San Diego

We took a long weekend to San Diego together last month. Travis had a conference and a hotel paid for so the kids and I decided to tag along. The only downside to the trip was that Travis had to go to a conference 3 out of the 4 days that we were there so the kids and I ventured out on our own a little. We first went to Old Town San Diego where they have the Mormon Battalion Historical site. If you ever go to San Diego, you must go here. The church has done an amazing job to make the building look as historically correct as possible. It was amazing and as a designer is a project I would have loved to take part in. 

Sister missionaries dressed in full 1800's clothing greeted us at the door and invited us on a tour. I have never experienced a tour like this one. There were picture frames with what looked like still images but all the sudden it was like we were in Harry Potter and all the pictures were talking and telling us the story. It was the coolest thing. They must have had super HD screens behind each frame because it looked real life. This picture doesn't do it justice and it was also taken when some of the characters were walking out of their frames.

Passion got to dress up as a Battalion soldier. Cutest soldier I've ever seen!

The Window to the cabin room also had a screen behind it.

Here is what Wisdom did through the whole tour. Poor kid wasn't feeling the best and was majorly lacking sleep!

At the Historical site they also took one of those cool old fashion pictures (for free) and let the kids pan for gold and keep the pieces they found. This is the kids at the top of a lookout tower attached to the building. It overlooks Old Town.

I loved learning so many details about the early saints and how the sacrifice they made to send men and women to be part of the Battalion helped and blessed the early church. Such an awesome experience.
Then we headed to the rest of Old Town to buy souvenirs and look around.

San Diego was originally founded by the Mexican people so a lot of Old Town was Mexican restaurants and shops. These dancers were amazing and so fun to watch.

While Travis was at his conference we also spent a lot of time swimming! Here is my daredevil son jumping in all on his own. Thank goodness for his Puddle Jumper, I'd never be able to keep up with him!

This is the balcony off our hotel room. The hotel sat right on a peninsula that stuck out into the bay. We lost a pacifier and who knows what else off this balcony.

Goofy faces!

Finally Travis' conference ended and we all headed to the beach! We first went to Mission Bay then the next morning we went to the actual ocean. Both were beautiful!

Wisdom super excited about all the sand!

Chasing Seagulls . . . he did this a lot!

Building Sand Castles

More Chasing

Getting a little deeper in the water than they were supposed to!

This is after Wisdom took a dip in the water not realizing he would get wet. He doesn't like wearing wet clothes so now he's down to a pull-up!

Mission Beach at 7 am

Pictures never do it justice but the waves were huge! Way bigger than I've ever seen before. And there were surfers out so we sat and watched them for a while. Passion braved the water . . . crazy girl!

Kindly, the little mermaid

The last thing we did before we headed back to Arizona was go to the San Diego temple. It was beautiful!

Wisdom is sleeping again! Tired kid!

Cool tree on the temple grounds

This gives some perspective on how huge this temple is. And most of the exterior is painted concrete with little white rocks pushed into it but you wouldn't know it without getting close.

One of the weirdest things about the trip was when people would ask where we were from (and I swear I got asked it about 10 times a day), I always hesitated after Idaho popped into my head and instead Arizona came out of my mouth. SO weird!
Still to come our trip to Idaho . . . .