Wrapping up a great summer!

We spent the first week of August in San Diego. I have always wanted to visit and see the sights, but I wanted the kids to be big enough to thoroughly enjoy it. It was a 17 hour drive and it went quicker than I thought possible. The Sierra Nevada mountains still had remnants of snow on them and the lakes were beautiful.
After getting there and finding our hotel, we were up bright and early the next day. The kids watch Man vs. Food on the Food Network and wanted to try a few restaurants they had seen on the show. So, our first breakfast was here:

Dallas hamming it up.

Dallas and Liam in front of the Broken Yolk restaurant.

 After a wonderful breakfast, we then Headed toward the USS Midway to take the tour and check out the sights.

This was an awesome tour and I would love to do it again when I had time to listen to everything on the audio tour. The boys loved seeing all of the planes and other aircraft that were on board.

My Men!

I loved this statue.

The boys in the fight simulator.

When we were done with the USS Midway, we headed for the famous San Diego Zoo. How can I put this and not upset a ton of people..... I hated the Zoo. The lines were atrocious, the animals are in tiny viewing areas and the prices were outrageous. I wouldn't recommend this place to anyone. Instead, skip the San Diego Zoo, and go visit the San Diego Safari Park.  It Rocked!

After the disappointment of the zoo, lets just say the boys were not too excited to visit the Safari Park. They quickly changed their minds. We had a great time walking and seeing all of the wildlife. We spent almost 7 hours here. The prices of food here was awful, but the animals more than made up for that.

Sunburned from the day before, I now don the infamous floppy hat.

The boys got a kick out of this baby elephant.

After the Safari Park, we had some time to kill before going back to the hotel, so we headed to Belmont Park.

We had a great time riding rides, checking out the beach and all the little shops on the boardwalk.
  The next day we went to Sea World.

We had so much fun the first 3 days down there, we took the 4th day off and let the kids sleep and play in the hotel pool. We went to Phil's BBQ for lunch/dinner.

This was, I think, the best BBQ I have ever had. I even had ribs. Anyone that knows me, knows that I hate Ribs, these were really good.
The our last day in southern California, we drove up to Anaheim to go to Knott's Berry Farm.

Got Dallas and Liam in the second car on the left, first row of seats.

Aw... Mom.. Not another picture.

We left Knott's Berry Farm and headed north. After a five hour stop in the middle of nowhere Nevada, we made it home the next day. 
We have tons left to do this month and school starts next month officially. Lord, grant me the strength to pull it all together.
Dallas, I and a friend of ours ran the Funnel Cake stand at the "Van's Warped Tour" last night and boy did "my kids" get an education. People watching at an event like this never gets boring.

James is out of town most of next week for work and I am going to buckle down and get the rest of my kids school nailed down. (I hope)