San Diego

We are back from a trip to the dreamy palm trees of San Diego.  Coming back from vacation always makes me contemplate the meaning of life.  Why am I here (and not in San Diego)?  Where did I come from (how did I not always live in San Diego)?  Where am I going (preferably back to San Diego)?

There is much to say about this vacation, which usually results in me saying almost nothing (see my last 3 vacation posts here, here, and here), but I'm attempting to be more descriptive this time!

In the space of 5 short days we did the following (good things):

• Visited Sea World, Legoland, the USS Midway, Balboa Park (and about 5 museums therein), and the San Diego Zoo
• Did sealings and baptisms at the San Diego temple
• Visited the Mormon Battalion site & a Catholic mission
• Risked our lives racing go karts
• Rode electric bikes around Coronado Island
• Kayaked and snorkeled in the ocean
• Surfed
• Rode around the harbor on a cruise
• Visited many beaches (La Jolla, Silverstrand, Coronado, and Point Loma)
• Celebrated our 4-Year anniversary
• Ate delicious Mexican food at Old Town
• Spent lots of time in the car with Grandma and Grandpa
• Prank called the family pretending to be President Obama (...you had to have been there)
• Watched Full House marathons every night

In the space of 5 short days, the following (bad things) also happened:

• Scott's wedding ring got lost at sea during a surfing wipe-out. Sniff. 
• Brooke got stung by a sting ray.
• I made the mistake of asking Rach to sunscreen my shoulder.
• Many suffered through blisters from the amount of running walking we were doing.
• It felt like we spent close to $5,000,000 in parking fees.
• We got stuck under a tree during a freak rain storm.
• We went to the wrong museum for an IMAX movie, but it turned out the rest of the family just slept through it anyway.
• A forest fire blocked our route home.

Bruening vacations are clearly the best.  We crammed so much into that week, but who needs R&R on a vacation?  

You know you had a good time when you took 500 photos. Here are some highlights:

Normally I stick with just photos of Scott and I on the blog, since if I tried to include everyone in this family, there would be NO END to the megabytes of this blog, but look at that face! He is the funnest.

Somehow Scott is really good at surfing...who knew?

San Diego 2019

We just got back from a trip to San Diego where we celebrated 8 years of marital bliss! 

I feel like I'm in vacation mode these days because it is just so easy to travel with a 3-year-old and an entrepreneur.  We have some pretty flexible schedules, and I am loving how easy it is to just pack up and take a trip.  Time to start planning the next!

But first--San Diego.  I haven't seen every place in America, but I do feel like Hawaii and San Diego are some of the best.  This time around we did the Zoo, Legoland, and Sea World.  We invited my brother and his family to come along as well.

I think we actually liked Legoland best because our small dictator liked it best.  She was in heaven playing with legos and going on ride after ride.  Also, hopefully I don't become really unpopular here, but Legoland's churros are better than Disneyland's.  This is a fact.

Unfortnately, Ives wasn't all that interested in the zoo.  She mostly just wanted to ride the bus, and it was very difficult to change her frame of mind at that point.  But, eventually we got her on that bus.

This child loves a bus.  She was singing "Wheels on the Bus" the entire ride.

I don't think she was all that impressed by Sea World either.  I think in her mind she doesn't realize that dolphins don't do flips every day, so what's the big deal?  She did like the manta rays of all things and also enjoyed watching the scuba divers vacuum up one of the tanks.  She's a hard one to please...or rather, she's easy to please if you can find the weird things she enjoys?

My favorite part of the trip was definitely the tidepools and beaches.  The beach is very nostalgic to me.  

Some other highlights were-

• Going to the Mormon Battalion Center
• Eating Mexican food in Old Town and having the mariachi guy come sing to Ivy
• Hearing Ivy praying in her pack and play one night that her bed would be softer (broke my heart and made me laugh at the same time)
• Running down the hotel hallways as fast as we could
• Listening to "Welcome to New York" a million times per Ivy's request
• Getting an actual card from Scott for our anniversary (he's not the best at gifts or surprises so this was legitimately awesome for me haha)