Thanksgiving in San Diego

We had the wonderful opportunity to visit San Diego for the whole week of Thanksgiving this year. My mom had the wonderful idea of renting a beach house as our Christmas gift. I loved this idea considering my kids have enough "stuff" and they really don't need a lot for Christmas. I figure spending quality time with the family is better than more "stuff" any day.

It was so nice being right by the beach. We could go out for a walk, play in the sand, or go on a sea shell hunt at any time we wanted. In fact it was so hard to pry the kids away from the sand once they started digging with their shovels. We were lucky to get them inside long enough to eat Thanksgiving dinner with us.

We made a lot of sand angels which would leave lots and lots of sand everywhere that I'm surprisingly still finding in the laundry.

Not to mention sand in their ears. I don't know how they managed to get so much sand in their ears. Yuck!

We had passes for Sea World, Wild Animal Park and The San Diego Zoo. We took full advantage of being able to visit these parks whenever, and as much as we wanted that week. We even spent two full days at Sea World, and one full day each at the other parks. The picture above is at the Wild Animal Park. They were a few wild animals themselves. :)

It really was fun to ride in the bus/train (I'm not sure what they call it) through the wild animal park. We were able to see a few new baby giraffes and learn some fun facts about the animals there.

I think all of us really enjoyed feeding the birds nectar at the Wild Animal Park. The birds would just hop right on your arm for a treat.

Avery was able to get two at a time.

Aliza was thrilled considering she had just purchased a bird stuffed animal from the gift store. I love this picture because you can see the excitement on her face.

Like I mentioned before we did spend two full days at Sea World. They were begging to go back right after we left the first day, so we went back for more. Avery and Aliza LOVED the tram ride that took you over the ocean. We did that two times too.

In Sea World they do have a fun section with a Sesame Street theme. It was full of rides and fun activities for young kids. Aliza was in heaven.

Abbie and Avery claimed that they were too big for Sesame Street, but they seemed to be having a great time too. All of the rides seemed to be suited for all ages.

Abbie's favorite activity of the whole trip was feeding the sea lions. She used her own money to buy fish for them to eat (3 times), and to my surprise she didn't even mind handling the dead yucky fish (Eeeww). It was fun to see all the sea lions begging for food. We just had to watch out for the swooping seagulls overhead who were very aggressive. Micah and I would have to be on lookout whenever she brought out a fish to feed them.

Abbie was always so torn trying to figure out which one to feed. They had their begging down pretty well.

The girls loved the shows which we did see a few of them twice too. It really is amazing what they can do with these animals. Both days that we were there it never seemed overly crowded which was nice. We were always able to get in to see the shows, and never waited in line for anything.

Look at all those people.....

Touching the star fish and sting ray's is always fun.

Aliza needed a little boost to touch the sting ray's.

They thought we had food and would come almost out of the water which gave us a good look at them.

Our last day in California we did attempt the Zoo. Unfortunately everyone else in California was there that day too. It was REALLY busy, and a bit cold that day so I didn't get many pictures. We did wait in line 30 minutes to see a new panda bear cub which was really cute. The mom panda and the baby were playing together which was fun to watch. The mother actually chased the baby up the tree and shook the baby out of the tree. As the crowd gasped the zookeeper informed everyone that it was normal for them to do this, and the baby was fine. Interesting way to toughen up your baby I suppose. We had a fantastic trip! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Chidester!!!