Leaving San Diego

Heading home from San Diego we decided to take the Pacific Coast Highway all the way.  It definitely takes longer, but the scenery is infinitely more interesting than taking the major freeways through LA.  So we took the 5 as far as we had to and then exited to the PCH.  I loved that the exit sign didn't say any particular city that we might be headed toward, but instead just said "Beach Cities". 

We had beautiful ocean to look at nearly the entire trip.  We opened the sunroof, put the windows down, and just took it all in.  This drive was breathtaking!

We didn't stop to do any sightseeing, but we did drive through most of the major beach cities that I've been wanting to check out.  We got a really quick and dirty drive through tour.  We hit Dana Point, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, Long Beach, Redondo Beach, and Manhattan Beach.  We could have stopped and moved in to just about all of them...SO BEAUTIFUL!

We had a moment to stop and miss our niece/cousin:

And I just kept snapping pictures of everything that struck me as beautiful.

We passed a Bentley, which I tried to get a picture of, but did a terrible job at.  Everyone always remarks on how expensive California is, but people clearly have no trouble affording expensive cars here.  We've seen no shortage of "normal" expensive cars like BMWs, Porsches, and Mercedes', as well as less often sighted expensive cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis. 

I tried to get a picture of this cool truck, because it was a Rent-A-Husband business and the truck said something funny.  Sure can't remember what it said now though, because the picture didn't turn out so well.

I also got a picture of this car dealership, because it was the first time in my life I've ever seen a Ferrari dealership.  Sometimes California feels like a different country...

San Diego Day 2: On Which We Go To Legoland

Sorry for the delay in finishing up our San Diego adventure.  I got sick right after we came home, and well now here we are almost 2 weeks later.  Anyway, tons of pictures ahead!

Day 2 of our San Diego trip we woke up and headed north about 30 minutes to Carlsbad, CA to go to Legoland.  The kids had already heard of it through the grapevine at school and they were beyond excited.  Overall we had a really great time there, and seeing all of the amazing things built entirely of Legos was VERY cool, but we were glad we visited Legoland this year, before the kids aged much more because the rides were almost too small to entertain them.  They ended up having a great time, but I know Taylor would have liked to have a little more excitement in her day.

Before we even got inside the park we came across an entire Lego family.  The girls were squealing with excitement and they wanted to touch everything.  The baby in the stroller was their favorite part of the family.

They wanted their picture taken with everything!

Volvo must have some sort of partnership with the park because they were hawking Volvo's all over the place.  They even had a Volvo driving school, where the kids earned their "driver's licenses".  That was one of my favorite parts of the day.  Austyn was too small for the real driving school, and had to go to Jr. Driving School, which was basically driving a Power Wheel Lego around an oval track.  Taylor, however, had a little town to drive freely around, complete with stoplights, stop signs, Lego people crossing at the crosswalks, a hot dog vendor, and even an underground subway.  They were expected to stop at the red lights and drive on the correct side of the road and everything.  It was so cute to watch all these tiny kids trying so hard to obey traffic laws!

The girls got their picture taken with a strange man:

We rode the world's tiniest log flume, and for some reason that was the longest line we stood in the entire day.  Even that was only about a 30 minute wait, the lines were nonexistent on most rides.  The shortest line was for the Fairy Tale boat ride, "where fairy tales come to life".  Taylor said, "THIS is where fairy tales come to life?  No wonder there's no one in line."  Haha!  But in the end, we even enjoyed that ride.

There is an entire area of the park devoted to recreating famous landmarks: Las Vegas, New York City, San Francisco, Hollywood, Paris, and more.

They also have a Star Wars exhibit, which the girls didn't yet understand, but they still liked (and now we are watching the movies to fix that problem!).

There was a rocking horse ride that also had a ridiculously long wait, considering it didn't look all that exciting.  Austyn insisted she wanted to ride it though, so they did and of course had a blast.

At the end of the day we found a giant-ish slide that the girls went down over and over again.

There was a giant spider made out of Legos.  Even made of Legos, it was still creepy.

The girls found a photo opportunity at the Castle Lock-Up:

All in all, we had a really great day and I'm glad we got to experience Legoland before the girls outgrew the park completely.  We definitely recommend it to anyone with young kids.

Stay tuned for one more San Diego themed post!

San Diego Day One, Part Two

After lunch at the Broken Yolk, we headed out to Cabrillo National Monument. This is also at the end of a long peninsula at Loma Point. First we checked out the monument.

Then we walked a short way up to the lighthouse on site. We were planning to climb to the top of the lighthouse but they have the observation tower closed right now. We went up as far as we could though.

It was still neat because they had the room intact where the lighthouse worker guy would live during his off-duty hours. It was meager accommodations and it was directly under the top of the tower. And the guy owned a LOT of hairbrushes!

Next we took the 2 mile hike from the upper lookout down nearer to ocean level. I think that was probably everyone's favorite part.

It was such a beautiful hike! There was a huge downhill grade, so a crazy steep uphill grade on the trip back up. There were views of the ocean nearly the whole way and we were able to see a ton of boats on the water. We also saw what we believe to be dolphins but they were far away and hard to confirm. Don't think my picture really caught anything:

But I still think it's pretty to look at. Finally we made it to the end of the trail. Proof:

We headed out to Coronado after that. It is typically called Coronado Island, although it truly is a peninsula. We drive over the famous Coronado bridge and then parked an headed to a beach to take in the sunset.

Final stop of the day was to Phil's BBQ, the best BBQ in San Diego. We tried to head there right after sunset but the line at this famed BBQ joint was wrapped around 2 sides of the restaurant. It was crazy! This place was also featured on Man vs. Food so I'm sure they stay pretty busy. We decided to go back to the hotel for awhile and have a late dinner (8:00) to give the line time to die down.

Unfortunately, when we went back there was still a pretty good sized line. I'm sure the picture doesn't do it justice.

We were met by an employee in line, and she passed out "newbie" stickers to us since it was our first time at Phil's. This was to tell employees that we needed extra assistance inside.

Austyn is sporting her newbie sticker proudly!

The sign is hard to read but it says "wait time from this point 21 minutes 14 seconds". Humor, I think.

We finally made it inside after a 54 minute wait. Their kids menu was limited and I was worried the kids would hate their food. In the end, they loved their food and it was Dave and I who ended up disappointed. The food was just so-so and the sauce was okay, but wasn't our taste. The sides were bland. We tried the macaroni salad, the baked beans, and the cole slaw. If you can get there at an off-peak time, then try it for yourself. It must be popular for a reason. But, I wouldn't recommend waiting an hour or more to get in. You may be disappointed.

Stay tuned for San Diego, Day 2!

San Diego Day 1

We all ended up with a 3 day weekend since Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr Day so we decided to take a little weekend getaway to San Diego. Yesterday after work and school we hit the road. We hit some major (expected) traffic around Santa Monica/LA and it stayed congested for quite some time. This picture doesn't even do justice to the traffic!

We decided to stop off in Laguna Beach and have a sit down dinner so that the traffic might have time to clear out. We hit a Cheesecake Factory in THE OC (like the TV show!!), but were surprised to find out they only had valet parking. At a Cheesecake Factory. We tried a parking garage that would have been a long walk but at least had free parking. Unfortunately all 5 floors of the garage were packed full. 25 minutes later we decided to head down the road to another Cheesecake Factory that was 9 miles down the highway. We found a parking spot right out front of that one and finally had a really delicious dinner.

We highly recommend the Oreo Dream Extreme cheesecake The traffic did clear out while we were eating and an hour after dinner we were at our hotel and crashed right away.

This morning we got up early and headed out to play tourist. We started in Old Town San Diego. There are some of the original historical buildings from when San Diego was founded in the 1800's. We toured a stable, a school, the courthouse and jail, and a post office. There were also tons of restaurants and crafty little shops. We managed to get away with buying nothing but some yummy homemade candy.

After Old Town we headed to Mission Point, which is on a narrow peninsula, so surrounded by ocean on three sides. It was beautiful! We walked around the whole peninsula and then let the girls play on a playground for a few minutes while Dave and I sat on the grass and enjoyed the peacefulness of the place.

Next we headed to lunch at the Broken Yolk Cafe which we heard about on the TV show Man vs. Food. On that show, Adam Richman did the Iron Man challenge: a 12 egg loaded omelet, topped with chili and cheese with 1.5 pounds of hash browns and 2 giant homemade biscuits on the side (finished in less than an hour). We weren't quite that brave but we did have some smaller omelets that were decent. Those giant homemade biscuits were amazing though!

This is a long post so I'll split the rest of day one into another post. Stay tuned!

"My Best Weekend Ever"

As we wrapped up this past weekend, Austyn said "this was my best weekend ever!". Taylor said I was "the best mom ever!". I told her to remember that when she's a teenager and gets mad at me over every little thing :-)

We started our Saturday by heading to our favorite beach path for running/biking. I signed up for my first CA half-marathon (yay!) and I had my first "long" run of this training cycle on the schedule. Dave and I ran 3 miles while the girls biked alongside us. It's too bad the scenery was so ugly:

Just kidding...it was GORGEOUS and we felt blessed yet again.

After our run/ride we hopped in the car and headed up to the Santa Barbara Zoo. We made a quick pit stop at McDonald's for lunch, where I snapped a pic of Taylor because I just loved her shirt so much.

The SB zoo is really nice. Clean, lots of animals, nice walkways, and views of the Pacific. The gorillas and flamingos were a big hit with all of us.

We loved the lions most of all, because they were born at the Indianapolis Zoo!

Of course the kids wanted to stop at every "stick your face through this hole and get your picture taken with this wooden sign" photo opportunity.

We finished our zoo trip by letting the kids play on the giant ant hill where they had a total blast!

Last stop of the day was trying out some more of Cali's authentic Mexican food. We had a nice dinner, but the search for our new favorite Mexican place continues.