San Diego - Take 1

(Whew - this is a long post - sorry there's not more pictures)

This last weekend was Fall Break for Jaxson. I had mentioned wanting to take the kiddies to the zoo at some point. I was thinking the Hogle Zoo, just a skip and a jump away. James got a great idea on Thursday afternoon that we should go to the San Diego Zoo! What can I say, he thinks big!!

I made the reservations, packed and was all set to go. When you book your travel online the San Diego Zoo emails you tickets to print. Stupid printer was out of ink so James ran to the store for more ink. I hurriedly put the ink and and waited for the Tickets-o-Fun to pop out of my printer. Stuff came out but my printer wasn't printing anything but the pictures! After messing with it for 45 minutes I finally saved the tickets on a CD and figured we'd find somewhere to print them on the way. Off we went at about 7:45 pm. The plan was to get to Mesquite, Nevada to spend the night and head out to San Diego early in the morning. That was the plan anyways...

As we pulled off the exit in Mesquite there was a strange thunking noise in the engine compartment. Oh, no... We got our room keys and drove to our room. The engine started SQUEAKING and SPUTTERING! We found a parking space (luckily - because it was packed!) and pulled in as quickly as possible. Before James could turn the car off it DIED! DEAD! DONE! We packed everyone up to our room (of course on the 3rd floor with no elevator nearby) and got kids to bed.

So... we needed a new plan. We were determined to have fun over the weekend and make it to San Diego but things weren't looking t0o good. If you all know me you know I STRESS! I was stressed to say the least. James patiently called the rental companies in St. George because there are absolutely no rental companies in Mesquite (we looked). Turns out the St. George Marathon AND the Huntsman Games were going on and they had NO cars. Wait! One place had a car and said they'd drive out to get us - YEAH, vacation's back on. About an hour later they called to tell us the price was more than they originally told us and to top it off they would only allow 250 miles a day most of which would get eaten up with them coming to get us, us driving back to drop them off and heading back out again. After 250 miles they would charge us 25 cents a mile.. A MILE! OK - that plan was off the table and we had wasted an hour thinking we had a plan!

Needless to say there were no cars available in either Vegas or St. George. I called the San Diego hotel to cancel. I explained the situation and they refunded every dime of the hotel charges and told us we had a year to use the San Diego Zoo tickets. So lucky because we had splurged and got a 2 bedroom suite for our stay in California. I'll definitely be staying there in the future - great customer service (If you're interested it's the Residence Inn in San Diego). We called my parents and they were able to grab our trailer and come rescue us... YEAH we were going to get home! Unfortunately, they wouldn't be able to get to us until that night and we'd leave the following morning for home.

What do you do with 3 kids in Mesquite? I don't really know - it's not a place I could find too much to do for 2 adults let alone little ones. Here's what we did...

We hung out in the hotel for a while.

Went to a small arcade and spent about an hour - the kids came away with LOTS of little arcade toys so that provided another hour of entertainment.

We hung out in the hotel for a while.

Went to a buffet for lunch - that would take longer right??? Nope! Kids were tired of being cooped up so we were in and out as quickly as possible.

We hung out in the hotel for a while.

Elsha needed a nap badly so I kicked the boys out of the room in the afternoon. They had fun bowling... Jaxson won 2 out of 3 games!
 


Xander - this is bowling, not soccer. Actually he did really good despite his unique way of getting the ball down the lane. If he wasn't kicking it he was throwing it from over his shoulder.

Then we tried something new and hung out in the hotel some more :)

We walked to the nearest store (Walgreens) and bought some more toys.

Oh wait this was exciting... We hung out in the hotel for a while. hee hee


WHAT AN ADVENTURE!  We had fun just hanging out together though.  Any way you make a memory is a good way in my opinion.

Now we have tickets to the San Diego Zoo that need to be used... We're thinking Christmas time but with our luck lately on vacations I'm a little hesitant. We'll be praying for no food poisoning, no obnoxious trains at night, and no car troubles on our next outing!