San Diego

We finally got brave enough to venture out on an amusement park vacation. The thought of dragging our two boys through lines, crowds and baking heat was terrifying, but we decided to give it a shot. We woke the boys up early and crossed our fingers that we'd clear the standby list and get on a flight. We lucked out, and after driving to the aiport, then flying to San Diego, then taking a bus to the rental car place, then driving to our hotel, then swimming, this is what happened: Tukker didn't even make it back up to the hotel room before zonking out. He crashed while I warmed him up in the hot tub, then stayed asleep while Caulder finished swimming, didn't budge when we carried him back up to the room, and kept sleeping for about 2 hours after we tucked him in bed.

After we all recovered from our comas we drove down to La Jolla Cove to see the sea lions and tidepools. I love it there. I wanted to spend more time there, but Tukker was hungry and kept begging for donuts the whole time. We finally caved and drove 15 minutes out of our way to find a Krispy Kreme. When we drove into the parking lot and he saw the pictures of all the donuts on the windows he almost exploded with sheer excitement. I'm pretty sure that was the highlight of his trip.




On the way back to our hotel Caulder stopped talking for about 15.2 seconds. We should have known something was seriously wrong when he actually went silent long enough to take a breath, but before we had a chance to enjoy the rare moment of quiet he launched a stream of vomit all over the rental car. When he finally stopped puking he said, "Oh man, how did that happen?" and then started talking again.

We got him up to the room, put him in the tub, and then poor Cole had to go back to the parking garage to try to clean up the car. Bless him. CJ didn't puke any more after that, but he had an explosion of an even more horrific nature in his sleep that night... all over the hotel room bed. So the next morning we had a pile of wretched-smelling bedding in the hallway, a mound of puke-covered towels in the bathroom, and a room that smelled worse than a frat house after an all-night bender. The Botts know how to par-tay. I apologized profusely to the cleaning lady, then we slunk back out to the Avis vomit rocket to continue our vacation while the poor maid cleaned everything up.

CJ was feeling much better, thankfully, so we headed to Sea World. Caulder thought the animals were amazing. He kept telling us all about how killer whales are actually a type of dolphin and the walrus was probably swimming on the bottom of the tank because he was using his whiskers to look for clams to eat and clown fish and sea anemone live in a symbiotic relationship. Thank you, PBS.

Tukker, on the other hand, just wanted to talk about ice cream as he attempted to climb in the shark tank. We spent some time with Shamu.

But these guys really stole the show:

The sea lion show was hilarious. My favorite part about it was seeing this little guy's face light up:

I'm pretty sure Cole enjoyed it more than any of the kids in the entire audience. I had more fun laughing at how hard HE was laughing than actually watching the show.

We also spent some time in the shark encounter building:Played with sea stars:And watched Tukk cool off in the splash pad: I think the boys liked the Arctic encounter building best, because it had a polar bear cave they could explore with speakers piping in the sound of a sleeping bear. About every 2 minutes the "bear" would wake up and growl, and then they'd run screaming out of the cave and laugh their guts out. I think they did that for about a half hour.

On day 3 we stayed in Carlsbad and visited Lego Land. We didn't tell Caulder we were taking him there until the night before. He was so excited he could barely stand it. The dude is a serious Lego freak. There were quite a few rides that Tukker was too little to go on. He was not happy about this. He pitched a giant fit, tried to run away, then pouted for about an hour. Luckily we found some cars he could drive, so he cheered up for a few minutes.

California was also experiencing a heat wave that day, and it was about 90 degrees. You already know how Caulder feels about getting hot, so you can imagine how much fun he was having around high noon.

Star Wars Mini Land seemed to help, though. He switched into droid mode, and apparently the heat doesn't bother droids as much as it does humans, so that was good.Then both boys got hungry, hot, and tired, and things went downhill rapidly. We almost had to beat them publicly, and we vowed we'd never do an amusement park again. Ever. Then we had a snack and a drink and we magically all felt better.

The rest of the day went much better, especially when we took the kiddos to The Big Shop (possibly the world's biggets Lego store) and told them they could pick out a souvenir. Caulder almost fainted when he saw all the options. He had a list of about 542 Lego sets he wanted to buy, plus a styrofoam sword, shield, and mask set. We would have had to take out a second mortgage on our house to afford everything he wanted.

Tukker's decision was much easier. He came running up to me yelling "I have dis my prize?!!" with his hand clutched around the most amazing thing he could see in the whole gigantic toy shop: a package of Rolos. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed those Rolos even more than Caulder enjoyed his new Star Wars Lego ship. Tukk is a man after my own heart.

So despite the puking, pooping, heat wave, billions of dollars spent, and near child throttling episode at Lego Land, the trip was totally worth it, because the night before we flew home Caulder made this list. It says "Going to Sea World" and "Going to Lego Land": He told us it's his list of his best days ever.