San Diego

We've been to San Diego twice before, but somehow we missed Coronado beach. Somebody mentioned it in passing to us, so we thought we'd go check it out.

The amazing thing about this beach is that the sand is gold. Well, pyrite, but it glitters like gold for as far as the eye can see.

Sawyer wasn't a big fan of the wind. It took him about an hour of hiding under his blanket to 

cheer up. 

Don't I have the best looking' boys? Their future significant others are so lucky.

When in doubt, make a weird face at the camera. 

Beach bums. (See what I did there?)

Oliver got his first body boarding lessons. He was a natural. 

These waves were so great. He was singing Beach Boys the whole way home. 

Once he decided that the wind wasn't the end of the world, he came for a walk with me. Kids and the ocean. It's magic. 

Sigh. I love this guy. 

It was so fun to watch them having fun together. As your kids get older, they slowly turn into your very best friends. 

This little heartbreaker. Am I right?

Then we went to Legoland! The kids didn't even know Leogland existed, so we decided to make it a surprise. As we were pulling up, we played "Everything is awesome", which, if you have kids and have seen the Lego movie, is probably the only song you have listened to in about 4 months. 

They were crazy excited. Surprising kids is the best. 

.

Emmet even danced for them. They LOVED it. 

Chewy! There were so many life sized creations. 

There was this great playhouse with giant Lego blocks. I honestly think the younger boys would have been happy to stay and play with those the whole day. I wanted to buy some but they're not for sale :(

We actually ended up going for two days because it's kid of a buy-one-day-get-one-free deal. (Really, two days isn't necessary, if it was already paid for, why not?) I was really glad we ended up going, because it was great for Sawyer to get a taste of what it's like to be on a ride, and we didn't want him to be afraid of anything at Disneyland. 

We spent some time just wandering around downtown, enjoying the beauty of the city and the balmy weather. We stepped into this fabulous art gallery which was mostly full of the works of Chuck Jones. The entire place made me think of my mom, who was most likely the biggest Merrie Melodies fan out there. Her nickname (not kidding) was Bugs Bunny, because she was the best prankster out there.  There was a lot of Disney art as well. I kind of wanted every single piece. We weren't allowed to take pictures of course, but we did snag this great one of Wile E. Coyote. 

We are just in love with San Diego. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows a lot. Probably more than is healthy, but whatevs.

We went to Balboa Park, which was huge and beautiful. The Natural History Museum has the incredible exhibit right now called "Real Pirates".  It features discoveries from the real pirate ship called the Ouida (pronounced Wee-dah). In 1984 a sailor and fisherman from Cape Cod, after years of research and planning, discovered the long lost pirate ship of Captain Sam Bellamy. They had rooms and rooms of artifacts recovered from the ship, including weaponry, kitchen utensils, pirate treasure, and even the shoe (and leg!) of the youngest ever pirate, a 9 year old boy. There is so much fascinating information in this exhibit that I can't even come close to relating it all. It's a travelling National Geographic exhibit, so I strongly urge you to check with your local museum to see if it might travel near you- it is so worth checking out. 

This dino, although it looks like a T-Rex, is an Allosaurus. It actually lived 75 million (million!) years before the Tyrannosaurus, but they are closely related. Some theories suggest that the T-Rex evolved from the Allosaurus. 

Sawyer really loved looking through these. Lucky for him, they're all over this museum. 

Beautiful gardens at Balboa. Sigh. It's so difficult to get everyone smiling at once! But I'll take what I can get. 

La jolla is probably my very favourite place in all of San Diego. It's beautiful, somehow always warm, even when the rest of the city is cool, and is protected from the constant wind that is present at every single other beach in San Diego. I could go here every day.

I know we have like 5 million selfies like this, but I just don't care. I like to document everything. So deal with it. 

So, there was this big pile of sea lions, just happily basking in the sun. You can see that they're all dry except for the one by the water. We sat here for about 10 minutes watching him. He was just waiting for the waves to come crashing over him. He kept sticking his head near the water, as if willing a wave to come his way. It was hilarious. Even Sawyer was cracking up. 

Oh, these boys. 

So that's how we spend almost a month. Of course there was some school/work involved, and by month's end we were more than ready to move on with the trip. Our wanderlust is too strong to want to be in any given place for more than a few weeks. At least for now. Ask me how I feel after 4 months of RV living with 3 small boys!