire at the beach.

We had way too many s'mores, maybe a few too many local brews, and stayed up way too late playing a bloody battle of Spoons, and then called it a night.

We woke up to a beautiful day for our last day in San Diego

We had our last breakfast at the lodge

Spent some time twirling on the beach

 Helicopters were going by constantly the whole time we were there. Freedom!

Brian and I took one last stroll together and enjoyed the kid free time. The Blue Angels flew right over us. Brian keeps trying to tell me he arranged that...ha right!

We checked out of our hotel and  took the ferry over from Coronado Island to downtown San Diego

Brian and I (and Teddy) by the USS Midway. We didn't have time to tour it but I definitely want to in the future!

Layla and Brian recreating the statue, haha!

And another statue holding Baby. We are a mature, mature family.

We spent a bunch of time walking along the harbor, saw pirate ships, met up with a friend from pilot training, had lunch, and then hopped back on the ferry to our car. I am so, so glad we were all able to take this trip (we did miss Danny and Dana a bunch!).

Beautiful sunset at their hotel before we left.

So glad we got to spend time with them!

After all of the fun in the sun we hopped back on a plane to head back to cold and snowy Colorado. The kids did EXCELLENT on this trip and for that we are so very thankful!  We didn't make it home until 12:30 that night but luckily we had the whole weekend to recuperate. A wonderful family vacation in the books! :)

San Diego Part 1!

I'm back! And full of vacation pictures! San Diego was AHH-MAZING.  So much fun. We're still catching up on sleep since we didn't nap once and stayed up late and awoke early pretty much every day. But, such is vacation.

We'd been talking for awhile about taking a family vacation to a beach somewhere with Brian's family. I found some pretty decent flights to San Diego in December and we just went for it! We were so sad that Brian's brother and his wife couldn't make it but we were thankful for those that were able to.

We left early (and I mean early) Monday morning. Why we plan these super early flights out of Denver (over an hour away from our house) I will never know. 

But we made it! And it was sunny and warm (well, mid 60's but that felt warm!) Brian's parents were already there so they graciously picked us up from the airport.  Our flight went great. The kids are getting so much easier to travel with. Other than Brady saying every 10 minutes "I see San Diego!" it was a very smooth flight.

We checked out a mall downtown and then got ourselves to the beach! We took the bridge over to Coronado Island where we were staying and changed right into our beach gear.

Some people were in heavy winter coats. But us, us northerners, we had our swimsuits on and were in the water!

How they didn't get hypothermia, I will never know.

The sand there was so crazy, it looked like gold and was super glittery.

We stayed at the Naval Base on Coronado and rented out a beach house. It had 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, a full kitchen and living area and we had sand right outside our door. If you're military and looking for a getaway to San Diego, I highly recommend these!

Our view from our beach cottage.

Playing in the sand every chance they could get!

Monday night we headed to the Coronado Brewing Company for some dinner

The boys approved of the beer selection...and the lemonade selection.

Tuesday morning we woke BRIGHT and early (like 5 am pacific time early). We caught some breakfast next to the pool. We stayed next to the Navy lodge and were able to use their amenities which were awesome.

We headed over to San Diego to pick up Brian's sister Catherine and her boyfriend Andy.

We went to a seafood place...where I had a Caesar salad. I suck, I know.

The kids tried some fish though and liked it!

Then we drove over to Cabrillo National Monument to check out the tidal pools. 

Funny thing is the place we could see from our beach cottage (and was less than 2 miles away) but we had to drive all the way around San Diego to get to it. This picture is from our beach cottage.

We were there when it was super low tide so it was really neat to see.

After all of that hiking we sure worked up an appetite. So to Ghiradelli, we went for some yummy ice cream sundaes!

That night we ordered pizza in and tried to stay awake past 7:00.

We decided we needed to stop being lame and Brian, his sister, her boyfriend, and myself decided to go out.

We went to Hotel del Coronado. Which was beautiful and so neat to see. Oh and fun fact, a shot costs $17 there. So word to the wise, drink elsewhere!

We ended up at an Irish pub with about 40 Navy guys just off a boat (I don't know Navy terminology, sorry!).  We had a blast and stayed up entirely too late!

I'll share the rest of our trip tomorrow. Sorry for the picture dump! :)