Sunny San Diego

I know I haven't posted for a long time and there are many things that I SHOULD be writing about, but instead I am on vacation, and I promised my family that I would write every night so that they could take a peek at what I have been doing down here.
It all started with -23 degree weather in Calgary this morning. . . . . it made it really easy to board the plane and fly down to Sunny San Diego!  Seriously, it was about 24 degrees down here and BEAUTIFUL!!!
We landed around noon and got to our hotel at 1.  It is a beautiful hotel and after we got settled, my Great-Aunt Jolene picked my Mom, Kristin and I up and spent the day taking us to 3 of the places that we wanted to see the most!
First we became honorary members of the Mormon Battalion, learned about its history, panned for gold and pretty much introduced Kristin to every sister missionary we could see because she will be joining them in March.
The next stop was to the Mormon temple where we had so much fun hearing stories about how it was built from my Aunt Jolene and taking pictures of what I consider one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen!
Our last stop (before dinner) was La Jolla Cove where we gawked at the seals, gathered seashells for my babies, put our feet in the ocean and watched the sun set.  I have never seen the sun set so quickly and it was amazing to see that happen tonight.
We finished off the evening with some dinner at a fabulous seafood mexican restaurant and are now just getting ready to try and sleep before we embark on our cruise tomorrow!!!
So, we are here, we are safe, and we are excited to board the MS OOSTERDAM and cruise down the Mexican Riviera.
I wish you all the best in the freezing cold up north!  I will be thinking of you tomorrow as I suntan on the ship with a virgin pina colada in my hand whilst I laze by the pool!
Until tomorrow!!!

A few pics from San Diego (the rest are on facebook)

We saw so many fun things at the zoo! Even though we were only there for about 1 1/2 hours!
We played at the park until it was time to go to the family reunion!
Dustin was smitten with my cousin's cute daughter Adri!
Anne LOVED my other cousin Tiffany!
The only family picture we were able to take was at Sea World

Waiting for our harbour cruise!
Dustin's Disneyland!
This was the gorgeous organ pavillion in Balboa Park!
This snowcone was HUGE!! 2 of them were more than enough to satisfy my family!
In Mexico on Wednesday. We got a lot of loot from there!

Oh darn it! I guess I chose the blurry one! Anyways this was at the Corvette Diner on our first day in San Diego!
There was a balloon guy who made the most incredible balloon characters. Caroline got Ariel, Anne got a monkey climbing a banana tree, Abby got a penguin, and Dustin got an orange Bugs Bunny.
These are my wild animals at the Wild Animal park on day 2
The girlies begged me to get their faces painted and so I finally relented. Oh and my camera died here too, so the other girls' faces and all of Legoland are all on our video camera (it is a hard drive camera) and so I will post those after I download them.
Having fun at Knotts Soak City (on Monday).

Home Sweet Home

I know I just wrote about yesterday, but I feel as though I need to finish off my traveling posts by writing about our experience flying home. We got up at the early hour of 4:30 am and got the kiddies dressed, got checked out of our hotel and returned our rental car. Then we got to the airport and things started to change. When we arrived we were told that our flight had been canceled due to some mechanical problems. That made me very nervous because Otto has his Professional Engineering exam tomorrow and I have 5 kids and I wasn't to eager to be stuck at an airport all day. When I got up to the girl at the ticket kiosk she said that she had some good news and some bad news and which one did I want to hear first. I said bring on the bad news. She then reinformed me that my flight had indeed been canceled, but that they had reserved us seats on a flight out of San Diego to LA (we originally were going to fly through Denver) and then switch to Air Canada and fly to Calgary. The plain would take off at the same time and get us into Calgary at the same time, but it was a commuter plane and so we had to take all of our luggage and enter at a different terminal (which you could only get to by bus). Heck, if that was the worst news that I heard all day I was going to be happy. So we got to the commuter terminal and hopped onto a tiny airplane (we got to load the airplane from the tarmack which was a first for me) and flew to LA. Once in L.A. we fed the kiddies breakfast and had a little bathroom break and while I was doing that Otto heard our name get called by the gate people. So when I came back they were frantically trying to fix something with the tickets that the other girl had messed up and I was getting nervous because they had announced the final boarding call, and they finally let us board the plane. Can I just say what a difference it was to fly on an Air Canada plane after being on United???? The plane was bigger so there was lots of leg room and the seats had the little TV's on the backs of them with movies, games, tv shows, and mp3's. And, because the flight wasn't full, I got to take Lee onto the plane in his carseat and so he just laid in his carseat and slept for the entire flight.
Once we got home, we breezed through customs, our baggage appeared to land on our baggage cart right before our eyes, and we walked right on out to our van which was waiting for us in our primo parking spot. It was wonderful and almost surreal that the flights went that smoothly considering the rocky start that we had had.
So now our trip to San Diego is nothing more than a mere memory. It was really fun and really exciting, and I totally want to live there, except that I kind of missed my house and I definatly missed being near my sister when she had her sweet little baby. I missed attending my ward and seeing my friends and I so excited to not have to share my bedroom with 5 little kids any more!!! YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!!
So for now all I have to say (in the words of Jenna who was quoting this all weekend). . . . Stay Classy San Diego!

Yesterday

Yesterday I didn't have time to write down what happened, so I wanted to make sure that I did it today.
Yesterday was our last full day in San Diego. I find that the last day is always a bit sad because you know that you are leaving the next day and so you keep getting reminded about that. Well, even though I had the fact that I was leaving the next day hanging over my head the entire day I still managed to have fun. . . . maybe that was because we spent the day at Sea World.
Yep, Sea World. What a great way to end a vacation. It's a little hard on the pocketbook, but it is still a really fun place to be. We took the kiddies there and watched pretty much all of the shows from Shamu to the Dolphin show and the Sea Lions to the Cirque de la Mer show. The only one we didn't attend was the pet show because I wasn't really interested in it. We didn't go on any rides (which made things a lot more pleasant), and the sky was a bit overcast for most of the day so that made the day really nice.
The only thing that I really wish was different and that has bugged me constantly since we were there was the fact that Caroline's shyness kept her from being a part of the dolphin show. All day she wanted to go to the dolphin show and she kept on asking to go see it constantly. So we went to go to the show and the stadium was full, so we convinced her that as soon as the show was over that we would go and get seats for the next show (they play every hour). We did that and while we were sitting there, one of the trainers came over and started to talk to Caroline (to see if she would want to be in the show). Well, Caroline was sooooo shy and turned her head and wouldn't talk to him, so he chose another little girl to be in the show instead. I was so frustrated because she would have been able to go and feed the dolphins and pet them and have her picture taken with them and play with them, but because she was too shy she missed out on that FANTASTIC opportunity!!! Aaaaarrrrgggg. . . . .I am still so frustrated just thinking about it!!
Well after Sea World the plan was to go to my Great Aunt Jolene's house for a potluck BBQ. We thought it might be a good idea to feed the kiddies first so that they weren't so ravenously hungry by the time we got there. So, we took them for one last stop at In N Out burger for some milkshakes (yum!!) and then bought stuff for a caesar salad and headed over to Aunt Jolene's. It was really fun to spend so much time with my cousins, first cousins once removed, second cousins, etc. My girlies really loved playing with my cousin Tiffany and Dustin LOVED Adri (my cousin Jackie's daughter).
We didn't get back to the hotel until 11 pm and then Otto and I had to pack everything up and load the car because we had to get up at 4:30 am in order to catch our 7:30 flight.
It was a really fun last day. I am really glad that we saved Sea World until the last day. It was a good thing to end with.

I think I got sand in . . . my. . . crevaces!

Today was our full day of family reunion fun! We actually did have a really fun day and we pretty much spent the entire day on the beach playing with our cousins. Because we have Lee, I didn't get to swim much, but I had a lot of fun playing in the sand with Dustin, suntanning with my sisters, splashing in the water with Caroline, body surfing with Abby and with Anne I had fun. . . ummmm. . . watching her play with our cousin Tiffany. Anne thinks that there is nothing more fun than playing with friends, so she had a blast spending the entire day with Tiffany.
It was really fun to watch my little Abby in the water because she is so much like I was as a child. She is like a fish!! Her and Otto borrowed my Uncle Darren's boogie boards and boogie boarded for awhile. They also body surfed for a long time. But I would have to say that the coolest thing that happened today was that Abby caught some live clams. It was so cool to watch the clams try to move around in the bucket. I have never seen clams move before and I really enjoyed it.
After a day on the beach, we all got together for a family BBQ complete with chicken and ribs! It was soooooo yummy! The beach gets a little chilly in the evening, so we were all wearing sweaters, but it was still fun watching the kiddies play Frisbee, and visiting with my cousins and my sisters.
Each family grouping was given the task of coming up with a song sung to the tune of a specific Disney song. Our Disney song was called "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". I ended up making up the song and it was really fun. . . it went a little bit like this:
We are super and fantastic but we are obnoxious,
Others say the sound of us just simply makes them nauseous,
But we know that secretly you all want to be like us,
Yes we are named Lee and we really are obnoxious,

um be little be um be lie (2 times)

When I was growing up you see there's a secret that I had,
My friends thought I was witty but my teacher called me bad
When my friends would sit down on my whoopee cushion pad
Even though they hadn't farted we all said they had.

Chorus,

um be little be um be lie (2 times)

Now we are all here spending time with family
Mike is spending money, Murray's golfing from a tee
Gary's dancing like an Irishman, Darren bikes off speedily
Aren't you glad you spent this time with our cool family?

Chorus (Gary does his jig)

So it was a pretty fun day, and my kids and I are now quite tanned. We are going to Sea World tomorrow for our last day and then it's off to the airport early in the morning on Sunday to go home. We will be home before we know it!

Fun Family Fun

Okay, so I have to start this post out by telling you what I found out today. It's gay pride week here in San Diego. . . totally explains my experience yesterday!!! The other thing I wanted to start off by saying is directed at my cousins. . . I totally miss you guys and I wish that you could all be down here!! Things just aren't the same without talking about Grandma Buns, having Amber direct us in a lip-sync, and making fun of Michelle only eating roast beef and potatoes at dinner. I am, however, excited to be around all of the family that is down here.
This morning we took our kids and my dad and sisters and my Uncle Garry and Aunt Judi out with us to go try this restaurant downtown. It was kind of fun to have breakfast with such a large brood of Lees! Then Otto and I spent an hour searching for a Walmart (not the most fun that I have had on my trip) because I needed to get some groceries and Otto insisted that it be at Walmart (I have mentioned that it is the most magical place on earth for Otto right?). After Walmart we met our cousins at the church. It was great! It was fun to see some of my relatives that I haven't seen in a long time. The reunion that we are at right now (the reason that we actually planned our trip to San Diego) is the Wright Family Reunion. Basically it is for all of the descendants of George and Laura Wright. They had 4 kids Ron, Carol (my grandma), Jolene and Vestal. Uncle Ron had 14 kids, my grandma had 5 kids, Aunt Jolene had 3 kids and I believe that Vestal had 6 or 7, I can't really remember. Out of those kids the people that are here are Derek and his wife and kids from Uncle Ron's family. There are my 3 uncles (Mike, Darren and Garry) and my dad and most of Mike and Darren's kids (with the exception of missionaries and Ryan and his wife) and my Uncle Garry's kids are . . . *sniff, sniff* missing in action also. My Uncle Doug's family isn't here also, and I am totally missing their sense of humor. It just isn't the same without the Ausmus' to liven the place up. From my Aunt Jolene's family her two daughters are here with their spouses and some of their kids, and her son's children are also here. And from Vestel's family I know that his oldest daughter Jennifer is here with her kids and I believe he may even have his youngest son here too, but I could be mistaken (it's rare but it happens.).
So, there are people to play with and things to catch up on, and we did get a head's start this evening when we all gathered at Mission Bay and had a Mexican Fiesta dinner complete with a pinata for dessert. The kiddies LOVED playing on the beach, but mostly they LOVED playing with my cousin Tiffany and my other cousin's daughter Adri. It was actually so cute to watch Dustin and Adri play together. I actually think that Dustin is a bit smitten with Adri and I don't think that she minded being mischievous with Dustin either. . . . I will have to keep an eye on that little guy. . . he may grow up to cause some problems being a ladies man and all! Abby also loved Adri and acted as though Adri was her own little girl. She played with her on the slides and in the sand and directed her as to where she could and couldn't go. It was so fun to watch how Abby interacted with Adri because that was how I was with little kids when I was her age.
Anne and Caroline think that Tiffany is the most wonderful, coolest and exciting person they have ever met. Ever since they saw each other at the lunch this afternoon they have wanted to do everything together. I was worried about how they would react to the fact that they wouldn't be able to sleep with Tiffany tonight, and luckily they were too distracted by the pinata that they didn't seem to notice.
Well, now that we are starting our family reunion we are planning on spending some time getting to know our cousins better. I had so much fun at the Wright family reunions when I was growing up that I was excited to participate in this one. Tomorrow will be a day spent at the beach and playing together and ending off the evening with a fire on the beach. . . I look forward to it!

Somewhere over the rainbow. . .

Today was a day spent with some very interesting characters. . . I'm not talking about Mickey and Minnie, these characters were . . . almost as entertaining. . . but not ones that I would especially want my children to be around all of the time. Let me explain.
Today was Tijuana day. The girlies were so excited to finally be going to Mexico again because they had so much fun going to Mexico on our family cruise a year and a half ago. Well, I have been to Tijuana before and I didn't especially want my girlies to have to see all of the poverty that was there so Otto and I decided that our best bet would be to take a tour bus to Tijuana and then the tour bus would drop us off in a more clean part of Tijuana and it would be safer for the girlies. I am glad that we did things that way. (Plus the cost of it was included in those passes I bought so yay. . . bonus!!) It is always an interesting experience going into a mexican market with my little girls. People always want to stare at them and touch their heads and so it is nice to have Otto around to act as a sort of body guard for the kids. Today we had a lot of fun buying some beautifully hand embroidered dresses for the girlies and a shirt for Dustin. We also had fun buying my Mexican Vanilla (the best!!) and some nativities for me (I actually found some that I had NEVER seen before so I was really excited!!). And, of course, the kiddies had to buy some guitars (totally fake) and some little souvenirs for themselves. Just as I was heading onto a bus, the cutest little Mexican boy came up to me with an arm full of bracelets and asked me to buy one for $1. I KNOW that they are not even worth close to that, but I did have 3 little girls and they DO love bracelets. . . and he was SOOOOOO adorable (which I am sure his parents use to their full advantage), so I bought 3 of them. It made everyone happy, and I felt good about it. Mexicans are hilarious. . . we walked all the way down the block and back up and we had the Mexicans shouting the most hilarious things to us. They would tell us that there was free parking in their store (for our stroller) and that there was a special discount for items seen the second time around. We even resisted the urge to sit atop of an authentic "Mexican Zebra" and get our pictures taken. . . .I believe the people in San Diego call these "Zebras" ZONKIES because all they are are donkeys painted black and white. . . sooooooo hilarious!
After Tijuana we went to the zoo. I have to be honest. I am not a huge zoo fanatic. I get bored really easily with zoos and I don't really see the point of staring at animals behind bars. The exception is, of course elephants, giraffes, monkeys and a lion or two. . . .okay and you can throw in a hippo and a rhino and I won't complain. However, I don't have the attention span or the interest in knowing all sorts of facts about each and every animal and their habitat and their surroundings. I am sorry to all of you zoo fanatics out there. I am glad that we have people like you because I am sure that we could all do more to help out the animals. So why did we go to the zoo you ask? Well, because I have kids, and they like animals and I like my kids. . . . good enough reason for ya? However, we did the Megan/condensed version of the zoo and walked in (after showing our passes), went to the children's section and pet the animals, went on the 35 minute tour and left. A perfect day at the zoo, if you ask me!
After the zoo, the kiddies were quite cranky and very hungry. So, I took them to the closest fast food place I could find. It was a Jack in the Box on University Avenue. Now I don't know how familiar any of you are with San Diego, but apparently I was in a more . . . ummm. . . flamboyant part of San Diego. I didn't notice this before I went into the restaurant. You see, I was standing in line to order my meal and directly in front of me was this cute little blond girl. I didn't pay much attention to her until I heard her speak, because out of this little blond girl's mouth came this Latino man's voice. . . turns out . . . .well, I'll let you figure this one out. So, I turned around to see if Otto noticed and he was nowhere to be found, however I did get a great front row seat to these two men totally groping each other in line. Then, while I was waiting for Otto to get his drink, I was sitting with my kiddies next to this guy who was yelling and swearing and being soooo loud right beside my kids. I was so upset that he didn't have the courtesy to curb his language with my children present. And then I was just grateful that I wasn't sitting next to the super skinny guy who was flying higher than a kite. I felt so sick to my stomach that my kids were at this restaurant, and I then I looked at the toys that came with my kids' meals. . . yep, they were tattoos. OF COURSE THEY WERE!!! Normally, I don't have a problem with kid's temporary tattoos, but it just seemed so appropriate that they were being handed out at this particular restaurant at this particular time. I told Otto that they should have some sort of signs warning us about this or something, and then when I walked outside I saw the signs. . . big, bright, colorful rainbow flags all over the place. . . why I didn't notice this before . . . maybe because the kids were crying and fighting and I was hungry, but that will never happen again. I have a few friends who are gay and they never acted like this, but there must be something about this part of town that attracts some pretty colorful characters.
Oh and speaking of colorful characters. . . when we got back to our hotel we found my sisters and my dad had arrived. The kids were so excited to see them and after chatting with Jenna and Kristin for a bit we all went swimming. I didn't realize how much I missed my family until I saw them. I, of course, immediately asked if Amanda had had her baby yet, and she hadn't and so now there are 4 of us down here anxiously awaiting the arrival of her little one.
Tomorrow is the beginning of our family reunion (which is the reason we came down here in the first place) and so we are excited to see our cousins and our other extended family!

Splish Splashing in the sun!

Okay, so I am sitting in my rental van outside of my hotel room because this is the only place that I can connect to the wireless network so that I can write down today's happenings.
Today's weather was FANTASTIC again, and we had so much fun. Basically the theme of today was WATER. We spent most of the day at Knotts Soak Waterpark. No one in my family had ever been to a real water park, so I was so excited to take them. We spent the day splashing in the wave pool, lazying about in the lazy river, slip sliding down waterslides and soaking up the rays! Actually I think that Otto absorbed most of the rays because he is looking a little . . . ummm. . . well done! Dustin and Anne didn't really want to go on any slides, and Lee was too young to do them so we took turns doing fun slides and swimming and we ended up all having a really fun time. (I even got some sun tanning in while Lee was sleeping.
After we went to the waterpark, we took the kids to this really great outlet mall right outside of Mexico. Well we were there for about 10 minutes and already the kids were fighting constantly, and Otto and I were both cranky, and it was a little depressing to walk around a mall and realize that you can't really buy anything, so we left there pretty quick.
After the bust at the outlet mall, we decided to go and take the harbor cruise that we missed taking on Saturday. It was nice because we were the last cruise of the day and so there weren't very many people on the ship and it was indoors so the kids got to play a bit while Otto enjoyed looking at all of the aircraft carriers and the kiddies looked at the helicopters (Dustin LOVED those) and the sea lions.
Otto also really wanted to go to Carl's Jr, and I haven't been there before so we took the kiddies there for dinner. All I can say is that I KNOW why the obesity rate in the U.S. is going up!! I ordered a hamburger and it was almost as big as my entire head!! I couldn't believe it! It was fun to be able to do some things that Otto was really interested in doing, and I am glad that we took the time to do it.
Now we ended off our day by coming back to the hotel and going swimming. Again, I had told the girlies about how I used to love going on vacation with my family when I was a little girl because we got to stay at hotels with swimming pools and it was so cool to be able to swim at night because there would be a big light in the swimming pool and it was so neat! Well, the girlies were so impressed with swimming at the hotel at nighttime (the pool is heated!!!) and they loved that they were swimming and staring at the moon. *sigh* I kind of wish that I could move them somewhere warmer so that they can do some of these things that I used to do when I was a kid.
Well, I do have to say that spending an entire day around water has made me a little bit redish, but I am not very burned, just a bit on my shoulders. I am, however, looking forward to tomorrow because we are going to go to the San Diego Zoo and then to Balboa park which is covered in gardens and museums. I am looking forward to not spending some time in my bathing suit. . . why you ask??? Well, let's just say that I feel sorry for the people who have to look at me in my bathing suit so soon after having a baby. I don't mean to punish them, but I have no other choice. I will not let my kiddies miss out on alot of fun just because I don't look that flattering in a swimsuit. I love them enough to endure a day of self-consciousness so that we can make some wonderful memories together!
Until tomorrow my friends!

Sunday in San Diego

Okay, so the kids thought that they had the world's BEST DAY ever yesterday. . . until today! We woke up and had our FREE breakfast at the hotel. . . which the kids thought was AWESOME!!! They think that this hotel is the coolest because not only do they have an outdoor swimming pool, but they give us breakfast every morning too! Otto has also decided this place is awesome because they have a Mrs. Pac Man and a Galaga arcade game and I love it because of the HUGE yellow sign that is lit up on the side of the hotel so that when I am driving here at nighttime, I can't miss the hotel!! Trust me, this is a huge blessing!! And, we also moved into the room that we will be staying in for the rest of our time here (I had to extend our stay by a couple of days because we could only get flights on those days so we had to stay in the other room for a night), and this room has a little kitchenette. Actually, that is the only difference from our other room. We have two queen sized beds, a roll away cot and Lee's carseat and the little kitchenette and bathroom, and that is the hotel room that the 7 of us are sharing. So far it has been okay. . . well, not exactly ok . . . . last night Dustin screamed for about an hour until Otto finally took him outside and slept in the van. For some reason, sleeping in the van was the only thing that worked, and I was amazed that they actually spent the entire night out there. That is way more brave than I would be, but Otto didn't want Dustin to wake up the girlies, so that was the only way, I guess.
Today we started out our adventures by going to San Diego's Wildlife park. We got to go on an African safari, pet some parakeets and some deer, learn about frogmouth birds and play in the spray park. I think that the highlight for the girlies, though was when they got to have their faces painted. There were these booths and they were amazing at face painting, and Anne kept on asking for it, and because I had saved some money by bringing snacks into the park instead of buying food there, I decided that it would be worth it to splurge some money on these face paintings. Well, Caroline ended up with this beautiful butterfly (complete with sparkles) face painting, Anne had a swan mask (also with sparkles) and Abby had basically a sparkly blue mask painted onto her face. They looked pretty cool, and the girlies thought that they were so special because they got these face paintings, so that made me feel as though it was money well spent.
After we went to Wildlife park, we stopped in to McDonalds for lunch. It was cheaper than eating inside the park and it is food that I know that the kiddies will eat. For a long time now, the girlies have heard me talk about how when I was a little girl and my mom would take me to McDonalds the playplaces were outside. I don't think that they believed me, but when we pulled up to McDonalds and they saw the playplace outside, I again became the coolest mom ever! Anne was the first to point out the face that the playplace was outside just like when I was a little girl, and they all wanted to go and play on it. Even though I was very anxious to get to our next destination, I let them go and play on the playplace so that Otto and I could spend some time with Lee. The poor baby has basically spent the last two days and nights completely in his carseat and I do feel bad, but he has been so good that I have been so grateful for it at the same time. Plus, he will probably have to spend most of this entire vacation in that seat so hopefully he will continue to be the calm, easygoing baby that he has been so far!
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening at Legoland. People, if you have children 10 and younger. . . . GO TO LEGOLAND!!!! This place is soooooo cool. If I were to do Legoland again, I would probably spend an entire day there because we weren't able to experience the whole park, but what we did experience was soooooooo cool! We went and saw a show and the girls were chosen to participate in it. Pretty much everything in Legoland is actually made out of lego. The rides at the park are all geared towards children and most of them are made to look like lego. We walked through mini land where there are exact replicas of some of the most famous places in North America. There was a replica of New York completely made out of lego that even had a running lego subway and cars. There were moving people and I can't even describe how cool and intricate and detailed everything was. . . . so I took videos of it instead! We got to watch a lego jazz funeral in mini New Orleans and a quickie lego wedding in mini Las Vegas. We even walked by Old MacDonald's farm where the mini lego animals and band were all singing and dancing to the music. . . . sooooooo cool! I had been debating whether or not we should go to Legoland, and I am so glad that we did go. Dustin even got to pose with Lego Lifesized Bob the builder, Thomas the Tank engine and Otto joined him in his pose with Lifesized Lego Darth Vader (they even got their own lego light sabor) and R2D2.
Finally we ended off the day in what Otto calls the most wonderful place on earth. To the rest of us it is known by its other name. . . Walmart. We went and picked up some groceries for the next couple of days and walked around the store for a bit.
Before I end this entry, I just want to say this. I often get teased . . . okay I get teased alot because I always need a plan. If I am going to go anywhere or do anything I have to get everything in order and know where I am going to next and put things into a schedule. Now, I can be flexable with my schedule, but there has to be one in place or else I feel lost and overwhelmed. I get made fun of ALOT for this!! Seriously!!! But today I was so grateful for this little quirk of mine because it has saved us sooo much money and time. There was no wasting time wondering what we are going to do next, and so far we have come up right on budget for our vacation. I have put us on quite a tight budget because we don't have alot of extra cash at the moment, but we have been able to have alot of fun and not really miss out on anything because I have done ALOT of research into our trip before we left. I bought these San Diego Go 5 day Go Passes (which cost me $750 up front) and I was really nervous about getting them because I wasn't sure if they would be worth it or if there would be too many restrictions on when I could use them and other things, but they have just about completely paid themselves off and that is from just using them for 1 day. We still have 4 more days to go before they expire. To top it all off, as we found out today, when we use the Go passes to get into a park, it doesn't just buy the basic admission ticket. . . . it buys the VIP tickets which include extra rides, tours and shows. That has made Wildlife and Legoland so much more fun and cost effective. Since we have been here we have spent less than $100 a day on food, entertainment, gas, and everything else. . . not too shabby for a family of 7 if you ask me. Even though I am a little bit worried about finances (what else is new), with the exception of Anne (who thinks that we haven't done enough shopping for toys and clothes) no one has complained about missing anything (I don't think that we have actually had to give up on anything that anyone would notice) or not being able to do things.
Another day is over and now my beautiful children are all asleep along with my wonderful husband. I always love taking the kiddies on trips and I only wish that I could do it more often. I know that we are making memories that will last a lifetime and I am so glad that we came on this trip.
Until tomorrow. . . and in case you didn't notice, I still haven't found my journal. . . thanks for reading!

We have LANDED!!

Yes, we are safe! We are in San Diego and I will write more about this in a second. I just wanted to explain why I am probably going to be writing a new post every day until I get home. It isn't really because I think that my life is soooooo fascinating that everyone needs to read about me every day, it's just that ever since I was a little girl, my mom would have a journal for us to write in when we went on vacations. For some reason this has always stuck with me and, in fact, reading my old travel journals is something I love to do because it brings back so many wonderful memories and feelings I have had growing up. When I was packing I had thought that I had packed my travel journal, but apparently I can't find it. We are going to be switching rooms tomorrow so I haven't completely unpacked everything, so maybe I will be able to find it tomorrow when I am done unpacking for the week. So, unless I find my travel journal, any poor sucker who wants to will be privileged enough to know almost every detail of our travels here in good old San Diego.
This morning we woke the kiddies up at 4 am. Our flight left Calgary at 6:35 and we just barely made it even though we were at the airport right when it opened at 5 am. It was actually great timing because we didn't have to wait at all to board the airplane and so the kids were great on our flights!!! We ended up having to stop over in San Francisco and it was actually a nice break and so the kiddies were great on the second flight too!
Once we got here and got our van rental, I had promised the kiddies that we would eat lunch at McDonalds. So, I punched McDonalds into the GPS system and it took us to this mall that I had been telling Otto and the kiddies about where all of the hallways are outdoors. The stores have roofs, but the hallways are completely open, as is the food court. It is a really cool mall, but we couldn't find the McDonalds anywhere. Just after I finished telling Otto about how I had had these AMAZING tacos at that very mall about 15 years ago, we actually ended up eating lunch in that very same place. It is called La Salsa and it has really yummy Mexican food for a great price!!
After we had fed the kids we had planned on going on a cruise around the harbour and looking at all of the war ships. Well, the kids were hot and tired and all they wanted to do was swim, so we decided to nix the cruise and go check into the hotel so we could go swimming. We had so much fun playing with the kiddies and swimming in the hotel pool for a couple of hours. I realized how much I missed swimming in outdoor pools. When I was a little girl we lived in Texas and I used to swim in outdoor pools all the time, but in Canada it just doesn't make sense to have outdoor pools, so they are all indoors. It just isn't the same and having the sun warm the water and then getting out of the pool and not freezing your butt off! The girlies thought that it was cool that I used to swim in swimming pools like this one when I was a little girl. They really like hearing about what I used to do when I was a little girl, and I enjoy telling them, so I think that it works out well!
After swimming for awhile, Otto and I decided that we should take the kids out for dinner at this really cool restaurant called the Corvette Diner that I had found out about in my research about San Diego. This place was really cool and the entire restaurant was a 50's theme. When I walked in the doors, I realized that I had also been here about 15 years ago when I came on a choir tour. We had sung at a Jewish synagogue and then afterwards we went there. It brought back a lot of cool memories for me, but I also think that we made a few tonight. You see the kiddies really had been awake since 4 am, and so by the time we were seated (after waiting for almost an entire hour) they were pretty sleepy. Otto and I were trying to get them to wake up and have some fun by dancing to the music and singing all of the 50's and 60's era songs that the DJ was playing. The kiddies were good sports, but they weren't really into it. . . .and then entered the balloon man! I have see TONS of balloon art, but this guy was INCREDIBLE!!! He made each of the kiddies something unique. Abby got a cool penguin inside of a heart. Anne got a monkey climbing up a banana tree to reach a bunch of bananas that were dangling from the tree (seriously!!), Caroline got an Ariel balloon art (yep, like the Little Mermaid), and Dustin got an orange Bugs Bunny. I, of course, took TONS of pictures, and if I get a chance, I will upload a few because this place was COOL!!!!
So we haven't even been here 24 hours and already the kids think that San Diego is the coolest place on the face of the earth! Wait until tomorrow. . . we are going to Wildlife National Park and LEGOLAND, so I pretty much will be the BEST MOM EVER!!!
Anyways for you family members and friends who have taken the time to read this, know that we love you and we really wish that you were here with us because it's always more fun to do things like this with people that you love. The kids are all exhausted and everyone is asleep in this room except for me, but I needed to make sure that I wrote this all down so that my kiddies can look back on this day and remember how much fun we have already had together.
Good-night!