Hanging out with kangaroos!

We weren't able to ride the new ride at Sea World (Electric Eel rollercoaster) because of technical difficulties or the new ride at Legoland (a real submarine) because it doesn't open until next month, but we were able to walk through the brand new exhibit on Monday at San Diego Safari Park - Walkabout Australia. It was amazing! They also have a lemur walkabout, but the lemurs weren't active when we walked through their enclosure. The wallabies kept a little farther away, but the kangaroos literally hopped right in front of us. There were several times I could have easily touched a kangaroo because it was right beside me, but we weren't allowed to touch them. I have never been so close to a kangaroo before aside from the baby kangaroo they often have at the petting zoo at the Lycoming County Fair. We enjoyed our day at the San Diego Zoo earlier in our trip. The zoo has a wider variety of animals. For example, we really enjoyed the koala bears at the zoo, and they didn't have any of those at the Safari Park, but the Safari Park is much larger (1,800 acres) and the animals

look like they are in something closer to a natural environment. The Safari Park has many different experiences but most of them cost extra money (zipline, ropes course, balloon ride, etc.). The one that was most appealing to me was one where we would have driven around really close to many animals - sort of like being on an African safari, but they were really expensive so we didn't do any of the extras.

I had four things on the schedule that I was hoping we'd do (that didn't cost extra) - ride the Africa tram, see the cheetah run 70mph, visit the animal ambassador stage, and attend a keeper talk (was leaning toward the tiger one). Our timing was off for all of the keeper talks, and Oliver had enough walking by 3:00 so we skipped the cheetah run. We did ride the Africa tram, heard two different presentations at the animal ambassador stage (two different tortoises - the second was about a pancake tortoise that is the fastest tortoise (1 ft per second) and also attended an excellent bird show that included an owl, peregrine falcon, parrots, etc.

One bird did an amazing job with talking and imitating various whistles and sounds. Although we didn't listen to any keeper talks, Nadia did ask the volunteers stationed at many exhibits throughout the park many, many questions - especially at the elephants, gorillas, and tigers. The kids also fed some lorikeets nectar (that other people generously shared with them) and brushed some goats. It was the hottest day of our trip and so the kids also got themselves thoroughly wet in some of the water play areas.

Paul's parents skipped this outing. When we got back, we picked them up and had dinner at In and Out, which is a fast food burger restaurant where the food is really fresh. As in I watched them peeling potatoes to make French fries and slicing onions for the burgers! We had cooked dinner at "home" the previous two nights so it was a treat to eat out on Monday night. If you are ever in southern California, I recommend visiting the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, just be prepared to do some walking as according to my phone we walked 6.3 miles!

LEGOLAND

Sometimes I feel like our house is LEGOLAND. I have found Legos at one time or another in every room and closet of the house. Even the bathrooms! I have a love/hate relationship with Legos. My kids love them Ian plays with them by far the most, Nadia goes through spurts but sometimes she plays with them quite a bit as well (with Ian), and Oliver plays with them a little bit. I love that they are a toy that lends itself to creativity and using their imaginations as they tell stories while they play. I dislike the fact that they seem to end up places I don't want them (on the floor, on the couch, etc.). I dislike the fact that we own tens of thousands of them and still Ian always wants MORE. Why? I don't understand the need to buy another Lego when they use less than 10% of all the ones we already own. I have adjusted to the fact that my dining room table is actually a Lego table for the vast majority of the year. Every once in a long while I ask them to clear it off so we can actually use the dining room table for its intended purpose. Knowing they love Legos, I had considered taking them to

Legoland in Florida in 2014 or 2015, but in the end we chose Disney and Sea World over Legoland those years in part because the kids had so much fun at the resort in Orlando that we didn't want to be out and about every day of our trip. That was the biggest difference between this vacation and our usual vacations - we didn't stay at a resort through Interval (via the time share). The only other vacation in the past 10+ years that we've taken that wasn't through the time share was the cruise. We stayed at a condo via Airbnb. This was cheaper than staying at a hotel and also meant we had free access to a washer/dryer, a full kitchen, swimming pool, etc., and it also meant we had a lot more space than if we had stayed in a hotel. The downside was that it was quite a bit more expensive for us because we're used to paying less than $300 a week for our lodging. This 10 day trip cost us more than our 14 days in Florida cost us in 2015, but considering the two weeks of vacation that the kids and I took in 2017 only cost $253 total (mostly gas), I didn't feel badly about spending a little more than usual this year.

We arrived at LEGOLAND a little bit later than planned because we needed to pack up the van as we were going straight from LEGOLAND to the airport. We stayed in the "dry" part of the park for the first about three hours riding rides and checking out the amazing Lego creations in Miniland. The lines were long for many of the rides, but because Paul's parents both rented motorized wheelchairs, we were able to skip the line for a few of them. They don't have any really "high thrill" type rides at LEGOLAND. It's definitely geared toward younger children. Next we (minus Paul's parents) spent about 2.5 hours inside the water portion of the park. The last part of our day we spent back in the "dry" part of the park during which we rode rides and watched two short (15 minute) 4D movies and also one live show. At the end the kids spent some time building with Legos, and Pop Pop bought them each one minifigure. Aside from one personal pizza at Disneyland and an ice cream cone at Fleet Science Center, I hadn't bought any food or drinks for myself at any of the places we visited so I

splurged and bought one order of Legoland's famous apple fries. They were yummy, but I probably wouldn't buy them again because it was $6 for one order. I was very thankful I did buy them because we didn't end up eating dinner until 8:30pm that night at the airport, and that is VERY late for me. Apple fries at 6pm tied me over for a really late dinner. Of course I shared my apple fries with the kids and Paul's mom. Paul wouldn't try any because he won't eat anything that has cinnamon on it.

After we left the park we returned the minivan we rented and then took the shuttle to the airport. One perk of flying so late at night was there was NO line for the TSA screening. Oliver fell asleep in my arms in the terminal soon after we ate dinner. Nadia and Ian fell asleep on the airplane. Naturally none of us slept really well. By the time we picked up our luggage and took the shuttle to the long term parking, it was about 7:30am (4:30 PST). I drove us to Paul's parents house so Paul could sleep in the van as he had hardly slept at all on the plane.

We stopped for gas and breakfast at McDonald's at 9:45. It was the only breakfast we purchased at a restaurant during our vacation. After dropping his parents off at their home, we drove one more hour to our house. I unpacked the suitcases and the kids helped put away their clean clothes. I had done the laundry in San Diego so that everything we packed was clean. I went through the mail and mowed the lawn while Paul took a nap. Then while I was finishing mowing he took Nadia and Ian to see Solo at the theatre. I had two free tickets, one free drink, and a $10 gift card. He used the gift card toward the third ticket plus a popcorn. All in all it cost us $4 for the three of them to see the movie and have popcorn. When I took the kids I got a drink we all liked (fruit punch or lemonade), but Paul got himself a soda and cups of water for the kids. I plan to take them to one more movie this summer - Incredibles 2 on Father's Day. I got 4 free tickets for that show plus I have coupons for 2 free drinks and 2 free large popcorns. The kids won't have to get water that time. Thankfully they are

used to getting water as I never buy them a drink when we go out to eat unless it is included with the kid's meal.

Paul ended up having 12 consecutive days off from work! He hadn't had that long of a vacation since 2015, and the last time he had ANY vacation was September 2016. He asked if we could pizza last night since it was the last hurrah of our vacation, and since I was busy with mowing the lawn, buying groceries, cleaning the guinea pig cage, etc. I went for that idea. Oliver and I skipped seeing the Star Wars movie. He opted to watch Peter Pan at home instead. He and I also made brownies. He loved licking the batter all by himself as usually he and Nadia share that treat. Oliver and I went to bed around 7:30, and we both slept until 8:30! We were tired!! Nadia went to bed at 8:00, and Ian went to bed at 8:30. They both got up around 9:30. I think it's the first time ever that the four of us all slept at least 13 hours on the same night. Today we are trying to shift back toward EST in terms of when we eat and such. The kids and I aren't going

anywhere today, and it feels great to stay HOME. I especially enjoyed sleeping in my own bed last night as the mattresses at the hotel in Baltimore and San Diego weren't good for my back. Thus far I'm only aware of two things that we lost on our trip - #1 Ian left his pair of brand new sandals at the hotel in Baltimore and #2 Nadia lost one of her starter earrings in the swimming pool in Baltimore. That was a painful moment for her because it was very painful for her when I put in a pair of Grandma's post earrings in her ears. Thankfully her piercings

seem to be doing fine now, and Grandma's earrings have a back that screws on so I don't think she'll lose these.

I marked the 29 items we've completed on our bucket list thus far in green. In the past I've put only 100 things on our summer list. I put more than 100 this time in part because we never have achieved all 100 in the past. This way I think we'll accomplish at least 100 of them since there are 113 on the list. I asked the kids to rank what were their top 3 things from the trip, and

they ended up ranking their top 5-6. Nadia said 1. Disneyland, 2. Sea World, 3. Aquatica, 4. La Jolla Cove (beach), 5. San Diego Safari Park. Ian said 1. Legoland, 2. Disneyland, 3. Sea World, 4. beach, 5. Safari Park, and 6. Aquatica. Oliver said 1. Disneyland, 2. Legoland, 3. Sea World, 4. Safari Park, and 5. Aquatica. My top two (by far) were La Jolla Cove (seeing the seals and sea lions in the wild was amazing) and the Safari Park. I'll write more about that park soon, but let me say the highlight for all of us was when we walked into an area where we were very close (could easily have touched) kangaroos and wallabies. They hopped right in front of us (we were inside the enclosure with them)! Originally when I planned an 8 day trip, I wasn't planning on us visiting Aquatica or the Safari Park. Those two were added when we extended the trip to 10 days. I'm glad we extended the trip as although we liked the San Diego Zoo, we liked the Safari Park even more!

Disneyland!

Not counting our travel days, our longest day of this ten day vacation was May 31 when we visited Disneyland. I had been there on a family vacation as a child, but the other six had never been there before. All three kids have spent 5 days total at Disney World from 2013-2015 - three days at Magic Kingdom and two at Hollywood Studios. Since Oliver was only 2 1/2 the last time he was at Disney World, he doesn't remember any of the trips.  There are two Disney parks in Anaheim, but I only opted to schedule one into our trip in light of #1 the cost of tickets and #2 the distance from San Diego (90 minutes each way). We had gotten (through credit card points) free tickets for Sea World, USS Midway, Maritime Museum, San Diego Zoo, Aquatica, and San Diego Safari Park. Using a coupon we got the kids' free tickets to Legoland. We all got in free to Cabrillo because Nadia is in fourth grade, and we got in free to the Fleet Science Center and Natural History Museum because of our ASTC membership. Bottom line is that May 31 was hands down the

most expensive day of our vacation. We bought our one day passes plus paid $10 extra per person to have the Max Pass which meant that #1 we could request fast passes via my phone which saved me a lot of walking (as it was we still walked almost 11 miles that day!) and #2 we could get free downloads of the photos that Disneyland photographers took of us. I will say that there were fewer photographers there than in Orlando, but still we got some nice photos through the Max Pass. The park was rather crowded (in our opinion anyhow), but thanks to fast passes, we never waited more than about 20 minutes for any ride, even though the stand by lines (meaning non fast pass) were often more than an hour long.

Even with fast passes there wasn't time to ride everything in the park. The park was open for 17 hours that day! The first hour (7-8am) was just for those staying at a Disney resort. We arrived before 8:00, but by the time we parked the van, walked to the front gate, rented a

motorized wheelchair, and went to the bathroom, it was almost exactly 8:00. My plan was to get the kids signed up for Jedi training and get our fast passes for the 9pm Fantasmic show first thing. For some reason Paul didn't feel capable of doing either task so I went to get the Jedi training and we weren't able to get any tickets for the 9:00 Fantasmic show; we could have gotten tickets for the 10:30 show, but I knew we weren't going to be staying that late even though the park was open until midnight. We got fast passes for all of the bigger thrill rides - Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Matterhorn Bobsleds, Splash Mountain, and the Indiana Jones ride. We also got fast passes for Buzz Lightyear's ride (twice), Star Tours, Haunted Mansion, Roger Rabbit's ride, and It's a Small World. We also rode eight rides that don't use fast passes including the Tiki Room, Jungle Cruise, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio's Daring Journey, Autopia, Astro Orbitor, and Gadget's Go Coaster. Some of the rides that didn't have fast passes we

skipped due to the length of the lines such as Peter Pan, Dumbo, etc.

We saw only two "shows" - the 3:30 Pixar parade and a 20 minute presentation of Beauty and the Beast. The kids also wanted to see a 20 minute presentation of Tangled, but we didn't end up having enough time to squeeze that in. The kids were also in one show as they fought with Darth Vader and Kylo Ren. Nadia and Ian had done the Jedi training in 2015 at Hollywood Studios, but Oliver was too young to do it that year. The kids also met some of the characters. Oliver was disappointed that he didn't meet Minnie Mouse, but he did meet Mickey Mouse. All three kids met Cinderella, Snow White, Ariel, Chewbacca, Kylo Ren, and Rey. Some of them also requested meeting Darth Vader, but again we ran out of time. We had packed our lunches, but since we were in the park for 13 hours, we bought our expensive (and not that great tasting) pizza for dinner at Disneyland. 

I think all three kids had a good time, and hopefully Oliver is old enough that he will remember this visit. The kids slept in the van on our drive home and went straight to bed once we got back. Paul's parents stayed home the next two days. We didn't leave until around 11am on Thursday for our trip to Balboa Park. The zoo (which we visited on Tuesday) is also in the park, but if you only visit the zoo you don't really get a sense of all that is included in the large park, which is the largest urban park in the US. It includes seventeen museums. I considered visiting some of the other ones such as the Air and Space museum, children's museum, etc, but I ended up picking the two we could get into for free due to our ASTC membership. They have many food trucks there on Fridays, and I had planned to have us eat dinner there and then attend a free symphony concert at 7pm, but we ended up leaving around 4pm so that we could pick up Paul's parents and go to KFC and the grocery store before coming back to our place for dinner. Parking is free in Balboa Park (for the zoo,

museums, etc.), and there is even a free tram that you can ride around the park. Since we didn't have to pay for parking or the museums, we splurged and got ice cream cones. It was the first time the kids had the flavor burst kind. Paul picked raspberry, I picked caramel, and Oliver and Nadia picked cotton candy. Ian chose to have a chocolate chip cookie instead of ice cream. The cheapest day of our trip was probably yesterday because we didn't eat out at all that day. Our only expense was parking in La Jolla Cove, and thus far it was my favorite day of the trip. I loved seeing all the animals in the wild - Brandt's Comorants, pelicans, sea lions, seals, ground squirrels, etc. Some of the seals had small pups, and one LARGE male sea lion started coming over toward the people and barking and making it clear he wanted everyone to back away from the moms and babies!

First week in San Diego

On Tuesday we went to Sea World. Nadia and Ian have been to the Sea World in Orlando three times, but Oliver was only 9 months old and then 2 1/2 years old the two times he went, so he didn't remember those visits. We saw three shows - Pets Rule (which was Ian's favorite when he was a toddler), the dolphin show, and the sea lion show. In the past we always attended the "Shamu" show, but they don't do a show with the orcas any more. They have two times a day when you can come and watch them do their own thing. We spent seven hours in the park. We packed our lunches and ate dinner at Denny's after we left the park. The sky ride gave us a nice view of the bay. Ian and Nadia loved the Manta roller coaster. I had to convince Ian to give it a try, and later I convinced Paul to ride it once. Nadia and I planned to ride their new roller coaster (Electric Eel) but it was closed for technical difficulties. The sky tower was also closed that day. We have a pass that gets us into Sea World and Aquatica as many times as we want for seven days, but we would have to pay parking and it

doesn't seem worth it just so Nadia and I could ride that roller coaster. It was a bit chilly that day so we all skipped the white water rapids ride, but Paul and the kids did ride the flume. Since Ian didn't see any octopus on Monday, he was happy to see a few of them at Sea World as well as a cuttlefish, which is another of his favorite sea creatures.

Only Paul's mom rented a motorized wheelchair at Sea World on Tuesday and Disneyland on Thursday, but on Wednesday they rented two of them at the San Diego Zoo. The rest of us have done a lot of walking this week! They stayed at home on Monday, yesterday, and today. According to my phone app, we walked
3.8 miles on Sunday, 3.3 miles on Monday, 5.8 miles on Tuesday (Sea World), 6.3 miles on Wednesday (San Diego Zoo), 10.9 miles on Thursday (Disneyland), 3.2 miles on Friday (two museums in Balboa Park), and 2.8 miles today (La Jolla Cove). Three nights we walked to a swimming pool and jacuzzi that is not close to our

condo. Today the kids swam in the pool (no jacuzzi there) right behind our condo while I was cooking dinner.

The weather has been pretty - lots of sun, but it's been quite a bit cooler than in Pennsylvania, which was a shock to Paul considering we are definitely farther south. When walking around the zoo we really appreciated the milder temps, but when we're trying to swim outside we would have preferred it to be a bit warmer.

I'll write some more about our adventures at the zoo and Disneyland sometime in the next week, but I wanted to post something because I have taken oodles of pictures - probably more than I took the past five months combined. My favorite day of the vacation thus far was today when we visited the seals and sea lions at La Jolla Cove. We also saw ground squirrels and several kinds of birds. The kids had fun playing in the Pacific Ocean even though the water temperature was only 63.