Take me back

I've been away for awhile, actually enjoying the sun in San Diego. A person can only take so much snow, ice, and frigid temperatures. This has been one harsh winter. We were all so happy to fly to CA and escape this winter wonderland that we even forgave SD for giving us one rainy day. That's okay, we educated ourselves with a little museum visit indoors and enjoyed the guilt-free restaurant eating that only comes on those vacation Sundays.

When you've been away from the coast for a long time and you get to visit again, you just want to stay awhile, close your eyes, and let the sand tickle your toes for a bit. (And try not to wish that you didn't live in a land-locked state. This is hard to do when every other minute your kids are asking if you can move to San Diego.)

This is what it looks like when you've been away for awhile:

You even remember the magic glow from the setting sun and what it can do to a sweet face.

We participated in the other obligatory kid entertainment activities: A visit to Sea World (Matt and I liked this), Legoland (all of the worst parts of Disneyland, i.e., the rides that don't go over 2 mph, concentrated exclusively in one lively themepark, uugh - Jake loved it), SD's Wild Animal Park (really I think people go there on the off chance that the lions will escape and hunt down the safari caravan of gawking tourists - I'll admit I was looking for a hole in the enclosure).

Then we got lucky and stumbled onto a beach where the sea lions are having babies this time of year. We all got to go down and hang around the sides of this little grotto where they beach themselves - and get chastised by a well-meaning activist who had appointed herself in charge of making sure we all knew she was "in charge" so she could remind us that we just might do something wrong by letting our eyesight rest momentarily on the sea lion mothers. She informed us that a baby sea lion had died earlier that day and that they were trying to prevent any other deaths. Lest I be labeled as one who is rooting for death to all baby sea lions, this sounded like a very unfortunate event. But, wow, I think she just wanted it to be the actual fault of one of us standing there and couldn't chill out enough to see that nobody was even venturing away from the rock edge toward the little group of sea lion mommies. I hope the do-gooder survives the stress of the sea lion birthing season. We wish her well.

On the last day we went on a whale watching excursion - which didn't find any whales, but did manage to find some cute dolphins who swam along with us for about 30 seconds. We tried to make those seconds last since we were on the boat for a total of about 3 1/2 hours. But hey, we have rain check tickets in case we want to come back. Hmmm.

Right before getting heading to the airport we toured the USS Midway which has been turned into a museum/tour. All of us liked this one too. It's so big we were there for almost two hours.

And because we could, we had dinner at In & Out Burger afterwards. I admit that they get an "A" for simple ingredients and a straightforward menu, and I liked the chocolate milkshake we got, but if I'm going to stock up on unwanted calories by eating a huge cheeseburger, there are other places I'd rather go. So, this is just a fun tradition, but I will say their fries are sick.