Friends From Switzerland

David and Andrea visited us while they were on their trip to the United States from Switzerland. We met them at Valley of Fire a couple years ago and we have kept in touch since. They traveled right at the time of the government shutdown and were lucky since they went to the national parks right when they were reopened. They stopped by the farm on their way back to Nevada and California and spent an evening and the next morning with us. We really loved that they visited us!

Going Home

Day 5 Sunday. We got up early, and we are glad we did for traffic purposes, and drove home. We decided to stop at LeAnn's and go to church with her family. We are so glad we did. We had a great visit and a nice break in the drive. She fed us dinner and we enjoyed their company and their puppy! We made it home and had Monday to recover before the kids went back to school. It was a great trip and it makes us want to go on another one!

LEGOLAND

LEGOLAND is the reason we planned this trip to San Diego. The kids had said that is where they wanted to go so that's what we did. We were sure glad we went this year since our kids are getting older. I didn't realize that Legoland was for the younger crowd but we still found a lot of fun things to look at. The rides weren't as exciting as Sea World but some were so creative. One ride we had to peddle to make it around the track. Another ride we pulled ourselves up by ropes vertically and let go to fall. There were some great lego creations we enjoyed looking at too.
 We wanted to join their Brick or Treat that evening and we did when the lines weren't literally hours long. We made it to 3 or 4 of the treat sites. We also enjoyed the Aquarium and got an extra treat there. I think we successfully exhausted the kids with all the fun we had!

San Diego Temple

Day 4. We stopped at the San Diego Temple on our way to Legoland. It looked like there were local church members putting the Christmas lights up on the grounds. This temple is so beautiful and it was fun to walk around it.

Sea World

Sea World was our favorite stop in San Diego. Everyone enjoyed all it had to offer. The rides were great, shows were fun and there was so much to see. Kevin even picked out a great spot to get splashed by Shamu. We loved it all!

The Mormon Battalion

Our next stop was the Mormon Battalion. It was such a pleasant surprise! Their tour was just fantastic and completely interactive with the kids. After we learned all about the battalion we were able to mine for gold! There were some fun sister missionaries that were from Utah and so Kevin invited them to come to the farm when they were finished with their 18 months. One was so excited that she took down our number and said she would come with some other sisters. We are going to wait for their phone calls in May.

San Diego Zoo

On Day 2 we visited the San Diego Zoo! We loved it and tried to see every single animal! We did a lot of walking and we almost saw it all. This was definitely a great place for us to visit! The kids took most of the pictures. We have a lot of pictures of animals through fences from Derrick and Samantha. And we have a lot of pictures of flowers when KayDee held the camera. They were good photographers!

Mission Beach

After the USS Midway we wanted to go to the beach so we went to Mission Beach. It was gorgeous! There was a man there with his boys and he let our kids use one of his boards. Samantha and Derrick loved it! He also showed the kids how to catch sand crabs. KayDee is holding one in a picture. The weather got cooler and we had to go, but the kids had so much fun and wanted to go back to the beach. We will just have to dedicate another vacation to the beach in the future.

USS Midway

 We were able to take the kids to San Diego for fall break. We had a great schedule lined up since kids were FREE in October! We drove to Vegas to spend the night at my sisters so the drive wouldn't be sooo long. We woke up early to finish the 5 hour drive and went to the USS Midway first.
It was amazing! We loved taking the tour of the ship and seeing all the aircraft! We were there for about 4-5hrs. At the end we were getting tired but we sure enjoyed seeing what we did. The kids even did the youth tour and were given wing pins at the end.