Spring Break - 2nd Half

Soooooo....we went!  The kids were so excited.  First we went to the field of flowers in Carlsbad.  It was gorgeous!  There were stations where the kids had to find and stamp different parts of this pamphlet they were given.  Brinley missed some and at the end of our time there, pointed out her blank spots.  She was a good sport when we suggested she just stamp those with the same stamp from the station we were located at the time.  She was not fooled.  I felt like she was being such a good sport, that I had Danielle run and get her one more stamp that she didn't have while the rest of us made our way out.  What a great sister!  There was a maze that I think was Drew's favorite part.  He was determined to get through it without any of the girls' help, especially Danielle.  Notice he did not worry about me helping, he knew I was lost the whole time.  As you can see, even Santa vacations there.

After the flower fields, we went to Oceanside Beach and ate at Ruby's Diner on the pier.  Then we spent a few hours on the beach, which I don't have pictures of, but will hopefully borrow some from Staci soon!

 

After a long day, we stopped at Staci's friends' house in San Marcos for the night.  They were out of town and kindly offered a place to stay.  We had to stop at the neighborhood pool and hot tub first though because I guess we weren't watered down enough yet?

The next day, we got up and went back to Carlsbad to the Strawberry fields.  The kids had fun picking their own strawberries.  Then we went to Ikea and had a great lunch.  We waited a while to put the younger kids in the nursery they provide...

A board room...some were not so happy that they did not get a seat at the important table...

Okaa-aay...I guess it is time to take the kids to the play room.  They loved it and the rest of us enjoyed looking around.  The next thing kind of happened by accident.  Isn't that how the best things sometimes happen though?  We were looking for La Jolla beach because the kids wanted to go to the beach again, and we ended up at La Jolla cove and saw this:

It was so cool!  We loved it, and walked all the way out on the pier and saw the huge waves come in.  It was great.  But the kids still wanted to go to the beach.  I pretty much ruled it out.  It was cold and I was tired.  Drew claimed it was not cold, so I told him to take off his jacket and give it to me then.  Big mistake.  So, he looked like this:

 

And the weather looked like this (I did not adjust the lighting):

The kids finally found what I guess was a sliver of a beach right by the cove.  Convenient, eh?  So Staci and I relented.  And while they did this:

The rest of started to feel more like this:

And less like this:

But we must not have been too tired, because on the way home we stopped at Chili's!  We don't have one where we are and we miss it!  So, we ate dinner like at 8:30 at night.  It was such a fun trip, the driving wasn't that bad at all and the kids were able to chat between the cars with their DSs.  Staci brought walkie talkies for us, which was a lifesaver!  It was so fun and we are so glad we went on this last minute vacay!