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! :)