San Diego

To celebrate Doug's graduation, his parents took us on a vacation after he took the Bar Exam. After tossing a few locations around, the family decided to go to San Diego and it was a blast. It was so much fun to spend time with his sister and parents. Dallin was spoiled with attention and loved every minute of it.

After we flew to San Diego, we checked into our condo in Oceanside. It was a very nice condo and Dallin loved exploring the condo. Doug was kind enough to let me take a nap while he and Aunt Amanda took Dallin on a walk and to find the fish. That evening we went to San Diego to go to a Padres baseball game. They were giving away free hats and it was a great game. We left during the 8th inning after Dallin informed as that he was ready to go. He waved at the baseball field and said "buh bye, see ya next time". I wasn't complaining that he was ready to go home, it was late and traveling is exhausting. It was a good game and Dallin was as cute as ever with his hood and hat on.

The next day we celebrated Grandma Hansen's birthday. We took a walk around the Oceanside Harbor, ate a yummy Mexican dinner, fed the fish at the condo, and took a walk along the beach. We finished off the evening singing Happy Birthday to Grandma, eating cake and ice cream, and opening presents. Happy Birthday Grandma, thanks for letting us celebrate with you.

Then we went to my favorite place in the world, Sea World.

Dallin loved to be able to feed the dolphins. He was so excited to touch the dolphin and to be able to feed them. He loved touching the starfish and stingrays as well. He could have touched them the whole day if we had let him, however, he probably would have preferred to jump in and swim with them.

He watched all the shows in amazement and loved seeing all the animals jump out of the water and splash. Now when he talks about dolphins he says, "I feed dolphin fish and they jump out of the water." We took him to the Sesame Street 4-D movie, which I personally thought should have been a little longer (we had to wait for 45 minutes for a 15 minute show). The show was great and I really enjoyed sitting down in the a/c after waiting in line for 45 minutes. I wasn't done being refreshed before we had to go outside again. We took Dallin to see the sharks, penguins, manatees, wild Arctic animals, two aquariums, and any other animal we saw along the way. We finished the day at the Sesame Street Bay of Play. Dallin had a lot of fun meeting Elmo, Cookie, Abby, and Grover, although he didn't want to let go of Daddy or Mama when seeing them up close. He did give them five and hugs. He loved going on Elmo's Flying Fish and the Abby's Sea Star Spin. He enjoyed playing in the big foam blocks but he wasn't being very nice so we took him to sand area to try that instead. You could tell he didn't have a nap that day as he cried when the other kids wouldn't share the dump trucks. So we finished off the day at the fountains, which made Dallin very happy and he had a blast. After changing back into his clothes we headed back to the condo. It was a fun day!

After a fun day at Sea World we had a relaxing day at the beach. Dallin loved playing in the sand. I loved watching the ocean, Doug, and Dallin. Doug loved going boogie boarding. I was a little cold and told them I was ready to go and asked for directions back to the condo. Dallin was apparently ready to go and said "I go condo" and started walking away towards the condo. After that everyone decided it was time to go back to the condo. We took a little swim in the pool. Doug and I were able to go to the hot tub for a minute while Amanda and grandpa and grandma swam with Dallin. We finished the evening going to Ruby's cafe on the pier. It was well worth the walk down the long pier watching all the fishermen. The following day we spent the morning going shopping at the outlet malls. We had lots of fun and all came away with some cute clothes.

After we went shopping and had lunch we went back to the condo. We put Dallin down for his nap and Doug and I got ready to go to the San Diego Temple. We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary with 3 dates. Our first day was while we were still in North Carolina when my parents came for Doug's graduation. We took a break from packing, took advantage of our babysitters and went for one last trip to the Raleigh temple. I wasn't sure if we would get to do anything on our anniversary and I love celebrating so I made sure we would get in some type of date for our special day. Then after we moved to Texas. I spent our anniversary cleaning our apartment and waiting for our stuff to arrive. Doug went shopping and came home with 5 of my favorite flowers (Gerbera Daisies). Then we went to Texas Land and Cattle for dinner with our favorite little boy. After dinner we walked to a park by our apartment and played. We watched our wedding movie after Dallin was in bed. It ended up being a really nice anniversary in spite of moving and not having any of our belongings. Our Grand Finale anniversary date was in San Diego. We went to San Diego for our honeymoon and since we were going to be there the year of our fifth anniversary we left Dallin with the grandparents and went away for an evening. It was so nice to get away, yet it was a little weird not having Dallin around. It was the first time I've left him to have a night away, aside from hospital trips (which don't count if you ask me). We had a wonderful Temple session in the beautiful San Diego Temple, which is becoming one of my favorites. Then we went to dinner and relaxed at the hotel. It was kind of funny because while we were on our honeymoon it was when Who Wants to be a Millionaire was doing some primetime special and they were doing another prime time special during our 5th anniversary trip, funny. It was so relaxing and quiet to get away, and Dallin didn't miss us for more than 5 minutes. He had lots of fun with Aunt Amanda and his Grandparents.

Another relaxing day at the beach, Dallin and I had tons of fun playing in the sand. We made sand castles, a dolphin, a train, and a Mayan temple. It was so much fun. We took a nice family walk from the condo to the beach and back. It was so fun. Dallin loved walking on the beach. Dallin preferred to be held when playing in the water this trip.

It was always too cloudy to enjoy a beautiful sunset, but I did like that picture of the ocean (upper left). After we played at the beach we went swimming at the condo for a little bit. Then we grilled bratwurst and hot dogs for dinner at the condo. We had tried to get a fire pit at the beach but they were all taken so we roasted our s'mores over the stove. They still tasted just as good.

We went to the Wild Animal Park and it was so much fun. We took a little train to see some African animals and got to see a ton of antelope, giraffes, zebras, etc. The above picture with Dallin putting his straw cup to his eye happened on our train ride. A lot of people were viewing the animals with binoculars so Dallin thought he would join in the fun. That was a fun way to view the animals. Dallin loved playing at a little play area. He enjoyed climbing on the animals and driving the jeep. We took him to a petting krall and Dallin loved petting the deer. We went to Dino Mountain, which was a really cool exhibit of life size animated dinosaurs. They were so life like and I even screamed when we saw the baby t-rexs coming out from a bush. Dallin loved seeing the dinosaurs but he was afraid more often than not. We finished our day at the park with 4 rides on the carousel, Dallin was able to ride on a zebra, lion, elephant, and white tiger. He also sat on the giraffe and gorilla before he decided the other animals look like more fun. We had lots of fun seeing all the animals.

The morning of our travel day we went to a little model train museum and then took Dallin to a playground at the beach to get some of his wiggles out before our flight. He had so much fun and even made a friend, they were so cute following each other around the playground. We enjoyed lunch at Cafe 101 before we headed to the airport. Dallin was really good on the flight home and he entertained himself by playing with his new dinosaur and white tiger. We had such a fun vacation, Thanks for spoiling us Grandma and Grandpa Hansen.