San Diego , USS Midway - December 28, 2010

Every time we go to San Diego, our son insists on visiting the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that's docked near downtown and has been turned into a museum.  Since our youngest is old enough to actually tour the ship now, we've all gone the last couple times, and the girls have been excited to go and not just indulging their brother.  We decided to get a membership this time since we do tend to make it down at least a couple of times a year and it's a great organization to support.

There are new things to see just about every time we tour the ship, and this time was no different.  They had added a family audio tour, so we let the older kids get the headsets and listen to the recording as we wandered around the ship.  They were fascinated by the information they heard, so it was worth having them wear them.  Our youngest was disappointed that she couldn't listen, too, but she did enjoy climbing around the ship and up and down the ladders.

We had lunch at the cafe onboard, which we hadn't done before, and the food was pretty good.  We finished the day up on the flight deck, where Mike took the big kids up to tour the tower and our little one and I hung out in a helicopter.  She spent her time serving pretend food, flying us to exotic locales, and chatting with other kids who came in.  When I finally convinced her to go outside, she checked out the information on signal flags and wandered around the deck until the others came back out to meet us.

It was a fun day for all of us and we stayed until they closed the ship down for the night.  We then headed back to the house for dinner with Mike's parents and then off to bed.

After Christmas in San Diego

Two days after Christmas, we drove down to San Diego to spend some time with Mike's parents. We did the same thing last year and found out that it's a great time to be there, and we all love our trips to visit Gramma and Grampa, so all five of us were really looking forward to the trip.

The day we left started out foggy, so we didn't have high hopes for the drive. Just before we got on the highway, though, the fog burned off and it turned into a bright, sparkly day. Incredibly, we had no traffic going down - unheard of for driving through Los Angeles! It only took us eight hours and we were happily pulling into Mike's parents' driveway. The kids immediately got the scooters and skateboards and started riding up and down the sidewalk and Mike threw the ball up the street for Zatarain, who was very happy to be out of the car after the long ride. I ran out right away to pick up food for the dog and then we spent the evening watching the Saints beat the Falcons and eating burgers.