Fall Break

Here they do a little thing called Fall Break (I keep wanting to say 'Spring Break') and as luck would have it, Sara and Joseph have it the same week that I do! So we are on Fall Break this week. Before I get started talking about what we've done already, here is the newest pic of the kiddos that we had taken at the end of September.... :) AND I'm going to warn everyone right now, there are A LOT of pictures in this post. Hope everyone enjoys!
So our original plan was to go home to Colorado for the week that we have Fall Break. But Steve doesn't get Fall Break with his excellerated school schedule. We waited and waited to see if he'd have a fairly easy assignment load, but he doesn't. So there was no way that we could take the week and go home, as much as we would have loved to. Instead, it worked out that we were able to take a couple of days and go to San Diego as a family. Steve stayed up late Saturday night to do his Sunday work so we could leave Sunday after General Conference. So we left about 3pm and headed to San Diego. We haven't had a "real" family vacation since 2002 I'm sad to say. We've done the weekend getaways to 3 different weddings since then, though (1 in 2004, 1 in 2005 and 1 in 2006). And even though the change of scenery was nice each time and we got away for a few days, it wasn't really a vacation. This time even though it was still only for a couple of days, it was just about our family. So we decided to splurge and take the kids to Sea World. :) ((NOTE: even though there are A LOT of pics, these aren't all of the ones I took. Sorry again if this is too many for anyone...))

Steve and the kids at Sea World San Diego.

Next was the Penguins - Joseph's favorite!

Sharks!! :)
We went to see the Dolphin show which was awesome!! We were in the 2nd row in the front - aka SOAK ZONE. And that was so fun! The kids and us had an awesome view of the dolphins and got splashed a couple of times by them! Because of our close proximity, I didn't take a lot of pics of the dolphin show, as I didn't want my dads camera to get ruined.

The kids waiting for the dolphin show to start...

Sea Turtles!

Waiting to go into an aquarium (Seth was getting tired)


Octopus -photo taken by Sara

Sea Stars!!

Shamu was Larissa's very favorite part of Sea World. At the end of this post there is a short video of Larissa and how excited she was everytime Shamu swam by her. Be sure to check it out, because it's so cute! (if I do say so myself! ;)



Me and the kids waiting for the Shamu show to start. Do you see Seth? He's hiding between Sara and me.

We totally made a day of Sea World - 10:30 - 5:30!! Well worth it! The kids had such an awesome time. I'd love to go back at some point with them. After Sea World, we decided to go by the San Diego Temple grounds. Unfortunately, the grounds were closed (Steve was guessing due to Temple closure for cleaning) so all of the pictures of the Temple were taken from behind the fence.

Back at our hotel, the kids were enjoying their Sea World souviners!

Seth and his dolphin...
Sara got a hat and a whale tail necklace...
Joseph and his penguin....




Larissa and her whale...

I got a whale tail necklace, too and a stuffed whale (I think I look tired here)
And then just some pics of California as we were going back to AZ. Wish we could have stayed a few days longer!!!!! We were back here about 3:30 Tuesday afternoon.

Oh and in our secret life we have a research center in California... ;)

LARISSA WHALE VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!