Mini Vacay to San Diego!

And we're finally back! Well, only for a week before we pack it up and head down to Mexico for another week of travel, but it sure is good to be home even though we have had an amazingly fun-filled past few weeks! Let me play a little catch up and post a few of the many pictures I have of our little vacation we took to San Diego a few weeks ago (the week of the 12th of October). Justin's younger siblings had fall break that week (how come we never had such a thing in Texas?!) and so we all decided to travel together and have some fun in beautiful San Diego!

We went and spent some time touring the U.S.S. Midway, which is a retired aircraft carrier that was active at the end of WWII and continued until the 1980s. This ship was huge and it was really cool to see and hear, through an audio guided tour, of how they lived on this ship. 

And here she is.. The U.S.S Midway..

Ethan was SO incredibly excited to see all the airplanes aboard this ship. They even let you sit in some of them which I'm pretty sure made our Ethan one happy little guy..

Chalene (Justin's youngest sister) standing in front of where the men would sleep. I'm not too sure how anyone could have a good night's sleep on one of those tiny cots!

 

This rope was HUGE and weighed a ton. I think it was used with the anchors somehow...

Of course Ethan could not resist the chance to pull, push and turn a ton of buttons on the radar machine

Group picture on deck...

We then headed over to check out Coronado Island which is absolutely beautiful. I loved the quaint, old looking houses there and hope that someday we will be a super rich old couple who can retire there. Ok, so probably not but I loved it anyways. We found a small little restaurant hidden behind some tourist shops called Miguel's Cocina and everyone agreed that it was the best Mexican food we have ever had! Hands down! That's saying something considering we have not only traveled all over in South America but lived in Mexico as well! They have the best chips and salsa I have ever eaten. You MUST go there!

We then made it down to the beautiful beaches of La Jolla. Justin and I came here on a little babymoon before Ethan was born and this is still one of my favorite places to go in southern Cali. 

Not only does it have beautiful beach surroundings but it also has seals!  How cool is that to have seals in California?! 

Ethan loved these little guys and was constantly trying to find a way to get past mommy and daddy to climb over the railings to see them. I'm sure he wouldn't have loved them so much if he would have succeeded :)

Of course we had to drive by and see the beautiful San Diego Temple on our way back to the hotel one evening. We have tried twice to go do a temple session there but haven't had very good luck in doing so. The first time I forgot my temple recommend. Of course, this is so me. The second time I woke up with an incredibly bad head cold with a nose that wouldnt stop running and I thought everyone that would have been sitting next to me would probably think I had the swine flu or something so I opted out while my in-laws went. Someday we will make it in.....

The next day we went to Balboa Park and went to the Interactive Science Museum that they have there. Below are Caryn & Chalene having fun paying around with one of the experiments...

Ethan didn't have the patience to wait around while mommy looked at all the cool science experiments so we quickly found the children's play area they have there. It was so much fun to play around with Ethan here. He loved making the glove blow up with air shown below...

 

and playing with the telephones, mini grocery store, mini houses, and computers. 

We only stayed 2 full days in San Diego but I feel like we did and saw a lot! On our way home we dropped Justin off at the border in Tiajuana since he was meeting some people across the border for work. He said he felt like an illegal immigrant walking across the border with his suitcase rolling behind him. I bet he was a funny sigh t to see :) Thanks Mom and Dad Smith for taking us along with you! We had a blast!

I'm going to try to post about our amazing trip to the east coast in the next few days so stay tuned!