The Rest of our Southern California Trip - Beach and Zoo

After Tyler's conference ended, we were able to spend the rest of the weekend with him. We always love going to the beach, so this trip was no exception.  We went to Coronado Island again which we enjoy because you go over the huge bridge to get there. With it being June instead of September or February, we thought it would be nice summer weather this time - perfect for the beach, but it was still cold and pretty windy. I forget not everywhere is 90 degrees by June like it is in Texas! Even though the water was chilly, the girls didn't mind playing with sand toys and looking for shells.

They still went in the water a little bit too. Once they were in, they got used to it and liked running in the waves, even though they spent the majority of their time digging in the sand. I love getting pictures with Tyler and the girls by the ocean. I don't know why, I just do. This one is of Tyler and Tessa.

The water was definitely too cold for Taryn, so we entertained her by burying her in the sand. Once she was buried, I decided I could easily turn her into a mermaid, which she loved. We then spent the next half hour or so turning everyone into mermaids.

The people next to us on the beach had created this amazing rendition of a turtle. They left before we did, so we were quick to head over there and take pictures with it. Tessa was so excited because she loves turtles so much. Isn't it amazing?! 

We spent the entire day Saturday at the San Diego Zoo. Tyler was excited to do this because it was his one full day off, so this was his real vacation. Plus we all love zoos and all the animals.

Aubrey's favorite animal is the flamingo which was our first stop. We saw flamingo nests and even a flamingo egg which was awesome. 

Abby posed in front of a monkey for me which is still my favorite animal. And we of course had to get one with Tessa by her favorite animal.

These monkey face masks were a definite picture spot. I thought it was hilarious that Tessa was able to climb up and reach the tall mask. 

 Tyler wanted to join in on the fun as well, so he took his turn with Taryn.

There were so many baby animals at the zoo. We stayed and watched the baby hippo for a long time. It was really funny watching the mom push the baby along with her snout to help the baby hippo swim. We watched the baby from underneath the water swim all the way to the top and then climb out which is when I took the picture.

Monkeys and gorillas are my favorite. We saw some baby monkeys too and it was fun to watch them swing and play around. My four monkey girls had fun playing around too on the statues. 

They had these metal statues throughout the zoo. I'm only including a few pictures even though we probably stopped to take pictures at all of them. Here's one when all for girls were happy enough to take a picture together. (Although maybe not, considering Taryn's face.) I had Aubrey stop to take a selfie with me and this pretty flower. They were all over, and they were so big and colorful.

We took the sky tram to the opposite side of the zoo. This is what the girls said was their favorite part of the whole trip when we talked about it on our drive back home. We were up pretty high and the girls didn't seem to be scared at all. They liked that each tram car had a different animal on it. Ours had the Kookaburra bird. Tyler and Abby rode in the tram behind us since they wouldn't allow more than four per tram.

One of the zoo's most recent new animals was the polar bear. They had a whole new section called the Polar Bear Plunge with lots of fun picture spots.

 

They had this awesome sea lion display complete with tunnels for the kids to climb through and these lookout holes. I loved these pictures.

 

We waited for a very long time to see another one of their newer exhibits - the panda bear exhibit. It was a long line, but the girls were good and we saw some cool animals along the way. The pandas were sleeping when we got to see them, and so was Taryn who had fallen asleep in the stroller during the wait.

The San Diego zoo is the largest zoo in the United States so we did a lot of walking. There are a ton of stairs too, but luckily they also had some moving walkways. We took some pictures as we waited to be carted up to the top of a particularly high part of the zoo. One picture of the girls in front of me and one picture of Tyler and Taryn behind me.

As we neared the closing time of the zoo, we still had a couple sections of the zoo that we hadn't made it to yet. We decided to hop on one of the double decker buses to save our feet and see the last few animals like the lions and elephants. We were able to get on the top deck to be able to see the animals better, but it was pretty sunny. Taryn and I sat across from everyone else. 

Our bus drive who talked about all the animals we saw was very excited to tell us about the baby giraffe that was only a couple weeks old. I don't think they had even named it yet. Once we got off the bus, we had to walk closer to get a better look. It was so cute. It's right between the two big giraffes, directly above Tessa's head in the picture.

We finished off our day on the very last tour bus that circles the entire zoo. We were one of the last ones on the bus so we were on the bottom level for this ride, but we were happy to be in the shade. 

We had a great time at the zoo and everyone was happy seeing their favorite animals and all the other awesome things we saw and did there. It was a great way to finish off our family vacation and the perfect way to start our summer.

Our Summer Vacation Started Before School Finished

Tyler had a work conference in southern California, but he had to be there at 8am the day after the last day of school, so we took the girls out of school early the last day and drove all the way to Oceanside, CA. The girls were not looking forward to the long drive or missing some of their last day activities, but they were looking forward to the fun things we had planned once we got there. We were going to Legoland with our friends who went for the conference too and then we planned on going to a beach and the San Diego Zoo once Tyler was finished with his conference.

We made it to Oceanside without any issues, but they started as soon as we got there. Our hotel somehow had cancelled our reservation but didn't let us know so we drove in after 10pm and had no place to stay. Apparently, a couple weeks earlier, someone had used our credit card down in Brazil so they had sent us a new one after we cleared all that up, but our hotel reservations for this trip were still listed under our old card. Once that one was cancelled, they just cancelled our reservations without switching them to our new card, or calling to fix the situation with us personally. After a half hour or more of arguing, (because their hotel was fully booked), we ended up staying in a different, lower end, motel a couple blocks away. Tyler was not happy. We went back the second night to the original hotel since they did have room that night, but they said nothing about it. We thought we'd get better service or apologies or something for the mixup, but nope. Even after calling their customer service the following week, they were not very accommodating or apologetic. Oh well, we tried. The motel we did end up at that first night had a statue of a mermaid outside the lobby, so the girls liked it even though Tyler did not.

After dropping Tyler off at his conference the next morning, we drove to Legoland and met Margaret and her kids, Paul and Eleanor, there. We managed the 6 kids between the two of us and had a lot of fun. 

With Abby and Paul tall enough to be the "adult" rider, we were able to all ride the rides together. After an early ride on the Coast Cruise boat ride, we waited in the long line for the sky cruiser which we told them was one of our favorite rides. They liked it too. 

 

There were a few rides that Taryn was still too short for like the Kid Power Tower and the Driving School, so we just watched and I took pictures. 

Taryn and I rode the Sky Patrol a lot together whenever we waited for everyone else at the Driving School. 

The biggest difference about Legoland for us this time was the addition of the new Heartlake City with all the Lego Friends characters. These are the Legos tailored for girls, and my girls have a lot of their sets. They were excited to see the Lego versions of all the characters they know and to actually meet some of them in person!

They even had a show that we had to stay and watch. With 5 of the 6 kids being girls, poor Paul was forced to do what the girls wanted, but he was a good sport. All the girls loved the performance.

A new ride in Heartlake City was a carousel ride with the Lego Friends horses. While Margaret and Paul went somewhere else, I took all the other girls. They loved picking out their own horse to ride. 

Another favorite ride of everyone was the Cargo Ace plane ride. It whips you around the corners and all the kids love that. They even let Taryn ride in her own seat even though she wasn't four. We rode this one a lot while others rode big kid coasters or waited in line for the longer rides.

One of Margaret's favorite rides was the Lost Kingdom Adventure with the laser guns. We sent the four older girls off on their own. Margaret paid to keep all the pictures that were taken from the park, so we have some good digital pictures from some of the rides. You can definitely tell the quality difference between the two.

Margaret loved this ride so much that we rode it both days that we were at Legoland. 

The Aquazone Wave Racer broke down when we were at Legoland last time, so the girls were so excited to finally get a chance to ride it. I rode with Aubrey and found out very quickly that with every turn, the water rushes into the car and gets your feet very wet. The people watching from the side like to make the water erupt so you get wet that way too.

Abby took a ton of pictures at the Stars Wars Miniland, but I'm only including these two. She remembered Uncle Scott giving us a hard time for not even walking through that section the first time we went to Legoland. He's very into Stars Wars, but our family of all girls? Not so much. 

We walked through the aquarium at the end of our first day and met the Dads outside afterwards. 

On the second day at Legoland, Aubrey got her turn to ride her favorite roller coaster ride, The Dragon. I love finally getting to have some pictures from the middle of a ride. And I love how you get to see how much Aubrey loves roller coasters. She's only 6 and she already puts her hands in the air! Here's Abby who rode near Margaret and Paul.

We rode the Safari Trek and the Fairy Tale Brook, another of our favorites, on the second day. 

The Fairy Tale Brook was closed the first day for maintenance so we were happy to see that it was open our second day. The girls had told Paul and Eleanor all about the Fairy Tale ride since we thought we were going to miss it, so they were all super excited when we actually got to ride it. Abby's selfie of our boat riders turned out so cute! 

We found a few photo spots to take pictures. The kids really liked this shark mouth one. It was a little wet the second day for the Dune Raiders ride, so while the older kids were on the big Technic roller coaster, I stayed with the little kids who got to go down some twisty slides. 

The Lego Technic coaster that the older kids went on was their favorite. I took a motion picture as they came down the first big hill and this was the best shot that showed all four of them. They also got a picture from the ride even though you can't see Paul and Aubrey in the back very well. Aubrey and I also rode this one together and the picture of us in the front was awesome, but we didn't get that one included in our package. I was super bummed, but at least we have proof that Aubrey rode this ride too. It may rival the Dragon as her new favorite ride ever. 

We spent half of the second day at the water parks. This was also new for us since our other trips to Legoland were in December and February. We rode the big splash boat where everyone gets wet but Tessa refused to ride because of the big drop. We also had to convince her to try one of the big raft tube rides. She cried the whole time we were in line and a worker even asked if she was going to be all right. I wasn't forcing her. I kept telling her she could go back down, but she didn't want to leave the line alone either. It was one of those big rafts for like 6 people but watching it go down the tube, she was worried that it would tip over. Once I convinced her it wouldn't and having her hold on to me tightly as we rode down, she decided it wasn't so bad and she liked it a lot. I didn't get any pictures at the water park, but there a few taken of us by their photographers while we went around the lazy river. 

At one point, we had gone around the lazy river multiple times and we lost Eleanor when everyone else had gotten out. Margaret and I were a little freaked out and we had a lot of workers looking for her to make sure she wasn't in trouble when she finally floated around one more time. She had just gone around an extra time and none of the kids had seen her. Luckily she was ok, but we were all freaked out enough that that was pretty much how we ended our water park trip. We headed back into the Legoland park to finish out the day. The kids wanted to watch a 4D movie, so we got some popcorn and ended our trip with a movie. It was a different one than the one we watched on our last trip, so my girls enjoyed it too.

We did end up seeing Margaret, Paul, and Eleanor again later that weekend after the dads finished their conference, but only for a minute before they started their trip back home. We had so much fun with them and really enjoyed those two days while our husbands were gone. We both knew we couldn't have done Legoland with our kids by ourselves, so it was great that we were able to do it together. We stayed the rest of the weekend so Tyler could enjoy some of the vacation as well, so those days will be included in their own posts.