San Deigo Part 4

On Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel and headed down to visit the San Diego Mormon Battalion Historic Site.   While we waited for our tour to begin, the kids enjoyed panning for gold (they got to take a few pieces home) and learning the art of brick making. 

The tour was not what I expected.  We were part of an interactive story about the Mormon Battalion, and each room we went to was a different scene.  It was pretty cool, especially for the kids. See more pics here.

A definite must see on our trip was the San Diego LDS Temple.  We had wanted to drive by it at night but it never worked out; so on our way back we made sure to visit the temple grounds.   I think it is one of the prettiest temples. To learn more about temples click here

At the temple we said our good-byes to Cory's family and grabbed some lunch before starting our long ride home.  Samantha and Xavier fell right to sleep just as we pulled onto the freeway, and not long after Isaiah followed.  We smiled at each other thinking that the ride home would be a breeze.  Xavier's nap lasted only 30 minutes and he woke up crying.  No amount of coaxing would get him to stop and unfortunately Sam woke up.  We pulled off to get him to calm down and then headed back on our way.  By the time we got into Los Angeles Sam needed to get out of her car seat, so we finally  stopped in some ghetto town at a Target for a pit stop.  Isaiah was still asleep so I feed her while Santiago took Xavier to the restroom.  Once we hit the grapevine Isaiah woke up and Xavier was starting to whine a lot.  We tried to keep him happy as much as we could until we pulled into Bakersfield and stopped for dinner.  Sam had still not fallen back asleep by then.  We ate, I fed Sam, and then we put a movie on for them and headed home.  She thankfully fell asleep soon after that and we reached our home around 10pm.  It ended up being about a 7 1/2 hr trip.  Despite the ride home, I think it was a successful vacation.  Someday I think we would love to live in the San Diego area.  Everyplace we went was so clean and of course the scenery was beautiful!  I can remember going to Disneyland when I was around Isaiah's age so I hope that he will remember these trips also.  I'm excited for them to get older so that we can visit more places and do more fun things.  We would love to take them to Ecuador but that will be in a few years when they are easier to travel with!