Carlsbad Vacation Recap

Our much anticipated trip to my hometown of Carlsbad, California went pretty well. We were pretty worried about how the kids would do on the 1600 mile roundtrip drive. Let's just say the DVD player was a lifesaver, at least for the kids. For Trevor and I the desert trip was just as boring as we remember it from our childhoods - at least nowadays we have air conditioning!

The day after we got there we took our first day trip to see the seals down in La Jolla.
The next day we made the trip to the beach. It was the first time any of our kids had seen the ocean (technically, Caleb came to Carlsbad beach when he was 13 months old). Initially, the kids were worried about sharks and crabs (the big red ones that pinch you like in the cartoons) but they soon realized there was very little danger in these waters. The water was very cold and there was a cool wind blowing so we only lasted less than 2 hours, but that was just long enough for Caleb to master the boogie board.

On Tuesday we went to Legoland. This Darth Vader is made up of thousands of legos (except the cape) - even the light sabers and R2-D2 are legos. The older 3 had lots of fun on rides that are geared toward their age groups. Gabriella could ride several rides too but didn't like having to sit next to me (instead of on my lap) and the metal bar seatbelt thing across her lap.

Fortunately we scheduled a breather day on Wednesday. Because on Thursday we went to Sea World. The one big roller coaster we did go on cured me from going on another roller coaster for a long time. My first mistake was saying I'd go on this ride that we were told there was only a 20% chance of you getting wet (mind you the temperature that day was only mid 60's and overcast and I did not want to walk around in wet clothes). I knew that percentage was wrong when I approached the boat we rode in and ALL of the seats were wet. The second mistake was my sitting next to Megan who cried on the first descent and couldn't cry on the second descent because it was too fast and swirly. Then we had an interesting experience. We were one boat away from unloading when the ride broke down. The seatbelt bars wouldn't release even though we were right there at the unloading platform. We sat there for 10 minutes while they tried to get the ride going again. Finally they let us off. We were very happy to be in the position we were when it broke down. I don't even want to think about if we'd have been stuck in the elevator portion of the ride where you're in complete darkness and the boat in tilted to the right or left. If that would have been the case Megan and Michelle would have never ridden another roller coaster for the rest of their lives.

But I did get to finally see Shamu. Even though I lived 30 minutes north of Sea World - this was the first time I'd ever seen Shamu.

On Friday we started our drive home. We left around 3 pm which was just in time to hit traffic in 3 different metro areas along I-15. We stopped for the night in Mesquite then finished the drive on Saturday.

Now the fun of unpacking and doing tons of laundry!