Fall Travels 5 of 8: San Diego

San Diego was a lot of fun! Earlier in the year my sister and her husband found a beach house for us to rent for a week and we went for it! The end of September we all went to San Diego for a week of the beach, sea world and Disney Land.

Getting there: My mom and I drove down together and spent the night in Vegas! We saw the Disney Broadway of Lion King and I LOVED it! It made me want to get up and dance. I know, silly, but true. The next day we drove to Long Beach where we picked dad up from the airport (lucky duck) and then headed on to San Diego to meet up with everyone.

The first official day we were there we went to Sea World… not kidding, my dad went running and skipping into the park with all the grandkids. I think it was half him being a good grandpa but the other half was his true and pure excitement to be in a park with knowledge and animals.

Yes, this was my brother-in-law's day pack through out the trip... he wore it proudly. I loved it!

The day we went to Disneyland and when we were first walking in I got so excited and I grabbed my little niece and picked her up and said, “We’re in Disneyland! Look! This is place where your imagination can come alive and where your dreams…” and then I saw this guy looking at me like I was some psycho and I realized I had gotten a bit over-excited… oh well!

Look how excited he is!

I went on cars with one niece… I pushed the pedal while she drove; except her version of driving consisted of bouncing the car back and forth on the median thing going through the tires. My nephew loved cars so much that he was mad he had to get off… he was mad at the end of a lot of rides until he understood the concept that there would be another ride to go on next and that we would come back.

I took my niece on her first roller coaster: Thunder Mountain Railroad! Pretty sure she didn’t know it was a roller coaster but I took her on it anyways. I MAY have asked her if she wanted to go on a train with me and explained it MAY go a little fast. Haha! She held her breath on every drop until I showed her how to scream… it was the cutest thing ever!

We also went on the Whinnie the Pooh ride twice and then we left my dad with all the scardy cat grandkids and we went on Splash Mountain while my dad continued to go on Whinnie the Pooh over and over again… haha… poor dad. We went on The Matterhorn for my brother Nate who was gone on his Mission and my niece requested it because she wanted to do it for Nate. She really was so excited and proud that she did it because she is terrified of that ride.

My parents and I went with my sister's family to the San Diego Zoo. Megan read somewhere that you could really laugh with hyenas if you got the right pitch so she was really excited to do it to them but she missed them when we walked by them. I’m kind of sad, I wanted to witness her screeching in public just to laugh with the hyenas.

The days we were at the beach we just sat and read while the kids played in the sand. One niece (the bird lover) of course collected bird feathers and seashells and decorated her sand castles with them. We found LONG strands of seaweed and played jump rope with them.

We made this sign out of seaweed for Nate and sent him the pic.

My nephew was sitting on my lap and then said, "I'll be back!" He left me and then the next thing I knew he was wearing these goggles. I laughed SO hard out loud.

I think one of the neatest things of the trip though, was all the little kids getting to know each other that much more and bonding. I woke up every morning listening to Bryce and Addie playing on the stairs reciting each other’s names. Addie would say Bryce’s name really quick and short, “hiii Bryce!” and then Brcye would emphasize the double syllable and say, “hi Add-dee!”

It was such a fun trip and I loved being with my family!

Fall Travels 4 of 8: New Orleans

We arrived at 11 am and took a cab to our hotel in the French Quarter; our hotel was a little French place called Place D’Ames Hotel. Seriously… I felt like we were in Europe. All of the buildings in the French quarter have open aired hallways and court yards, as did our hotel.

We went to lunch at Bubba Gumps and the waiters were way friendly and chatty. They even pulled up a chair to talk with us and quiz us on our Forest Gump trivia (which isn’t much). We took a bus tour of the city. It went all over the place. We some Katrina damage, went to an above the ground cementery, went to the city park which is really old and has these trees that grow crazy things on them and I recognized a bridge in the movie Benjamin Button, drove by lots of cool New Orleans homes, saw Tulane, Xavier and some other schools… it was a really great tour. We were a bit nervous and felt out of place and didn’t know where to start so the tour was perfect to get a good over view of everything. We got to see a lot of the city and we learned a lot too. You know how back in the day family fortunes and businesses were passed onto the oldest son, well in the Creole culture of New Orleans the family fortune and businesses are passed onto the child that shows the most intelligence and promise. Well, girls usually develop and mature before boys so a lot of the fortunes were passed onto women in the past. Weird uh?

We even drove down a street where they hold the mardi gras parade and there are STILL beads in the trees. After the tour we rode ferry across the Mississippi River… it was free! And then we just rode it back.

We then walked down Bourbon Street. Umm… that was an experience. I’m glad to check that off the list of things to do in life, but I’m ok if I never do again. There were a lot of people approaching you to eat or shop or give them tips for whatever talent they are featuring. There were several clubs of unsavory nature, but apparently we didn’t fit the clientele and I’m ok with that. We did get stopped by one man dressed as a policeman and he gave us a ticket for being too cute, not partying hard enough and for guys watching us.

After that we took off to find some dinner. We had heard that Frechman Street had a lot of cool live jazz clubs that served dinner. It was getting dark and we were getting a little creeped out by the streets (a lot of homeless people, drunk people, dark alleys, etc) and we couldn’t find a club that we liked… luckily we made our way back to the French Quarter and ate a little pizza place. While we ate dinner we googled pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina’s house and went and found it (or at least like to think we did)! Then we went to the famous Café Du Mode (café of the world) where they sale beignets (ben-yays) and got them for dessert! The café is open 24/7 and the beignets are these delicious scones with about a half cup of powdered sugar in the bag with them. Yummo! The dangerous thing… the café was only a block from the hotel… we knew where we were going to stop on a frequent basis.

The next morning we ate breakfast in the sunroom of the hotel! We then took the old historic trolley to the garden district where all the really nice houses are. (History on Garden District: this wealthy plantation owner once owned the garden district but then he cheated on his wife… several times. So in the divorce the judge said that the husband had to give his wife half of his riches but the husband didn’t have any money, just land, so the judge made him give his best land to his wife. Well she took it and then sold it in pieces and ended up being worth 3x her husband) We did some more celeb-estalking (celebrity real-estate stalking) and found Sandra Bullock’s house. We walked on Magazine Street and nearly perished in the heat! We walked Royal Street (a more sophisticated street in the French Quarter) and I found this awesome designer hat shop! I wanted to buy all of the hats! We tried gumbo and jambalaya for lunch… tasty but not something I would crave.

We walked around Jackson square and there was an awesome band playing in the square. People were playing jazz music all over New Orleans but this bad was legit.

We explored the French market and flee market and then went back to our courtyard to take a break. We met some old people from Florida and we now have an invitation to stay at Hammock Island in St. Augustine Florida. Bob with a B invited us to their home.

(Pictures of the courtyard at our hotel)

We ate dinner at the Market Grill and the jazz band took a break and came and sat by us. The saxophonist has a daughter in Pocatello and he chatted a bit about Mormons. Nice guy. He told us to be careful twice when we left. We walked around some more, went through an art gallery, peeked again at Bourbon Street at night and remembered why it was a bit too much. And then we ended the night back in our delightful courtyard feeling the warmth and humidity that symbolizes the meaning of vacation. Next morning we flew home!

Fall Travels 3 of 8: Maine

The Saturday Lisa and I were in Boston we drove up the coast to Maine! On our way we stopped at little port towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. In one port town we found this huge store in a barn and it was like a vintage garage sale; lots of random funny stuff. In another port town we got to watch a drawbridge go up and then down… very cool.

We took a detour to go see Philip Exeter Academy… the number one boarding school in the U.S. It’s where all the yuppies send their kids. And oh my goodness, it was amazing! It looks like a college campus… except for kids! We then went to another port town and ate at a seafood place on a peninsula right next to a lighthouse; I had crab… probably for the first and last time.

We then arrived at our final stop; Kennebunkport! The Bush family owns a peninsula there and it’s known as the Bush Compound. It has this huge house on it and then a guest house, tennis courts and putting greens. When we stopped to look at it two boats, one black, the other one white, pulled up to the dock and… BUSH Sr got out of the white boat and went up to the house and then the black boat (secret service) took off. It was really cool. There was the lady standing by us and she started talking about the secret service and pointed out a man standing by the group of people with us that was secret service but then she started getting really paranoid and pointing out all these other people as secret service; this one girl even went jogging by and the lady whispered to us, “secret service for sure… I mean, you never know!”

The rest of the night Lisa and I kept joking around and pointing out random people in the town and saying… they’ve got to be secret service. We drove around Kennebunkport looking at all the beautiful coastal homes and even found a rode that we kept going back to because it had our favorite houses.

That night we ate at a seafood bar/restaurant and there was a football game playing and all these people were gathered there to watch it… so we joined in the fun while we ate. Probably one of my favorite restaurants of the trip, just a fun atmosphere and the food was good too. After that we drove all the back home… no stops.