Two Big Fall Family Vacations in 2016

Warning: LOTS of pictures ahead!!

After hanging out in southern Arizona all through the long, hot summer, we decided to take not one, but two big family vacations in the fall. One of those vacations was a fun family fling in California. The other was a holiday trip to Utah, to spend Thanksgiving with some relatives. Both vacations were wonderful experiences for our family. This blog post will tell a tale of these two vacations (hopefully in a coherent fashion!).

 Our first trip, which took place during our school's Fall Break, was to lovely San Diego, California. We've been there as a family before...heck, I'd visited the city just a few months before! But we love it there, and we still had a lot of fun activities in San Diego to cross off our "to-visit" list. I for one was happy to revisit the city again, this time with my loved ones. And on this trip, we were going to be taking the kids to some attractions Nathan and I last visited when we were newly married...attractions the kids had never before seen. We were all excited to get started.

We had an uneventful drive to California, then checked into our hotel in Mission Valley (a short drive from downtown San Diego). This hotel was much closer to the action than my Comic-Con hotel was; we were located right off the freeway, and had access to covered parking. The room was pretty nice too; very roomy and comfortable.

Plus, the hotel had a pool; this proved to be a wonderful place to rest and relax after each day's activities.

On our first night in San Diego, we decided to drive to the Mission Beach area. Once there, we passed the evening by strolling through the sand, while the girls tried dipping their toes in the surf. It was a lovely night and we got some great pictures!

Right next to Mission Beach is a small amusement park called Belmont Park. We thought it would be a fun way to get some of our wiggles out after a long day on the road.

We even talked Lorelai into her first roller-coaster ride. She cried a little in terror, but she survived, so the evening was a success!

We followed that up with a delicious dinner at Pieology, an artisan pizza place that lets you personalize your own pizza. We each got our own pizza and ate like hogs. So good!

The next morning was our first big adventure; we visited the San Diego Zoo as a family for the first time!

We didn't realize that 2016 was the 100-year anniversary of the zoo; it was neat to see all the commemorative stuff everywhere.

As luck would have it, our beloved Denver Broncos were in San Diego the very same day we were, playing their division rival, the San Diego Chargers. We knew we wouldn't be able to attend the game on such short notice, but we still managed to show our team spirit at the zoo with our Super Bowl T-shirts. We saw lots of Broncos jerseys and shirts at the zoo that day, and almost no Chargers shirts...poor Chargers, they don't have the greatest fan-base. Of course, we probably saw all the out-of-town tourists like ourselves. But as it turned out, the Broncos lost the game, so I suppose the home team got the last laugh after all.

Either way, it was a beautiful, sunny, warm day...perfect for walking through the zoo and seeing the huge variety of animals.

The San Diego Zoo can be a little tiring: it is very hilly and has lots of paths that form big loops. You spend a long time walking at this zoo (unless you spring for the motorized tour, which we did not do!).

On the plus side, because the zoo is 100 years old, it has lots of huge, leafy trees everywhere which provide excellent shade. So even though we were tired by the end of the day, we didn't feel too drained.

Of course, being in one of the biggest zoos in the world, our girls' favorite attraction was the one that had nothing to do with animals; it was the Skyfari elevated tram that spanned most of the park.

I was not thrilled to pay a few bucks extra to ride in a tiny box high up in the air, but the girls loved it so I suppose that made it worth it. And I have to admit that it was somewhat refreshing to ride it towards the end of the day; my tired feet were thanking me.

We really enjoyed the zoo, and hope we can go back again as a family someday!

But another busy day of walking awaited us the next day, at SeaWorld San Diego!

Early in 2016, SeaWorld had announced that it would no longer be breeding its famous orcas in captivity. This was a clear sign that the organization would soon be undergoing many changes, including the eventual phasing out of their orca shows. When Nathan and I heard that news, we decided that if the kids were ever going to see "Shamu" in action, we would have to visit SeaWorld sooner rather than later.

But killer whales weren't the only thing to see at SeaWorld; the kids got to see (and touch!) a lot of other sea creatures, including tiny sharks!

We even got to see shark eggs, with the tiny sharks visible inside! I didn't get a great picture of them, but it was still pretty cool.

We saw lots of larger animals as well, like full-sized sharks...

Manta rays...

Penguins...

Dolphins...

Sea lions...

Belugas...

and walruses!

There were also plenty of rides at SeaWorld (this is, after all, an aquarium that is trying to simultaneously be an amusement park). There were some rides that were a bit out of date, like the motion simulator in the park's Arctic Encounter exhibit (not pictured). There were also several small, nondescript rides, like this "aqua-rescue" thingamajig:

But the most notable of all the park's rides was the Mantis, a roller coaster that the whole family was able to ride!

 As roller coasters go, it was pretty tame, but it was perfect for our girls, who are just barely getting old enough to ride all the rides at amusement parks. Lorelai (who was so scared of the Belmont Park coaster) had a blast on the Manta and insisted on riding it several times. So much for fear!

The last major aspect of SeaWorld are its animal shows. Some of those are better than others, but without exception, they are all pretty crowded! Sometimes it was frustrating to wade through the crowds getting in and out of the shows throughout the park. We managed to see all the major shows, however, so we considered that a victory.

The whole family loved the sea lion show; it is always very comedic and silly. Since we were visiting in October, it had a "Halloween" theme; the trainers and the sea lions donned multiple costumes for the occasion!

I remember loving the dolphin show on my first SeaWorld visit; however, the kids were not very impressed. That may have been due to our seats in the nosebleed section; they probably couldn't see much.

The orca show was, as always, very impressive. We sat just outside of the splash zone, so we got a really good look at the orcas without getting soaked. While I enjoyed seeing these awesome animals up close, I couldn't help but feel some relief that they would no longer be performing for applause. I think the orcas are impressive enough on their own, and it would be just as interesting to see them in a more naturalistic environment, with more emphasis placed on education and conservation. I am very curious to see how SeaWorld adapts their parks to survive without orcas.

Strangely enough, SeaWorld's fourth major show doesn't feature any marine animals at all, but trained house pets. It's called "Pets Rule!", and it has dozens of mammals and birds (most of which were rescued or found in shelters) perform lots of crazy tricks along with their human handlers. It it very cute and high energy, and our kids all loved it...possibly more than any of the marine mammal shows! Ah, the capricious tastes of children.

SeaWorld has pretty short visiting hours, so our day was done by 5:00 pm. But after two straight days of heavy walking outdoors, our kids were happy to fall into their beds that night.

We kept things simpler on our last full day in San Diego; we didn't visit any theme parks, but we went to a bunch of random places and walked around.

 Old Town San Diego is a favorite place (on our last family vacation to San Diego, our hotel was within walking distance of it), and we were happy to revisit the park and see the sights.

One of our favorite destinations lies just outside Old Town; it is the LDS Church's Mormon Battalion Historic Site. It is a fun, interactive look at one of the great epic adventures of the early Saints during their mass migration across the United States in the mid-1800s.

There is a guided tour of the site with lots of interactive videos; it does a great job of taking the visitors back in time.

After that, we did a little bit of window shopping in Old Town's many shops. We found a shop that sold dozens of different types of root beer and sarsaparilla. What choice did we have but to buy several and take them home with us?

But the girls' favorite shop was the candle shop...because they got to dip their own candles as a souvenir!

It was fun to watch them create their own rainbow-colored candles. Everyone was very happy with their purchase!

We also stopped for a huge lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant...

That face says, "This is more food than I will ever be able to eat in one sitting!"

Then it was time to visit the Embarcadero!

San Diego has a long, winding coastline, which has a lot of character. So we went on a long walk and checked some of it out. We got to the downtown area from Old Town by riding the electric trolley (the same trolley I rode every day to and from Comic-Con). We had to wait a while for a trolley car to show up, but we enjoyed the view once we got there.

This was mostly a "window-shopping" walk as well; Nathan and I were very curious to visit the USS Midway Museum, but the girls weren't interested. This was as close as we got to that huge aircraft carrier:

Maybe next time! The kids were more interested in some of the specialty shops along the waterfront, like the magic/joke shops, and the crazy hat shops:

After all that walking, the whole family was very tired. We wearily rode the trolley back to our car, and then returned to our hotel. The girls celebrated their last night in the hotel by swimming for a long time:

I was glad they enjoyed our hotel so much!

On the way out of town the next day, we decided to drive to Point Loma and check out the tide pools. It was a cooler, blustery day when we visited, and that made for some pretty sweet waves (and some awesome pictures!)

Our family grew gradually more daring as the night went on, venturing closer and closer to the edge of the rocks. But then our hubris caught up with us, as a surprisingly huge wave washed over us before we could scramble to safety...

...and when I say "us," I mean these three. As you can tell, Nathan, Lorelai, and Celeste had varying reactions to their sudden soaking. At least they all survived, though, or Aurora might have been even more upset than she already was...

Poor Aurora. My youngest daughter can be really tough, but for some reason she is absolutely terrified of the ocean. As soon as she saw the wave crash up over half her family, she completely lost her cool and wailed for twenty minutes straight...even though everyone was okay. Soon after that, we drove further down the Point to the Cabrillo National Monument Visitor's Center, and that seemed much more agreeable to her.

We were able to learn a little history of the Spanish settlement of the area, look inside an old lighthouse, and get a great view of San Diego to boot.

It was a fitting way to end our trip to a city we all love to visit. We hope to return again someday soon!

And now, on to our other big trip of the fall...the trip that lasted much longer but only has a fraction of the pictures!

We decided early on in 2016 that we wanted to visit my sister's family (the Carlins) in Utah for Thankgiving that year. It had been a few years since we'd traveled for Thanksgiving, and we thought it might be fun for the girls to have a "cold-weather" Thanksgiving, possibly even getting some snow. In addition, we have lots of friends and family in UT, and hoped to visit our alma mater BYU as well.

As it turned out, our BYU visit came on the first day of our time in Utah; we started off the tour with lunch at a long-time Provo institution:

Brick Oven is not a fancy restaurant, but it is still very tasty. Comfort food at its finest. It was an all-you-can-eat lunch bar, so we all ate until we were stuffed. The girls declared it one of the best restaurants they had ever visited. I suspect they need to visit more restaurants!

After eating, we burned calories by walking around on campus for a while. It was a cold, rainy day, but it felt great to us desert rats. It was so great to see some great fall color still lingering around campus!

We visited a couple of campus standards (the Fine Arts building, the Bean Museum, and the Museum of Art, for example), but the highlight of this particular BYU trip was our guided tour of BYU's Broadcasting Center, aka The Home of Studio C.

Studio C is possibly the girls' favorite television show right now. It is a sketch comedy program in which the writers and performers are all BYU alumni, and all members of the LDS Church. As a result, the comedy is always "clean" (no profanity or sexual content), and so it's a fun show for the family to watch together. I don't personally find Studio C as funny as do my kids, but I still enjoy large parts of it, so it was an exciting prospect to get a tour of the building in which the show was filmed.

Before the tour, we met up with the Carlins (it was great to have them with us on the tour!), and we looked around the broadcast center's main atrium and all the memorabilia (and awards) on display.

Going behind the scenes was really neat. As a journalism major, I really enjoy seeing the backstage aspects of television/film/radio production, and all of that was on display here.

Plus, Studio C itself!

I think the kids were a touch disappointed, because the sets for Studio C were not up at that time (the show is primarily filmed in the summer). But they still got a kick out of seeing the stage where their favorite actors perform, and they loved the backstage area with all the commemorative photos.

Plus, they found the dressing rooms, and loudly proclaimed that they were sitting in the same chairs that Mallory and Natalie sat in when they prepared for sketches. I hope this tour was enough of a brush with greatness for them!

We got to see other studios as part of the tour, as well...including the set for the BYU sports talk show (which was fully set up at that time), and a set for supplementary programming (including now-passe Election Night coverage!).

After the tour, and just before heading back home, the Carlins and ourselves celebrated the completion of a long day with some delicious ice cream from the BYU Creamery! We were really grateful for the long day of fun.

Our girls get the full week of Thanksgiving off from school. As a result, we needed to get out of the Carlin's house for a while, so the cousins could get some of their schooling done. The Museum of Natural Curiosity was a perfect opportunity for us to get out and play for several hours while the others got stuff done!

I had taken the girls here a couple of years ago when we were in Utah for my grandmother's funeral. This time, it was fun to show it off to Nathan. Everyone went crazy for several hours and burned a ton of calories exploring, playing, showing off, learning things, and generally being crazy.

Those were our two big family "outings" for that week, plus one small "mini-outing" with the Carlins to watch Disney's newest animated movie, Moana (the girls, unsurprisingly, loved it). In addition, we had a nice "adult" outing as well; Paul and Jocelyn generously offered to take us to dinner at Christopher's Prime Steak House and Grill, a lovely steak house with fantastic food. It felt great to go to an "adult" restaurant and have a great "adult" conversation. I love my sister and am so thankful to have her and her husband in our lives! They are very generous and thoughtful.

Much of the rest of the time, we were either traveling around Utah County or Salt Lake County to visit old college friends (we got to go sledding in the backyard of our friend Ben Olsen's house!), or just crashing at the Carlin's house eating a lot of food. That's what Thanksgiving is for, after all!

Best of all, we did get a little snow the night before Thanksgiving; hooray! So Lorelai and I had to go out into the cold morning air and enjoy the "white Thanksgiving."

It wasn't a lot of snow, but it was enough to make our Arizona girls happy!

 We didn't get to take many other pictures of the actual Thanksgiving meal; everyone was busy cooking/sleeping/watching television. Also, some of the Carlin daughters really don't like having their pictures taken, so that makes family photos a little problematic right now. Ah, moody teenagers...I wonder if someday they will regret their reticence? Anyway, here are the pies Jocelyn and I somehow got cooked during all the running around:

While we were busy cooking, Uncle Paul took Nathan and our girls out shooting. Paul is a gun enthusiast, and he is always eager to share his knowledge with others around him. Shooting is not an activity I'm interested in, but the girls and Nathan all had a good time.

When it was time for Thanksgiving dinner, we were more than ready; my sister is an amazing cook and she did not disappoint!

The rest of Thanksgiving weekend was spent in a mild food coma, drifting from one activity to another. Nathan and I snuck in a quick trip to the temple, for instance.

On Black Friday, our family had a dinner/games night with my good friend Dawn Wells, who was my roommate in college for a few years.

Her husband, Dan, is another friend (we all knew each other in our freshman ward), and he has since become a published sci-fi/fantasy author. Basically, he's living my dream! It is always fun to get together with them, and be with their awesome children. We ate a lot of food (Mexican and Chinese food, if you can believe it...long story), played a few board games, and went home happier for being with them! I wish I lived closer to Dawn, but I will have to do with cherishing these rare visits.

We had one more thing to do on our Utah checklist before heading home; see the holiday lights at Temple Square in Salt Lake City! This is a tradition I experienced many times with my family as a child; I also went there several times as a college student. I was excited to share the beauty with my children.

Overall, I'm glad we went to Temple Square, but it was more stressful than I'd hoped. It was very difficult to find parking (we had to circle in the parking lot for almost half an hour!), and there were crowds everywhere. On top of that, there were many big trees on Temple Square that used to contain Christmas lights, and that were no longer lit up. Kind of a bummer! It actually made me more grateful for the beautiful lights at the Mesa Temple in Arizona; it is overall a smaller light display, but it is every bit as tasteful and much less crowded!

But there were still some beautiful sights to see; and it's always good to see such a beautiful temple up close. Seeing the inside of the Conference Center was nice, too.

After our night at Temple Square, we had to pack and prepare for our trip back home. We attended sacrament meeting with the Carlins, and said our (sometimes tearful) goodbyes afterwards.

I love this sister of mine!!

The Carlins have had a tumultuous year, and I am so grateful they were willing to host us for the whole week! They are so generous and fun. I can't wait to see them again at our family reunion in the summer of 2017.

We waded through a heavy snowstorm on the way out of Utah (of course!); it was the most snow we'd seen since arriving in the state. I had forgotten how stressful it can be to drive in snow. But we arrived in Vegas safely, and spent the night there before a safe drive home the next day. In just two months, we'd had two huge vacations. It was great fun, but also pretty tiring! Too bad there was to be no rest; Christmas season was upon us. Hopefully I can cover all that in the next blog post.