Mission: San Diego Wild Animal Park

At Thanksgiving Rachelle was giving away little videos for toddlers and babies from Baby Genius.

We got one titled Baby Animals and it has a little over half an hour of footage of baby animals and songs to go with them.  The footage was shot at the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Wild Animal Park (which is now the San Diego Safari Park), and the video shamelessly  promotes the two parks during the footage. Since January, James has been asking to go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park to see baby animals.  This kid is truly my son.

So, what's a parent to do?  Why, we planned a vacation to San Diego of course :)

 We left on Monday, and got to LasVegas that night and got to spend it at Cory and Karissa's new house.  Thank you guys.  Tuesday we were able to spend some time with Cory (Karissa left for work early, and it was spring break for Cory who's a teacher) before leaving for the last six hour drive to San Diego. He fed the kids a favorite for lunch of mac and cheese, and they were happy.

Tuesday night we went to the pool shortly after arriving at the hotel.

They liked having their feet in like Daddy:)

Wednesday morning we got ready early and headed first to the airport to pick up my mom!

We were able to fly her out to meet us and go the Wild Animal Park as well.

As soon as we had her we headed over to Escondido and started the day.

 Checking out meerkats 

 James wore his monkey backpack all day, and he wanted a tail and to be a monkey.

Since Jack didn't have one, James started calling him a gorilla, which Jack promptly started saying and was then happy he didn't have a tail. 

From the baby animals video we learned that one of the differences between an ape and a monkey is that apes do not have tails while monkeys do.

And gorillas are apes.

 Baby gorilla

 The whole gorilla family got to eat some treats of nuts and fruits. 

 Jack loves eagles right now, and says it over and over (actually all morning on the way to the Wild Animal Park, that is what he wanted to see most).  Most birds though he calls eagles, so the bird show was a perfect place for this young guy.  He enjoyed getting a drink before the show started.

 The bird show did not disappoint!

Jack would "oh" and "ah" the loudest out of that whole auditorium, it was pretty adorable.

 Old friends from Provo, the Williams', now live in Escondido, so it was so neat that Michelle could meet us at the Wild Animal Park with her two boys and mom and grandma.

She couldn't stay as long as we did, but that was okay because then we got to go to her house for dinner that night!  It was so great to see them, and we realized that we really miss seeing them more often.  It was a good trip and we promised to keep in better touch :)  

Thanks for coming to the park with us Michelle!

 Next we took the tram around the park, and as proof, you can see that it wasn't all fun and games :)

Waiting in line for our turn was not something on the top of Jack's fun list that day.

 But when we put him down he was a little better

 Checking out giraffes 

 Jack looking at the animals too

 And then the poor little guy passed out

This was a pretty great photo that they took of us before we were too far into the line for the tram, so Grammies got it for us and her as an awesome souvenir of the day.

It is now proudly on our fridge and there's another bigger one in the boys' room.

 These two shared some frozen pineapple near the elephants

 Such good little sharers and brothers

 Grammies and Jack checking out those really big elephants

 James and Daddy

 He enjoyed lunch too :)

 The petting zoo part was great.

James liked to pet the goats, and even got to brush them.

Jack was working up his courage the whole time to try to touch them.

He didn't quite get there, but we'll try again someday

 

James and Daddy made a squished penny with a panda on it.

The last thing we did that day at the wild animal park was the carousel

 James chose the baby panda to ride.

Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel, picked up Nathan's roadbike (yes, he brought it, for riding in the great weather!), and headed over to the Williams' for dinner.  Nathan and Ryan went biking, and the rest of us ate while they were out. 

Overall it was a great day, and only didn't end well when Jack got sick all over me, while we were still at their house, and Nathan was still on a bike ride.

Poor little guy, he seems to only get sick when we go on vacations (remember Thanksgiving?)

The next day he had to get over the sickness, or so we hoped so that we could still have more fun (and we hoped no one else would get it).