Chapter One: Life is a Beach

We escaped. Even if it was only for five days, we still escaped. Last week we left the 60 mph winds of the tundra for the wonders of San Diego, albeit a somewhat chilly San Diego. What is it with us, really? Are we destined to live with cold forever more? It seems that since we moved to the tundra we tend to bring the cold weather with us, like when we visited Utah for Spring Break. The weather had been beautiful the week before and then we show up and what do you think happened? It snowed. So now we went to San Diego, the land of the perfect temperature according to my sister Dana who spent a few years living there, and we were hard pressed to find a day that wasn't a bit on the nippy side. But don't think for a minute that that deterred us from any fun. In fact, due to the thickened skin we seemed to have grown (at least William and the kids have thick skin, I, on the other hand, still suffer from temperature distress disorder which means that if the temperature is off just one degree from perfect it is seriously uncomfortable) we had a super vacation filled to the brim with fantastic adventures! Of course it was a very full schedule; we had an itnerary we had to keep to, although I did neglet to type it up using military time as my dad would have done.

This particular vacation was in connection with a conference William attended at the Hotel Del Coronado, or rather, as it is lovingly referred to time and again on the documentary played over and over on one of the hotel channels, "The Del." So thanks to William's company, we spent three fabulous nights in San Diego's most famous historic hotel. Day one was spent exploring the fabulous "Del" which included a wonderful garden exhibit of Dr. Suess sculptures and playing on one of San Diego finest stretches of land, otherwise known as a beach. And because we live in a land-locked tundra this was a particularly great activity. I found myself keeping a particularly close eye on Mitchell because the water seems to bring out the dare-devil in that child. It reminded me a bit of last summer when he decided that the high dive was the place for him and he would run as fast as he could from the water to the diving board and then to the water over and over and over again. Luke, however dug the sand. And Jane, well she loved it all.

So while William schmoozed and ate good food with other attorneys, we hardly ate anything but the sun. It was great but not so great that we didn't want to make a lunchtime excursion to La Jolla to see the seals at the Children's pool. I might add that on the day we visited the city still had the rope in place encouraging people to stay away from the seals, but the rope came down the very next day due to litigation brought by concerned citizens who wanted to swim in the poop infested waters with the seals. Those dang attorneys!



Keeping to our itenerary, we returned to the beach for scheduled relaxation. And we did relax. Well, Jane and Mitchell relaxed, Luke bounced because he thinks he's Tigger and that's all he does at times, and I actually found myself feeling quite hawkish until William was able to join us and he could run constantly in and out of the water that was off a degree or two with the older kids. So other than leaving the hotel to find a less expensive dinner that ended up costing as much as it would have at "The Del" but tasting far inferior, we had a wonderful first day.