San Diego Zoo

My parents planned a trip for our family months ago to spend some time in California & it was great! Not only was the weather refreshing, but we absolutely loved spending some extra time with family. Especially the kids - these cousins truly are best friends!

 

We all flew out on Friday morning - my parents from Houston, my sister's family from Austin & we came in from Dallas to meet at the airport in San Diego. Unfortunately our flight was delayed an hour but thank goodness Dallas Love Field has an indoor play ground because that made the delay bearable that early in the morning:

 

 

We were supposed to be the first ones to arrive, so by the time we got there, everyone else was getting there also, so it worked out. Bryan & I have spent some time in San Diego & done of most of the touristy things there but our girls have never been there & neither had my parents. The first thing we thought of was the San Diego Zoo, which is supposed to be one of the best in the country:

 

 

Originally, we had planned on going on Saturday morning, but everyone told us it would be really crowded on a Saturday morning in the middle of the summer, so we thought we would go ahead & go on Friday afternoon hoping to beat the crowd. Thank goodness we did, because I feel like the morning rush had cleared out & it really wasn't that bad.

 

The next tip everyone told us was to take the guided tour:

 

 

It was covered & we had a nice breeze when it was going. We also covered about 75% of the park & got to see a ton of animals pretty close. It really is a big zoo so this saved us a lot of time & energy not having to walk back to some of the exhibits. We saw a lot of animals all day & the kids loved it:

 

 

As you can see, the only bad thing about going during the afternoon was apparently it was naptime for most of the animals! The girls are obsessed with flamingos right now:

 

 

and I think they liked the giraffes:

 

 

We saw several babies at the zoo, including a baby gorilla & giraffe. The kids had a blast running around, looking at animals & spending time with everyone:

 

 

Besides the guided zoo tour we took at the beginning, we also took the tram that went in the air from one side of the zoo to the other. It was a great way to see everything & again, the kids loved it. In fact, the big kids thought it was a ride & had their hands up like we were doing something scary:

 

 

 

The kids had so much fun they wore themselves out:

 

 

This literally never happens! But we had to wake them up at 5:30 that morning & neither of them slept on the plane so they crashed when we left the zoo. As you can see, we had a lot of luggage! We rented 2 minivans to hold all 3 of our families & I'm pretty sure we had about 11 suitcases & 11 carry on bags (1 per person), 3 sets of golf clubs, 2 big car seats, 2 small car seats & 2 double strollers. Whew! Honestly, I still don't know how the guys got it all in there!

 

So that was day 1 & I still have 7 more days to talk about! I'll try to break up the blogs since we took so many pictures. I say we, but I technically mean Natalie :) Thanks again for bringing your camera & being our personal photographer for the week! If you follow both of our blogs, you will probably see the same pictures all week!