SoCal Trip Part I - The Beach

We have been wanting to go back and visit San Diego since the last time we went.  Over Christmas break, we decided that going this February would be fun.  We figured it was the last time we could get away with taking our kids out of school for a week, and February is usually lots of blue skies in SD, and we were looking to escape this gloomy winter we had been having.  We stayed at Hotel Mitchell again - that is our great friends the Mitchells offered to let us stay at their home.  That was half the fun.  Staying with the Mitchells feels like you are staying with family.  Harrison and Noah picked up playing with John and Will like they didn't skip a beat from the last time they saw them almost 4 years ago.  It was great fun to watch.

We flew in late on Saturday night.  Our flights were pretty uneventful, we did have a slight delay in Salt Lake, which allowed for enough time to grab some Cafe Rio at the airport.  Yum.  We randomly ran into the Findlays, some old friends from San Diego that now live in Salt Lake, as they were returning from a trip to Guatemala. Random and so fun. We arrived in San Diego just about an hour late, and we were renting a van, so I kept the kids entertained at the airport (i.e. constantly nagged them to stop jumping off the concrete structures and do some of their make up school work, while I pushed a very tired toddler in a jogging stroller up and down the passenger pick up area, in hopes he would fall asleep) while Sam picked it up.  By the time we made it to the Mitchells it was past 10 o'clock.  They were gone at ski weekend, scheduled to get home about the same time we were arriving.  There was a bit of a snafu with Ruth's perfect planning, involving keys and mailboxes, and lots of confusion, loud knocking, and we all ended up getting to bed just a bit later than had been expected.  But it's little things like that that make life memorable.

On Sunday we enjoyed relaxing with the Mitchells at home, and attending church with them.  It was a lots of fun to see some familiar faces, and interesting to see how different the ward had become.  Monday, Sam was meeting with collaborators at UCSD, and so I spent the morning with Ruth.  I went running with her in the morning, and it made me wish I still lived near by - what a great life to be able to spend an hour with Ruth several mornings a week!  Colleen, I envy you!  In the afternoon, we headed to La Jolla Cove with the kids.  Levi loves seals, so we thought it would be fun to go see some down at the Children's Pool.  There were tons out, and even some on a nearby beach.  It was the same beach Sam and I had spent some time on almost exactly 12 years earlier on on honeymoon.

This is Sam on our honeymoon at the same beach we took the kids to.

  Good memories.  We had to watch Levi pretty close - I'm pretty sure he would have tried to pet the seals if we weren't holding him back.  It felt so great to feel warm outside - such a contrast to the snow we had been dealing with just a couple weeks earlier in Washington.