Pre-Christmas Family Vacation

Chris took some time off for the holidays so we could go on a family vacation!

It started off as a trip to Hawaii, then transformed into a 4-day cruise, but eventually turned into a trip to exotic..... San Diego!

It was a lovely day for a drive

It took a little longer than we thought it would to get there, but we finally made it!

By the time we got there it was dark and we couldn't think of anything to do, so we wandered around downtown.

It turns out that we did our BYU fan duty by stumbling across the "Battle of the Bands" for the BYU/Wyoming football game.  We had great seats, but the problem was, we were on the wrong side!  Not only could we just see the backs of the band members, but it was the wrong backs!  There were a couple BYU fans around us so it was OK that I was cheering for them, but we finally decided we should really go and join the rest of the BYU fans across the way.

Obviously the view was not very good.  At least we were among blue shirts!

It was chilly, so we decided to get some delicious ramen for dinner.

The next morning we got some HUGE delicious gourmet donuts.  It's hard to tell, but two of them are bigger than my whole hand!  Mmmm.  They were good!

We set off for a day at the San Diego Zoo!

We rode the tram which was super cool and kind of scary.

We saw HUGE Galapagos Island turtles

We saw the cutest baby orangutan 

And a giraffe posed for us

We finished the day with some mediterranean food including salt lassi and baklava!

(Elle is the cutest, that's why she's always the one featured in the pictures)

The next day we headed to Tijuana .  We checked out of the hotel and went in search of bagels for breakfast.  It turns out that it wasn't easy as all that to find some! First we looked up Noah's bagels, but it was 20 min. away.  We tried a little grocery store next, but they only sold meat and stuff.  Then we mapped to another bagel place and got turned around getting there.  When we finally got close to the shop we ran into a DO NOT ENTER zone because it was a naval base!  We got to see some cool Naval ships though.

We continued on our way until we found a Starbucks--because there's always a Starbucks somewhere. We had overpriced pastries then decided to skip Tijuana and just go home.



On the way we stopped at the very first California mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá.  No tours were available so we just walked around the outside for a bit.

Next, we headed to the Mormon Battalion museum.

The sisters missionaries did a great job on the cute little tour!

Next, we were on to the San Juan Capistrano mission

It was so pretty!  

It was fun to see the ruins of the original building (we did the audio tour)

And there was this really funky squid-looking plant

It was a great vacation!

Unfortunately, our 1.5 hour trip home took  2 hours and 40 min.  The map kept telling us there was a "13 min. delay" here, and a "30 min. delay" there and another "40 min. delay" later on!

But we made it home and lived to tell the tale!