California Trip

Danny had a work conference in San Diego the first week of March. We decided it would be a good opportunity to escape the cold. The boys were in their school play, so we couldn't leave until March 1 and that was the day the conference started, so Danny ended up flying down there the day before we left in the car. We also had to cut our trip short a couple of days when we found out that one of Danny's YSA counselors was getting married on the day we were planning to drive back. On our list of things to do in California were Sea World, the beach, and Magic Mountain. We ended up having to do Magic Mountain without Danny when we discovered that they were only open Friday-Monday at the time we were there. We needed to drive home Friday, so I took the kids on Monday while Danny was at his conference still. The day couldn't have been much better. It was perfect weather, and we walked onto almost every ride. At the busiest time of the day, we had to wait in a couple of 15-minute-long lines. The biggest disappointment of the day was that all of us really wanted to ride X2 because we had heard so many people talk about it. We only saw it open one time all day and it only stayed open for about 30 minutes before closing down again. I learned that my older body cannot handle the rides there as well as it used to. I was feeling so sick from the nonstop thrill rides and lack of lines for most of the day.

On Tuesday, we went to the beach. It was a little colder than we would have liked it to be. In fact, the whole week was about 10 degrees colder on average than we were expecting. It also didn't help that there was a pretty constant breeze coming off of the water. I made the rookie mistake of leaving unattended food in the outside pocket of our backpack while we took a walk down the shore. When we got back, there were about 50 seagulls gathered around our stuff taking turns pecking at the backpack. They had somehow managed to mutilate the star crunch inside the mesh pocket and remove most of it from the plastic wrapping, but not from the pocket. The worst part about it was that the dumb birds had pooped all over our blanket and backpack. The kids took it out on them by aiming their football at any seagull that dared to come close to us. Tyler even managed to hit one with the football and they all had a good laugh about it. The seagull was not harmed.

On Wednesday, Danny's conference was over, so we headed to Sea World together. Their was a chance of rain that day, so the weather was not ideal. However, I think the rain scared away the crowds. We walked onto every ride that day and the shows had plenty of seating, even when we arrived right at start time. We learned later in the day that there were only about 2000 people in the park that day. And we didn't even get rained on, unless you want to count the boys sitting in the splash zone at the orca show. The highlights of the day were when Tyler started on the front row at the orca show and then after seeing the first splashes to the side of him he moved up a row. He ended up about 4 rows back from where he started because he moved up every time there was another splash into the audience. Camden stuck it out in his original seat, but didn't end up getting very wet. Another highlight was when stumbled on the sea lion show. We had somehow missed that show in our search of all the shows and just happened to walk past the show as it was starting to fill up. Ashley and I got to see the very entertaining preshow, which was a single man that walked around messing with people from the audience. He eventually ended up on stage doing some things with a mop and music. He was pretty funny. The kids also fell in love with sea lions since they acted so similar to dogs. Ashley asked if we could get one after we left. LOL.

On Thursday, we drove north. We met up with some of Brian's kids at the Newport Beach Temple to do baptisms. Maryn was there, too. Then we spent the rest of the evening at their house hanging out. Brian didn't get home until later, but we were still able to fit in a few games with him, too. The kids loved spending time with their cousins.

We drove home on Friday. It was a great time to go to California. Ashley did have a few things she had to make up at school and we missed out on a few school events scheduled around that time, but I don't think any of us regretted taking that week off to enjoy some sunshine and make some memories. We missed having Alyssa there with us.