We had so much fun, and decided that San Diego is the perfect affordable family beach vacation. There is so much to see and do! And yes, we bought the 3 in 1 passes from Costco to get in to Sea World, San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park. It saves you big bucks. And you can get in to any of the three parks as many times as you want within a five day period.

We gave Owen the choice of what we were going to do on our last full day. We could have gone back to either zoo or to Sea World, but Owen chose to build a sand castle on the beach. It was overcast and a little windy and cool, but it felt very refreshing. Especially since I knew the next day we'd be driving back to the dry heat of Las Vegas, and I'd be missing the cool sea air.

We saw a couple of other cool things that day. On our way down to the beach, we saw this abandoned bag (I am sure the owner of it was at the playground) and a squirrel poking out to watch us. It was hilarious! As we got closer, he ducked down for one last bite, and then took off with a wafer cookie in mouth. I got this picture just before he headed out. You have to double click on it to see it big to get the full effect. At least we got a big laugh out of it.

This beach didn't have any tide pools, but it did have cracks in the limestone bluffs where the water reaches at high tide. We found lots of little crabs and some sea anemones, but this crab was the biggest, and made for a good picture because he didn't have anywhere to hide from us.

Owen loved his last day at the beach to play in the sand.

Goodbye, Pacific Coast! We hope to be back soon. We miss you already.

We knew that Tuesday was going to be another hot one, so we packed a lunch and spent the day at the beach. We found a really cute fun one with a grassy area and playground, although we spent all our time in the water and sand! We were too busy playing to take many pictures, but I snapped these two cute ones as we were leaving.

On Wednesday we went to the Wild Animal Park. I think it was Nick and my favorite place of the three we went to. It was started in the 1960's as a breeding area for the San Diego Zoo. In the 70's it was opened to the public. If you have time to explore an area, this would be the place to go. Most of it has been planted like a jungle, and it has a fun African theme. The best part of it is that you get to see most of the animals in an open space like in the wild. The giraffe's and rhino's mingle with the gazelle's, more like keep their distance, but it's a large open area. We got to ride around in a tour bus ("train" according to Owen) with a guide telling us interesting things. I left my camera in the stroller during this, do I don't have anything cool to show for it. If you pay a lot extra, you can go in a safari truck thing, and get close enough to touch the giraffe's. I love how curious and friendly they are, and walk right up to the vehicles. They also have segway's you can ride around on another special tour! It looked like fun.

We were watching the gorillas as they were being fed. There was one mean one that kept taking the leafy branch that was thrown to another smaller guy. Three tries later, the smaller one got to keep his share. It made us laugh, but also feel bad for the little guy. Here he is trying to take it away on the second throw.

This one carried his on his head until he got to where he was going.
They were pretty entertaining. It was fun for me to watch them, and see how smart they act and resemble humans. At least I thought so.

Owen slept in the car for the 30 minutes back to the resort, and wasn't interested in napping any longer than that, so we found something else to do to get us out. We headed south to La Jolla Beach because I heard of a place there with tide pools and seals.

We had fun exploring the rocky coast and did find some cool things to look at. Everything except star fish!

A little farther down was a place called Children's Pool Beach. A long time ago they had a wall built to make a protected little cove and safe place for children to swim and play. Well, it's since then been taken over by seals. A lot of them. Online reviews of the place has a lot of people complaining about it. Then there are a lot of groups like PETA trying to protect them. Sort of a funny situation.

Here is Owen (another nervous look, as I perched him on a wall) overlooking the seal/children's beach. Another fun day in CA!

On Monday we went to the San Diego Zoo. It got pretty hot that day, but we still had fun. The zoo there is very cool. More laid back than Sea World, too.

Nick and Owen are planning out our course here.

With a grizzly bear.

Riding across the zoo on the sky tram. Thank goodness for that.


Giraffe's are one of my favorites.


Sky tram with daddy.


I think Owen was most entertained by the otter here. They love to interact with people and kept swimming up to us.

Elephants are cool.

After nap time, we cooled off in the resort pool.

Owen loves to swim so much!

After dinner, we went for a drive to check out a new beach, and got there in time for the sunset. It was beautiful!

This is Owen's nervous smile, because I made him sit on the edge of the boardwalk hand rail for a picture.

I love the beach, and I love family vacation!

This may seem like a lot of blogging, but I am wanting to do this day by day so I don't have to do a lot of catch-up when I get home. And I don't scrapbook or keep a journal, so this is the best I can do.
Sunday was a great day! We didn't realize how close we were to the San Diego Temple, or how close it is to the freeway, until we saw it on the way to Sea World. And it is a beautiful temple! After church we stopped by to take some pictures. A nice missionary couple took our pictures for us and told us about the temple. It would have been great to be able to go inside! There is an atrium in the middle that is open to the outside. So when it rains, it rains in the temple! (It is closed off by glass walls though.)

We spent a little time walking around the grounds and taking pictures for fun.

After nap time, we headed to the beach.

We made an awesome sand castle with a moat and fortress around it. This shows the destruction of our castle as the tide was coming in.

And the foolish man built his house upon the sand. It was a great lesson. This is what it looked like less than an hour after we started!

SEA WORLD!

Saturday we spent the day at Sea World. A first for me and Owen. The coolest part is how Owen is old enough to understand and enjoy what he is seeing, but young enough to still be FREE!

I have to admit, the whale show is the best thing there.

Waiting for the show to start wasn't that cool though.

I love tide pools. Here we are picking up a star fish! We have yet to find any really cool real ones at the beaches here though. I think the best are further up north.

These flamingos were funny because they started charging toward us really fast through the water. We couldn't figure out why, becuse they weren't eating any of the food we bought to feed them.

Owen really wanted to see the penguins. He got a kick out of those.

And I waited in line to take Owen on one ride before we left. He loved it, but it was a Saturday. Way too crowded for me.

It is Miller family tradition to spend Easter weekend in St. George at the family condo. This year there were the grandparents and four families with a total of 14 kids. Crazy, but fun. We had to leave Nick at home to study. Unfortunately, he had finals the week after Easter! The weather wasn't too warm, but we did fit in some swim time.

Owen is pretty good swimming with the arm floaties.

This is cousin Britton with little cousin Jackson.

Friday we dyed eggs in preparation for the hunt on Saturday.

The little ones took off their shirts to prevent color dye stains, but Owen insisted on keeping one on.

Jessie and Owen.

The adults supervising.

Jackson with a new cool egg spinner. It makes the eggs look like they have a messy tie-dye look.

The tradition is to hide the baskets, and have the kids wake up to find them in the morning. After opening a few drawers and cupboards in the kitchen, I led Owen to the bathroom where he found his!

The Easter Bunny (nana & papa) was very generous filling the baskets this year.

I love this basket of Owen's because it used to be Nick's when he was young! I love sentimental hand-me-downs that are functional like that.

Hope everyone had a great Easter!