San Diego

This last week we went down to San Diego for a mini-vacation. Chris had a doctor's appt at Balboa Naval Hospital, so we decided to make a weekend out of it. Well, actually, a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, but you get the point...

So anyway, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Sea World, courtesy of Hotwire. There was a nice little 50's style diner attached to the hotel, and on Thursday morning while Chris was at his doctor's appointment, I took the boys to breakfast. As you can imagine, going out to eat with both boys by myself is a little difficult, but they behaved for the most part. We had one little incident, but it wasn't really Aiden's fault. I mean, he's three, it's not his fault he can't pronounce all of his words correctly....You're probably smiling by this point, thinking he must have said something embarrassing by accident. You have no idea.

Aiden has trouble with "fff" sounds sometimes. They occasionally come out as "h"s, such as in "horse". Our waitress came by and had a button on her uniform with a number 4 on it. I don't know what it was for. Aiden caught sight of it and at the top of his lungs yells out, "Mom! That's a whore?" pointing at our waitress. I froze in utter mortification. My three year-old had just called this sweet girl a whore in front of everyone. She looked at me with a shocked expression. I cleared my throat and said, "Umm...he means "four"..." and pointed to her button. She quickly realized he wasn't actually calling her a whore and laughed about it. I was very relieved that she wasn't offended, but seriously, we never went back to that restaurant.

On Thursday afternoon we went to the beach at Belmont Park. It wasn't as warm as we were hoping, but we got to go on a nice walk and have some ice cream on the beach. Jack enjoyed his first experience with sand, he even preferred to eat that over the ice cream.

On Friday we went to Sea World, and the boys had a blast! Aiden loved the dolphins, Jack liked the polar bears, and we got to see the Shamu show. Aiden and Daddy went right up front and got soaked, much to Aiden's delight. It was a really fun day, and if you've never been to Sea World, I highly recommend it. If you are Active Duty military, you and three of your dependents can get in free once a year, so we took advantage of that!! They were really supportive of the military, and had signs up everywhere thanking "our Heroes", and at the Shamu show they had all military members (past and present) and their families stand up, and the whole stadium clapped and cheered. It makes me a little teary just to write about it.

They have a section at Sea World called Coco Loco, which is basically a bunch of carnival games. Chris took Aiden to try their hand at it, while Jack and I played in the baby "block pit" for awhile. Jack just needed to stretch his legs after several hours in the stroller. After a bit I got Jack out of the play area and was walking back to the stroller when I saw someone walking toward me with a GIGANTIC stuffed Elmo. Since I absolutely can't stand Elmo and think he's the most annoying thing EVER, I thought it was pretty hideous. Then I realized that the guy holding it was Chris. Oh...My...Gosh.

"Ummm....what the HECK is that, and why do you have it?"

"We won the ring toss, can you believe that?? We actually WON!!"

"Oh boy, I'm thrilled...." shaking my head....

Aiden was beside himself with absolute joy, jumping up and down and babbling about his "Elmo Giant". The thing literally is giant. It's about 4.5 feet tall, and totally huge. You know those big prizes that are always hanging up and that nobody ever wins? This is one of those. So we had to drive home with "Elmo Giant" in the back seat. Fun, fun.

On Saturday we left San Diego and drove up to Huntington Beach, where we had lunch and spent the afternoon on the pier with my really good friend Alethia. Aiden was very excited to see his "Auntie Letha", whom he remembers for her awesome Christmas tree. We had a really good time and got home about 8 o'clock Saturday night.

I posted pictures on my Facebook, you can see them by clicking here, even if you don't have a Facebook account. And if you don't have Facebook, WHY NOT?? :-)