Favorite Things

We are back from a fun family trip to Southern California.  On the last day, I asked the kids what their favorite parts of the vacation were.  Their answers were as follows:

William - Seeing his cousins.  All the us enjoyed hanging out with the Royal family of Yucaipa, California for a few days.  We had a blast with them.  The kids stayed up late every night, we played games and we played on the Wii.  They have a cute little dog named Belle who my kids loved.  Tessa found a kindred spirit in Sydney and they played Barbies for literally hours at a time.  On Tuesday, we all went into Los Angeles for the day.  We went to the California Science Center and saw some of their exhibits, including a cute IMAX movie called Born to Be Wild.  We also went to Univeral Studios City Walk and ate lunch (Jay really wanted to go to Pinks, a hot dog place) and shopped for treats.  To wrap up our day we went to the Griffith Park Observatory and saw the giant telescope and enjoyed the planetarium exhibits.  Although we were sad to leave their house on Wednesday (William actually cried), we are so grateful to them for playing host to us for a few days!  We had so much fun.

Henry - Sea World.  On Thursday we went to Sea World and the kids really enjoyed it.  Henry found his favorite ride - Journey to Atlantis - which is a cross between a water ride and a roller coaster.  He would have ridden it all day if we had let him.  We saw all the fun exhibits, rode some cute rides and saw three shows - One Ocean (the Shamu show), the Dolphin show (I can't remember the name of it now), and Pet's Rule.  Tessa and I saw Pet's Rule while the boys were riding the water rides and I thought it was silly but Tessa loved it.  Anyway, Sea World is a great way to spend a day in San Diego.  On Friday, our last day in San Diego, we hit a few sights around town.  We went to Old Town, saw the Mormon Battalion Visitors Center (we highly recommend it) and had lunch.  Then we drove to Coronado Island and went to the beach for a bit.  Finally we drove to Point Loma and saw the old military base and took in the view and the lighthouse.  San Diego is a beautiful area and we would definitely head back there someday.

Tessa - The hot tub.  Yes, of all the things we did, Tessa's favorite thing was swimming in the hotel pool every night and hanging out in the hot tub.  I think she had fun during the rest of the activities as well, to be fair, but this is the first thing that came to her mind. 

All in all, we had a great trip.  Poor Jay got home from Australia at 3:30 pm Friday and we left for California at 6 am Saturday morning but he seemed to recover from his jetlag well and had fun hanging out with the family.  I celebrated my 43rd birthday while we were there and it was nice - Carol even made a carrot cake to mark the occasion.

I'll post pictures in the next day or so when I get a chance.  For now, I've got laundry to catch up on.  Lots and lots of laundry.