Rants, Raves and Miscellaneous Thoughts

A few rants and raves about our San Diego vacation, in no particular order:

1) I highly recommend Paradise Pointe Resort & Spa. The trees and flowers were beautiful. The grounds were like a Hawaiian Paradise on the mainland.

2) The Friday before a holiday weekend seems to be a good time to go to Sea World. We had an awesome Breakfast with Shamu--the tables were right up next to the whale pool. Breakfast right next to the Sea World stars...and we had a front row parking place...what a great way to start the day.

3) The San Diego Zoo is not equipped to handle the massive crowds they had on Sunday. The zoo is beautiful, with all kinds of exotic plants and endangered species. But, it was crazy busy, which made all of us grumpy.

4) We did get to see the precious panda bears. This alone was worth the trip to the zoo. However, if the Omaha zoo had pandas and koalas and a warm-weather climate for growing exotic plants, Omaha would have the better zoo. Omaha natives are very proud of their zoo...and for good reason.

5) Books I read on vacation: Speak and Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson. Both were thought-provoking and well-written. I plan to study both in more depth later. Great characters.

6) Hubby did not wear sun screen to the beach. We all know how that ended. K enjoyed her first trip to the beach, but ingested lots of sand. A and S had a ball with their cousins. Even though it was only 70 degrees out and the ocean felt like ice water, my girls were body surfing in the ocean. I really do have mermaids for children.

7) Someone should have told me those shells we found were alive. I put them in a grocery sack, tied it shut, and forgot about the bag until we got home. Talk about a smelly suitcase! Thanks to a brief internet search, I discovered that I needed to boil them, dig out the meaty gunk and soak them in bleach. We now have a lovely souvenir.

8) Our vacation went way too fast. Note to self: next time C wants to take a "long weekend," remind him how time flew. The girls and I begged to reschedule the flight home, but C had important meetings today.

9) We used all the clothing we took, so I can't say I overpacked. However, five suitcases, two laptops, a diaper bag, a purse, a car seat and a kiddy backpack full of stuff to do is too much to lug through an airport. S pushed K in the stroller. A took a backpack and a suitcase, I took my purse and two suitcased and C carried the rest. On the way home, we hired a porter to help us.

10) We traveled with C's cousin (T) and her family. Our kids get along amazingly well. No fighting. At all. T takes fantastic pictures, so I have professional-quality pics of our vacation. Plus, she encouraged A and thinks A really has a great eye for photography. Once again, my seven year old took better pictures than I did!