The Great California Adventure: Goodbye Anaheim, hello San Diego.

Friday
Our last day in Anaheim was so relaxed. After spending over 40 hrs in the park that week, it was nice just to chill. We had a totally free day, except our dinner reservation at "Joe's Crab Shack". Gordon loves seafood of pretty much any variety, and being so close to the coast he was adamant we eat at a seafood restaurant at least once.
He gourged himself on giant crabs, and thankfully they had kid friendly foods. They also had a playground there (which should be at EVERY restaurant!), and at one point my kids were part of a pint-sized turf war, but eventually they all figured it out and we appreciated not having to listen to "when is dinner going to be heeeere??" and "I'm hungryyyy." every 2 minutes.

Satuday
The next morning we sent B, Grandma, and Grandpa back off to the airport. B was going to spend a week with my mum (Granny), before we came back home. Auntie Paige and cousin Charlie, who is only a month younger, also got to spend time with her.

We packed up and headed to San Diego. The weather was overcast and threatening rain, but we had had such nice weather, we could hardly complain. We stopped at In-n-Out burger for lunch, and while Gordon was inside ordering food, the rest of us waited in the van. The heavens opened and it started absolutely bucketing down on us. After about 5 minutes, and no sign of Dad, Isaac quips "I thought this place was called in and out". Isaac had quite a few good witty remarks on the trip. I enjoyed talking to him and listening to him. He was also a huge help with passing stuff back to the girls and helping Scarlett with her mp3 player. But I digress, when Gordon finally came out with food, the rain had stopped and he had no idea that he had missed a raining tsunami.

The kids had been begging to see the ocean the whole trip. Scarlett especially loves the sand and water. So we made a plan to stop at Playa Del Mar on the way. It wasn't exactly beach weather, so I insisted the kids bring their jackets, despite their protests. It was also pretty windy, which is one weather thing that I hate. But hearing the kids say "Is that the ACTUAL ocean?" and seeing them run down the beach to it, made the wind bearable.

Now they weren't in swimming gear and all our luggage was packed in the van, so we warned them not to go too far out. At one point, we were watching Mia run along the beach where the tide was coming in (we weren't far away,  just not close enough for our feet to get wet), and we noticed there was a point where there was almost a puddle of ocean... like the sand was actually lower than it appeared. Almost in slow motion we watched her get to this point on the beach, my brain goes "she's totally going to fall in". She stumbles, spins, tries to find her footing, and basically crashes face first in the water. It was shallow, so she gets up on her own, but she is absolutely drenched in cold ocean water. Gordon and I were laughing so hard. We're mean, I know. She runs up to us with this huge grin on her face, even though she's in a tshirt and shorts. This girl is crazy. Thankfully mama had the foresight to bring her coat and we stripped her wet shirt off and put her dry coat on. By the time the kids were done frolicking, they were all varying degrees of wet and sandy (I also hate sand haha...anywhere else but the park and beach anyway). But they couldn't wait to go back.

It looks like she's crying, but she's not.

Our check-in time wasn't until 4pm, so we still had a couple hours to kill. Gordon found a park called Mission Trails Regional Park not too far away where we could go on a little nature walk. We spent over an hour walking a couple km loop with the kids. They climbed trees, explored trails, and got even more dirty. I couldn't wait to throw them in the shower when we were done.

We arrived at our very clean and modern air bnb, and I went to pick up some groceries for dinner (aka frozen pizza), while Gordon made sure our children were squeaky clean. The kids relaxed, we watched a movie together, and put them to bed.

Sunday
On Sunday, as per usual, we went to church in the morning. I remember navigating there (usually my role), and one of things that would drive me crazy about the city was how entrances to the freeway would be in residential neighbourhoods, and how everything was weaving out of each other all the time. Ok you have 15 seconds to exit, then cross 4 lanes of traffic so you can exit again in 10 seconds. Just watch this one minute clip and you'll know what the deal-e-o was pretty much every day in this city.

We decided to check out the Mormon Batallion Historic Site in downtown San Diego. You can learn about the Mormon Batallion here. Basically they were a group of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (our church) who joined the US army during the Mexican-American war. Our 4th (or thereabouts?) great grandfather Albern Allen was a member of the batallion, as were a few more of our ancestors. Isaac thought it was cool that he could see his ancestor's name on the enrollment list. We got to do an interactive tour all on our own, and the kids got to pan for gold.

Next stop on our Sabbath in San Diego was the temple. You can learn more about our temples here. Temples are smaller nowadays, but the San Diego temple is massive. It looks like a giant palace. It was one of the most beautiful temples I have ever been to, with the most expansive grounds. The kids enjoyed exploring, barefoot for some reason, around the temple, and we even enlisted a couple of missionaries to take our picture.

Last, we went to La Jolla beach. There were tons of little tide pools and rock formations for the kids to explore. We were able to watch the sunset to close off another memorable day together.