kansas

we're back home. other than a bumpy half hour into denver, the flights went well. it sounded like pretty much everyone threw up on the flight before us that we took out of denver. i'm so thankful the turbulence wasn't too bad for us. both kids even did a pretty good job of sitting still in our seats. and i'm glad joshua decided to carry on our car seat rather than check it since our bags didn't make it to kansas city. lazarus is sound asleep. evalana and daddy are making a frozen pizza; we're very hungry since we didn't have any time to buy lunch. evalana says she's happy to be home, but she wishes we were still in California. we had such a good time. thanks tompa and grandma nancy! i'm working on adding tompa's pictures to the zoo and sea world posts now.

Legoland

Tuesday evening Tompa and Grandma Nancy left since they had a meeting in Arizona Wednesday and Thursday. We stayed in the hotel another night and then went to Legoland on Wednesday. Evalana says Legoland was her favorite place we went, although she was pretty hesitant to ride many of the rides, especially since Lazarus wasn't big enough for  most of them. I'd guess that if Lazarus went in a few years, he'd be riding all the roller-coasters, but we had a calmer visit.

We took highway 101 along the coast to get to Legoland. 

 

 

Evalana said she didn't want to ride this train, but Lazarus was asking to go, so i took him, and then Evalana also wanted to ride it, once she saw it didn't have a tunnel. 

 

  

 She said her favorite ride was this boat ride, other than the short tunnel.

 

We also got to go in the aquarium that was attached to Legoland, and, other than a puppet show that started out with a startle and really scared Lazarus, it was great for the kids. Lazarus loves watching fish.

 

 

After Legoland, we stopped for some fresh strawberries and a quick ocean visit before heading back to Palm Springs.

Joshua has some pictures and videos on his camera i'll hopefully be able to add soon.

sea world

Tuesday we went to Sea World, the highlight of our San Diego trip. It's pretty amazing to see big Orca dolphins!

Lazarus had a hard time sitting still through the shows, but he loved walking around and looking at all the fish.

polar bears

lazarus loved this real ice wall. after that he touched every wall to see if it was cold.

i really liked the walrus

beluga whale

They had a Sesame Street play area that the kids enjoyed. The first thing we did was a Sesame Street 4D movie, which was fun--the seats vibrated, wind blew, bubbles came down, and it was funny to see Lazarus try to grab a duckie and a flying cookie that seemed to come at us. We had a great time at Sea World, getting to see animals we don't get to see in Kansas. They had stroller parking outside of all the shows and exhibits, which made it easier to walk around without a crowd of strollers in everything, although the exit was usually a little walk away from where the strollers were left. And i was glad i had a bag to carry in the stuff we needed when we left the stroller. Evalana would have gotten tired of walking and heavy to carry, so i was very glad we had a stroller. Lazarus refuses to ride in the stroller, otherwise it would have been nice to not have to carry/chase him everywhere.
Some pictures from tompa:

san diego zoo

Monday morning we drove from La Quinta to San Diego to go to the zoo with Tompa and Grandma Nancy. The kids napped most of the way, and most of the drive was beautiful.

The zoo was a little crowded since it was President's Day, but it wasn't too bad. We started with a ride on the Skyfari.

 

 

Lazarus said his favorite part of the zoo was the elephants and the fish.

Evalana said her favorite animal was the takins. My favorite was the okapi and pandas. Daddy liked the rhinos.
We loved our time at the zoo. They had animals and plants all over the place, and they had many unique animals we'd never seen before. As far as a zoo experience, though, i was surprised to find that we prefer the Omaha Zoo.

joshua has some videos and pictures on his phone i'll hopefully be able to get soon.


Pictures from Tompa: