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.