Trips, trips and more trips!

Justin was fortunate enough to go to the Middle East for school and was gone for 17 days. Because he was gone for so long, I decided to break up the time and go on my own vacations. The first vacation was to Zion National Park with my Mom that I blogged about already. Then I was home with my kids alone for a whole week and then I went to San Diego with my sister-in-law Liesl for 4 days. It was a great trip. Here's a run down of our trip:

On Monday, May 10th I dropped my kids off to my sister-in-law Andrea and went shopping. I bought some cute skirts at Maurices and my sister Liz took me to the airport. Liesl and I flew to San Diego, got our rental car (I highly recommend Midway Car Rental in Cali) and drove out to La Jolla. We walked along the beach and ate at the Poseidon Restaurant. Good food but a little fancy for my taste. Then we checked in our hotel and watched "When in Rome" and laughed a lot, what a good movie!

Me on the beach

Beautiful park on the beach

Playground on the beach. Lucky kids!

On Tuesday we woke up at 6 AM which felt like 7 AM in Utah, our normal wake up time. We hit the gym, had breakfast and headed finally to Sea World at 10 AM. The dolphin show wasn't up and running since they are doing a new arena and show with the cirque du soleil performers. The others shows were great although they did not swim with Shamu which makes the show truly spectacular! Overall, I thought Sea World was good but not as excellent as the last time I went 6 years ago. We were done by 4 PM so we went to dinner and then headed to the Carlsbad Outlet Mall. Not really our style, too ritzy and expensive stores. Then we headed back to our hotel and watched The Blind Side, also a great movie!

Liesl through the aquarium

All 4 whales

Sea Lion

The waving walrus

On Wednesday we went shopping all day, it was great! We first hit the Seaport Village which reminded me of Gardner Village but seaside. Then we went to Old Town and enjoyed the ambiance and shopping there. Then we drove around the Gaslamp Quarter but realized it was just a place to go out to eat and party at clubs at night. Then we drove up to meet with some friends of mine for dinner and had a few hours to kill. We got pedicures (this was my first ever and I'm not really a big fan) and went to a shopping center that had tons of booths, it was awesome! Then we had dinner with Ryan and Christin and it was nice to catch up with them. Then we went down to the ocean to see the Red Tide where several plankton were growing and when it's really dark and they crash in the waves, they streak like lightning. We didn't stay late enough to see it but got some water in a bottle to try at our hotel in the pitch black and it worked, it was cool!

Me at Seaport Village

Me in the middle of the Seaport Village

Liesl at Seaport Village

Wednesday night was rough as I wrote about in my last post since I was missing my family and ready to go home.

By Thursday morning I felt better so we headed down to the outlet mall on the Mexican border and it was a much better outlet mall with the stores we like. We did a ton of shopping, ate at IHOP and headed to the car rental place. We forgot to get gas so we took the car to fill it up and drove to a Shell, waited in line and then it didn't even pump gas! We drove around for another 15 minutes before finding another gas station, filled up and were finally on our way home. I was happy to see my kids but sad to see Allison so lethargic and sick. She was sick until Saturday night when she finally started acting like herself again. Justin got home on Saturday night and it was really nice to have life go back to normal.