Taking the girlies to San Diego

Since we didn't take the girls on the cruise this summer, D had promised them their own trip to the San Diego Zoo and I asked if we could throw in the beach as well.  We had so much fun with them. They are young, and excited about anything, enthusiastic, grateful and easy to please.  Plus, we both felt really young walking around with just two young girls. :)

The girls and I played in the sand and looked for seashells.  The shells are pathetic, but to young girls that don't know any better, they were thrilled.  The sand felt so good on our feet and I couldn't help feeling a little giddy when I saw a sandpiper walking along the water.

After arriving at our hotel, the girls got all excited knowing the "mint ladies" would put mints on our pillows each night.  Even though they've been to several hotels and have never received mints on their pillows, they remember me telling them that we got mints on our pillows each night on the cruise and I had given them all of mine that I had saved.  So, with it being their trip, I told D that we needed something to appear on their pillows that night so that they felt special.  Upon leaving the Outback Steakhouse for dinner, I saw a basket of cheapo small suckers and grabbed two.  When D took the girls down a different hall at the hotel, I sneaked into our room and put the suckers on the girls' pillows.  They were thrilled after walking in and seeing that the "mint ladies" had been to their room.  That's a perfect example of how fun it was with the girls.  So dang cute.

The next morning we went to the zoo.  When we went to pay we found out that all children are free in the month of October.  Score!  That saved $38 a girl.  We were prepared to rent a stroller for the day because one of the girls tends to um, let's just say, whine and complain a lot when walking around.  But, the girls were troopers and we basically covered the entire zoo.  We had fun riding the bus around and the ski lift things were awesome to the girls.  They were cute eating all of my healthy snacks that I had packed for the day and never asked, "Where are we going to eat?"  Just cute and happy and satisfied with good food.  Throughout the day they would say that it was the best day of their lives.  D and I would look at each other and smile.  So much fun.

When seeing the hippo, S said, "Wow, he needs to go to the dentist."

I'm happy to report that the gorilla didn't eat his poop.  Happy day.

Just because being a ding dong every once in awhile is kind of fun.

We knew we could call it a day at the zoo when every snake, bird and lizard began looking like the last one.  So, we headed to the souvenir shops, picked out a couple things for each girl and headed home.