Last Hurrah and the trip home.

Friday morning we packed-- I packed in the condo and Eric made 15 trips up and down all the stairs carrying stuff and tetris-ing it into the car haha.  

Then we said goodbye to our awesome condo.  It was the perfect length of stay; we had gotten our fill of sand and sun.

We made one last stop before heading home: the tide pools and seal beach at La Jolla.

It was pretty cool even though we accidentally came at almost high tide.

I just like Whitney's braid in this pic.

 Maris walking in a little valley.

 there were SO many crabs!  The most I had ever seen!

 The seals were pretty cool, and they had a great walkway to go on and see them in their natural habitat. 

 Emma liked them, she just makes this face when she's out in the sun always!

 The drive home was thankfully uneventful, and Whitney didn't drink a ton of water like on the way there when we had to stop TWICE between home and St. George! The kids watched 3 movies on the ipad and we turned Emma around to be forward facing, yay!  Exciting! 
And Eric was all excited that the odometer was about to hit all 1's, so he set the trip counter at just the right moment so those could be all 1's as well. :)
I drove for 90 minutes so Eric could watch one game of the world cup lol.  But by then it was night so I was sleepy, I am so weak! 
Oh and I forgot to say that we watched the first couple of days of the World Cup in San Diego, fun times.

And that's all for our awesome trip.  We will be doing that again!

Day 4-- Beach Only Day!

This day was so great.  Everyone slept in and I cleaned out the car and went shopping for snacks for the ride home. :) Then at 10am we headed out to the beach!  It was gorgeous and we got a great spot.

Owen ran right out to chase the waves.

 Maris doing some very girly frolicking lol!

 Katelyn and Whitney ran right out into the waves!  I finally got some good pictures becasue all the other times the sun had been behind them in the afternoon.  Morning at the beach was perfect.

 Emma loved the sand by now!

 Maris was being hilarious

 more riding the waves....

 and running in the waves!

 Emma playing in the shade.

 We got someone to take a family pic!  so happy!

 My three brave adventurers set off...

 then this weird wavy picture happened, crazy huh?

 then Eric catches the wave,

 and then the girls....

 and they ride it in together. 

 this happened so many times for them, and for me too when I went out with them!  Great bonding.

 Eric even helped Owen catch a few waves, it was cute.

 While I got endless cute pictures of Emma!  She will smile for the camera now, it is SO funny and adorable.

 beach babes.

 all 4 of them going out, Eric is helping Owen.

 I went to the condo and cooked some frozen pizzas and brought fruit and the pizza down to the patio area of the condo, and Eric and the kids came and ate lunch and we went back out!  It was perfect, no sandy food. :)
then I settled down to this view and read for a few minutes and got totally sunburnt!

 the last hour Emma decided she wanted to go in the ocean!!

 and once she tried it once, she just kept running straight in!  so funny.

 maris doing some more cute prancing and twirling in the sand :)

 to end the day, and the beach week, the kids wrote their names in the sand.  then the girls wanted me to send pics to their friends of their names in the sand. :)

It was so great to end all together in the sand.  Then we washed up and went out to a japanese place for dinner, yum!  and got some kids chicken nuggets haha.

San Diego Trip Day 3- The San Diego Zoo....and the beach haha

Wednesday was Zoo day!  But first I had promised Maris I would take her down to the beach early in the morning to look for shells while the tide was out.  Eric had taken her and WHitney and Owen the morning before, when I came back from running with some big shells.  But she wanted to go with me. :)

I love that her name is Maris, "of the sea" and she loves the ocean!  She kept saying she wanted to "play in the sea" and it was so cute.

Emma and her mullett and pajamas and muffin came too. haha

And I took this picture to prove something exciting: Emma let me put her down on the sand!  And she WALKED AROUND on the sand barefoot!  yay!

Then we went to the zoo. It was awesome.  And HUGE.  After about 5 hours kids were having meltdowns and I checked my Garmin and we had walked 5.8 miles!  No wonder they were cranky, they were exhausted!  So we left.  But here's the pics:

Maris climbing a gorilla statue and Whit with a hippo.

Katelyn with her favorite animal, a monkey!

Katelyn getting stomped on by a lion!

save her!  haha

Everyone by the giraffes.

Emma making her dog sound "woo-woo", she did that for lots of the animals!  It was adorable.

and there was a lot of pointing!

kangaroos.

and I accidentally added this video haha

Maris by the PINK flamingos.

ahhh a snake!

WHitney with her fanny pack and a camel!

Maris with her favorite animal, elephants!

Owen photo bombing the giant sloth picture.

Whitney with some kind of hog.

seals!

cheesy Emma and a capyburra

all of us with the Panda!

the air tram was a hit!

we could see Balboa park, but never made it there.  Next time!

silly

more monkeys.

Owen was so excited to see his favorite animal, tigers!!

this crazy animal I had never heard of or seen before, it was really cool!  And I didn't get a picture of the koalas but they had a bunch and they were awesome.  I had never seen those before in real life either.

After said meltdowns and miles of walking we said peace out to the zoo.  We hurried back to the beach!  Where no one fought or had meltdowns!  The sand and waves were just too soothing. :)

Owen and Maris worked forever on making this huge sand pile for some reason haha.

and Katelyn and Whitney kept making sand castles right by the waves to see whose could outlast them better. :)

Me and Owen dug this hole to sit in. :)

Then we went back to the condo and I made mac and cheese while Eric and Whitney went and got the 3 of us some more mexican food. We put on a movie for the kids and took Emma on a bike ride with the bikes the condo had; they had one with a baby seat!  So that was the only time we went over to the Bay side of Mission Beach.