Last summer, the day after our friends from Finland left Vancouver, we headed to the Portland Airport to board a plane for San Diego. Elvin's family was having a reunion down there and so off we went!
Everyone had to help carry the assortment of bags and booster seats!
Once in San Diego, we drove around a little bit. The reunion was actually in La Jolla which is a little north of San Diego, and where Emily and Elvin went to college. We ate lunch at Island's, which is a burger and fish taco joint that Mommy and Daddy used to frequent as college students!
And the hotel we stayed at overlooked the La Jolla Shores beach--which is the beach we went to as college students to "study." It was a blast from the past to visit this beach!
In the evening, the kids went out to check out the water. Unlike the water on the Oregon coast, the water in San Diego was actually...NOT cold! (However, our relatives who live in Brazil commented that the water seemed cold to them!)
Karina was having a moment of deep thought as she stared off into the sunset.
The next day, the entire extended family--about 40 people--went out onto the beach to play some games. We started off with a water balloon toss. Gabe ended up getting soaked!
Nai-nai (Elvin's mom) ended up being able to toss and catch longest without having her balloon explode out of the whole group! She must have been secretly practicing in her spare time.
Later, with the extra leftover water balloons, the situation devolved into an all out water balloon war. There were water balloons been thrown indiscriminately by young and old alike.
Later in the day, one of Elvin's cousins brought out a soccer ball.
Gabe is absolutely obsessed with playing soccer and joined right in.
After washing up, we went to the mall for lunch and ended up in this ice cream shop for dessert. This was the UTC Mall and much more fancy than when we went there during our college days.
It sells ice cream...and a plethora of other knick knacks.
We found an Havaiana store and marveled at how these sandals are so trendy now.
Before dinner, the entire clan met in the courtyard for a posed photo. It took a lot of coordination to get everyone posed just right. Elvin took a selfie during the process.
And here is the product! There were relatives from California and also some that flew in from far away places such as Indianapolis, Minneapolis, New York, and even Brazil!
We had a very nice catered dinner out on the beach. There was lots of yummy food. Afterwards, as the adults sat around and talked, the kids played in the sand.
We took the opportunity to take a family photo on the beach.
And then it was dessert time, of which there was a lot! The kids were very excited. Can you see Gabriel hiding from the camera? Look in the bottom left corner...
We had three birthdays that week, including Eliana's, and so the three got to celebrate it together. Also having a birthday was Eliana's cousin twice removed and Elvin's uncle.
We stayed out very late that evening and the kids had lots of fun.
Gabe had so much fun, in fact, that sometime during the night of running around, he kicked off his sandals, but then later on we found only one but not the other; and he could not remember where he left it. We looked and looked that night but could not find them, and assumed there were buried in the sand somewhere.
The next day, he was still sad they were missing, so Elvin went out looking for them. He found it about 40 feet away from where the festivities were. Only about 2 inches of the sandal was sticking out above the sand.
The next morning, on Sunday, it was the last day together and we all had breakfast together at a nearby cafe. For some reason, Elvin's family feels a need to take a picture of all the kids together and so once again, they were subjected to that.
Here is the crazy paparazzi taking pictures.
Here we are saying good bye to the hotel!
The next day, we took the kids to visit Legoland. Both Gabe and Karina are really into Legos so we thought that they would enjoy the park.
They have little cars that the kids got to drive by themselves.
There was a little race track for younger kids Xiao Yu's age.
They had another ride where you had to pump a handle up and down to make the police car or fire truck go. You race against other cars.
They had life size statues of various figures.
Elvin found a Chewbacca.
There was a artificial lake where for two dollars you could drive RC boats.
In the Lego city area, they have a Lego Friends exhibit. Karina has lots of Lego friends sets, so she enjoyed checking that out.
There was a little ride with airplanes that the kids liked.
There was another ride with horses. Eliana was a bit to old for this ride!
In this ride, you got totally soaked. Which was fine because it was blazing hot that day. Elvin, Eliana and Karina are in the middle row in this picture.
Can you spot them at all?
We stayed at a Air BnB with Elvin's family and played lots of games together.
Karina played a game against Uncle Leslie called Goblet Gobblers. It's like tic tac toe, but there are various sized pieces and you can use a bigger piece to "gobble" a smaller piece from the opposing side.
In another game, called Set, you had to spot patterns in the cards. Everyone got into this game.
The next day we went to Sea World. The only down side was that it was still very hot. The dolphin show was pretty impressive.
There was an exhibit with a lot of sharks swimming around.
There was another area where you could pet nurse sharks.
The killer whale show also was impressive. It's amazing that these amazing can generate so much speed.
We had to drink lots of water to stay hydrated and also poured water onto our shirts to stay cool!
We had In N Out for dinner one night. Elvin had been planning to eat In N Out while we were in San Diego for weeks before the trip. The kids thought it was "fine", but...Elvin really enjoyed it!
On our last day in San Diego, we visited our old college UCSD. These are the apartments that we used to live in. Elvin used to live in the apartment on the second story, on the left side.
We then walked to the walkway leading up to the library and the kids played around the sculptures. These spheres don't actually move, but Karina is trying to move it anyway.
Each graduating class has an inscription and Elvin is laying on the one for the year we graduated.
Here is the famous library that is shaped like a tree (or some people say it's shaped like a space ship.) The scraggly looking tree in front of the library is a sculpture made out of metal.
The library is called the Geisel Library, which is Dr. Seuss' real name. He made a big donation and so got the library named after him. The library has an exhibit with some of his work, including lots of original drawings.
It also had this--a charging station for smart phones. This is something that was NOT around back when Emily and Elvin were college students! Smartphones weren't invented yet. Does that make us old?
We also visited the dorms we used to live in during freshman year. Emily lived on the fifth floor of Argo Hall. This dreary cinderblock dormitory is still there today!
And before heading off to the airport, we went to the food court to eat lunch. There were considerably more restaurants and a wider selection compared to twenty years ago. The kids had Panda Express and Izze!
And finally we made it home! We had been looking to buy a sun hat for Karina the whole time we were in San Diego. We looked in Legoland, and Sea World, and at the mall but couldn't find anything she liked. And at a random shop in the PDX airport, we finally found one out of all places!!!
Here is the shuttle ride back, which the kids absolutely love because they don't have to wear any seat belts or be strapped to car seats.
Bye, San Diego! We had a good time!
No comments:
Post a Comment