San Diego

Last week, we went on a relaxing vacation way down south in San Diego. We celebrated Casey’s 22nd birthday, went on a lovely, romantic Valentines dinner, and just enjoyed being free for an entire week!

On Monday, after a long but smooth nine hour drive down, we had arrived. The place we were staying at wasn’t quite ready yet, so we stopped at a nearby park to let Jess get her wiggles out. She spent about forty minutes going down the slide! up, down, repeat; up, down, repeat; up, down, repeat.

Dominic was so excited to be out of the car and looking around at the beautiful surroundings. It was pretty windy that day, but he was so warm and cozy in his car seat.

After changing diapers, nursing, and getting re-situated we drove off to our home away and got settled. It was a beautiful house with all the accommodations one could ask for, including the fact that it was within three miles of the ocean.

The next day was Casey’s birthday! I made my man a nice breakfast in bed, and we all enjoyed a lovely, slow morning with birthday kisses and snuggles. Jessica loved the sausage.

After our relaxing morning we went to get fish tacos at a restaurant with a view. It turns out that on Tuesdays and Thursdays their tacos were only three dollars! They were SO good!

Just a walk away from the restaurant, was the Ocean Beach Fishing Pier. We enjoyed the scenery as we walked along.

How does one resist ;)?

These two!

Of course, the birthday boy had to get a special treat!

Next stop was the USS Midway. It was so cool getting to look around and see all the planes, helicopters, and all the living courters!

The device Jess is holding throughout all the pictures was an automated tour, which you could decide to listen to by holding to a special device next to each exhibit. She loved listening to it.

As you can see, Jess completely figured out how to use her automated tour guide ;).

This was one of our favorite rooms on board.

Wow! Look at all of those buttons!

We so often forget about the men who serve our country and what they went through day in and day out.

This brought tears to my eyes.

 

On Wednesday, we went to Balboa Park. It was beautiful with all of it’s impressive architecture, botanical gardens, and museums.

Jessica loved it so much! Being outside is her absolute favorite place to be.

Dominic loved it too! It seems both of our little ones have Casey’s and my love for the outdoors!

These bushes were near the zoo entrance. Unfortunately we knew we weren’t going to have time to go to the zoo, but we will go next time when both Dom and Jess are a bit older.

Dominic loved the flowers and all the colors that surrounded him.

Jessica was presented with a balloon rose by a gentleman making balloon animals (and flowers apparently 😉 ).

 

This, ladies and gentleman, is the largest outdoor organ in the world. On Sundays they have free admittance to hear it. We wish we could have heard it! Just imagine how gorgeous it would have been!

There are a lot of museums at Balboa Park, and we picked the model trains museum.

Of course Jessica enjoyed herself thoroughly.

Let’s all take the time to appreciate the joke behind this :).

Can you spot the Winnie the Pooh characters? Jessica found them right away and listed all of their names several times. She was ecstatic to have found them.

Casey got us a reservation at this gorgeous restaurant as a Valentines treat! It had a spectacular view!

This guy is my everything!

Jessica got cranberry juice! Our happy little girl makes us smile almost nonstop!

 

Thursday was our last full day in San Diego and so we had a nice relaxing morning at home followed by fish tacos from the restaurant we ate at earlier that week, and the rest of the day was spent at THE BEACH!!! One can’t go to San Diego without going to the beach!

As a little girl I loved the beach, but the waves always scared me until I was a bit older and had a few more beach visits under my belt. Jessica, on the other hand, loved the waves! In Fact, Casey and I had to make sure she didn’t run out too far into the water!

It started to rain for a bit, but thankfully it didn’t last long ;).

Fun in the sand!

Jess wouldn’t stop chasing the seagulls. The birds would run out to the water to try and get away from her, but she would just follow them right in. In the picture above, she had run up to the bird in the background but Casey and I called her back because she was going too far out… As she ran back to us she slipped and fell in the water. Her response was getting up and running into the dry sand face first while laughing and screaming in excitement.

When it was time to go, Jess started to cry because she waned to stay so badly. On our way up the beach to the parking lot, she kept “accidentally” falling in the sand to postpone leaving as long as possible.

We finally got her to smile for the camera and headed back to our place for a much needed bath to get the sand off :).

It was an amazing trip full of sites and new experiences! It’s so amazing to go on trips together as a family, and we had so much fun watching Jess explore. It was fun and exciting going away for the first time as a family of four. Dominic did so well, and we can’t wait until he can run around alongside Jess.

Until next time,

The Walker family