San Diego

I am not sure what we fell in love with first - the San Diego Chargers (GO CHARGERS) or San Diego itself. We love it there. We would never want to live there but it is our favorite vacation spot. This trip we were able to have Erick (my youngest brother) join us. We were all thrilled. Cory finally had a body surfing buddy and the kids, of course, had their buddy. He is so great to them. We all love to have him around. We had planned a whole family trip to San Diego in July but we were never able to get the timeshare. We tried again in August but it just didn't happen. We are glad we got to go in September when the kids had a break in school. It was quite chilly but I am sure there were less people. We only had one destination other than the beach and that was the San Diego Wild Animal Park. It was fun but really expensive for what you get to do. There is one place- Lorikeet Landing- that was unforgettable. First they have you buy nectar, $3 a tiny cup (yup each) and then you go into this double door huge cage. We bought 4 cups, and at first when I walked in I was amazed at a lady with 5 birds on her arms and head. They are beautiful birds, kindof colored like a parrot. As I was helping Christian get a bird to drink his nectar I heard Jessica yell and she had one on top of her head! Then another and another. Before she knew it there were 4 birds on her. They drank her nectar really fast so then they wanted to eat her earrings, thumb and freckles on her arm. She was freaking out. I had the video camera and all I could do was laugh - bad mom huh. She was almost hysterical when they all flew away. Erick had one land on his head and scare him to death and Michael had one that really wanted the mole on his neck. It was the best part of the whole park. These pics are of the beach at Catalina Island. We had a lot of fun. The water was pretty cold but we didn't care we were at the beach! I went out to body surf with Cory and Erick one time and there was a huge seaweed forest that you had to treck through to get to the deep water. It was so gross. You had to just run with everything you had to get through it. I just couldn't help but wonder what was inside all of that stuff. We were really lucky though, we saw 6 dolphins not to far away, pelicans flying everywhere (that is what the black specks are in my title pic), and there were 4 sea lions. It was kindof creepy. Overall we had so much fun! We love San Diego!