Christmas morning! The kids were totally thrilled that Santa found them in San Diego, and he even left a note! We decided that this would be a good beach day, as it seemed warmer than the day before.
After a slow morning we hit the beach. You can totally tell by their faces how the kids feel about it. They all love the ocean, but O is totally in her element anywhere close to the water. Carter is happier to play in the sand and Kenz is somewhere in the middle... I kept Hunter in the car to feed and change him before we hit the sand, so I didn't see their initial reactions, but the Coronado Beach was beautiful.
Our Christmas photo this year. It was funny to spend the holiday on a semi-warm beach while our house was buried in 2+ feet of snow,
After the picture we let this girl go...about 100 times...into the water.
There weren't many people in the water, it was probably too cold for the locals. All I can tell you is that it was considerably warmer than the Oregon Coast, so we were ready to go.
Building our sand snow man...
The finished snow man... Makenzie kept insisting that it was a snow man, which drove our 'I see everything in black and white' daughter crazy, but they were able to complete their Pullman December bucket list item of building a snow man on Christmas.
I had a change of clothes for each of the kids in the car, but hindsight (pun intended...) shows me that maybe swimsuits were in order. Carter's khaki pants just got too heavy for his tiny little hips.
This happy 7 month old loved it when I finally let him loose on the sand. He slept most of the play time, but as we were leaving and I realized he was in the Ergo the entire time, I pulled him out and let him eat a little California sand before we left.
After the wet-clothes peeling and sand shaking car-side, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for Christmas dinner. This was one of the few events that we had with the WSU travel party, so I was excited to see people and get the kids a little dressed up for a nice dinner.
Some quick and only marginally successful family shots in front of the beautiful lobby Christmas tree before we went back upstairs for dinner.
Dinner was great. We sat at a table with the entire ticket office and enjoyed chatting with them. There was a big buffet of food, a carving station, and a cookie decorating table for the kids. I wish I had pictures of their creations, there was not limits or rules so they came back stacked with layers upon layers of candy on top of their cookies. I guess they figured I wouldn't let them go back for another :).
After dinner we were able to crash the team's game room, which was huge conference room set up with arcade games, air hockey, ping pong, video games, corn hole, and probably a bunch of other things that I'm forgetting. We were able to go because the team was at practice, and it was the perfect place to let the kids run around for an hour. Dinner and relaxing time in the room and the kids were ready to go to bed. This trip was the perfect mix of pushing until the older kids couldn't walk anymore and just relaxing and taking advantage of the amazing accommodations. Before going to bed, we had each of the kids pick one must-visit animal at the San Diego Zoo. There is lists of dozens of animals there, and we knew that we wouldn't be able to see everything. We wanted to make sure that each of the kids had one animal that they were most excited to see and that we could prioritize our time accordingly. Olivia was first to pick, and she was all about the cheetah. Makenzie jumped right up, went through the elephant (no), flamingo (no), fox (no), and on and on. Finally I just asked what she wanted to see most and she came up with dog. Not wolf, not any big cats, dog. The one animal that we definitely wouldn't see. You can even find squirrels if you look hard enough, but dogs? Man. I was thrilled that Carter picked crocodile, a definite zoo animal :)
The next morning we went to the Zoo, and started our morning with the double decker bus tour all around the outside. I'm not sure if I think it was a waste of time after the fact, but at the time it was frustrating. Most of the animals were on the other side of the bus, and the kids had a really hard time seeing the animals fast enough before the bus moved on. But either way, we were able to catch two of our must see animals, so I guess I have to consider it a win.
Cheetah! And as a surprising addition, Dog! Apparently (actually I have heard of this before at Oregon's Wildlife Safari but didn't know it was widely practiced) they raise a cheetah cub with a puppy to help them be more comfortable around people. The dog has a natural affinity for humans, which helps the cheetah calm down. So a huge thank you to the San Diego Zoo for having a puppy out in the open to meet our animal requirement for the day!
Once we got off the bus we headed up the middle of the zoo and saw the orangutans first. This one female was hilarious, spinning past all the kids and splashing every pool of water she came to. We stayed for about 10 minutes and she never stopped spinning back and forth in front of everyone. Awesome.
We wandered through a couple aviaries and ended up at the gorilla enclosure. I was impressed with the volunteers outside each animal who would give information like their names, quirky facts about them, etc. It was the perfect info for the kids who just want to know the funny stuff. There were three gorilla brothers who were just a few years apart and had grown up here. The middle brother was fun to watch as he waited for his food. He would go over to the green wall and peek through a tiny hole to see the feet of the zookeepers preparing the food (which coincidentally left his bum way up in the air...to our kids delight), or stand up and watch the people walking above (his food comes from a ledge up there) and he never stopped moving.
This is the youngest brother, and he was just sitting watching until he jumped up and pounded on the wall a couple times. It freaked me out, but the kids were totally fine with it. They definitely have a distorted feeling of safety around huge deadly animals :)
Here is Carter's animal...half in the water but his head is out. We got all the necessary animals in before 11!
We met up with the Zollingers (Alex's boss and family) for lunch and a few more animals, but I didn't take a single picture but we had a fun time experiencing what an older kid is like at the zoo (full of fun facts and information that you kind of question, but they learned it WAY more recently than you did so you go with it :))
Loved this picture of Kenzie chatting with the hippo :)
After another hour or so, Hunter and Makenzie were both asleep in the stroller so Alex took the bigger kids on the skylift, which went from the back to the front of the zoo. I took the stroller and was going to meet them at the front. There was quite a line, so I figured I could beat them there. I was WAY wrong, That zoo is HUGE! I started walking, never stopped, and got to the front of the zoo at least 20 minutes after they did... I just wish I had been wearing my fitbit, it would have been a great day.
My skin starts crawling even typing about this, but the kids were thrilled to go into the petting zoo. I can't handle the grossness of petting zoos (alright animals aren't super high on my touching list in general...) but I did go in for a few minutes to take some pictures. I even let Hunter have his first goat-petting experience, and his faces were adorable.
Face translation: 'not sure what's going on, what is this I'm touching?, wait this is soft and warm, I love it!'
You can just tell exactly what he was thinking, and it's adorable.
After the Children's portion of the zoo, the kids were reaching their limit. We had SO many things that we hadn't seen yet, I was really glad that we got short glimpses of cheetahs, elephants, lions, etc. during the bus tour. We didn't even hit that side of the zoo at all (besides my walk through it to meet them after the sky lift). We wanted to make sure to see the Panda, and hopefully the koalas, giraffe, etc. in the Urban Jungle.
The Panda exhibit was easily the busiest spot in the zoo. I wish I could express to the kids how special it is that they have seen an actual panda. It was my first time, and easily the highlight of the day for Alex, who has loved pandas since he was young. They have 2 different lines for the Panda Trek. One is the picture line, where you wait 2ish hours to go and take selfies, pictures, and whatever else you want to do, as well as watch the panda for as long as you want. The other is called the express way. It never stops walking, you aren't supposed to take pictures, you just walk past the 2 panda enclosures and see them as you walk by. We chose the express path, which worked out perfectly. We walked right through, took turns lifting up each kid to see the pandas (who were just chilling eating bamboo) and then walked out. Alex sneakily stuck his phone in the air and took this picture without looking as we were walking out; he's super proud that he got the panda so perfectly centered, and I am happy to have a picture to remember our visit.
One last snack before we saw our last section, the Urban Jungle. It was beginning to get dark at this point, and before we left we actually had a hard time seeing the animals. It was definitely good timing to have our kids too tired to walk one more step :).
The koalas weren't feeling especially photogenic, but Kenzie loved the wallabees, who were jumping around below the koalas. One this that I really appreciated about this zoo was the active animals mixed in with the ones that are less kid friendly, and the amount of information available about the animals was awesome.
We wanted to make sure to grab a family photo by the sign, but we maybe should have done it before we went in...it was pretty dark! We had 2 kids asleep before we left the parking lot, which is always a sign of a great day.
O was really happy to have her picture taken with the 6 in the parking garage :)
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