We didn't have anything left on our "to do" list so we just took it easy this day. We slept in, got up and got ready for the day before leaving for our last outing of the vacation. We drove up to Mission Beach. Although we didn't really know what we wanted to do there, we did know we just wanted to walk along the walkway and enjoy the sun/breeze/beach.
...we walked...and walked....and walked...
We parked at the south "end" by the roller coaster and walked north toward the pier.
By the time we made it to the pier, we were all getting hungry and tired (we needed to sit somewhere for a short time). I carried Kaiya for much of the walk and Jer still has days when his plantar fasciaitis flares up immensely, this became one of those days.
It was about 11:30 so we walked over to Main Street and ate at the Denny's (it was nice to just sit and drink water). Across the street to the west was a little ice cream shop that we wanted to try after eating lunch.
The Baked Bear: Custom Ice Cream Sandwiches was a nice little spot to stop for a sweet treat. They can put your individual flavor of ice cream in between cookies/brownies/waffles and create your own personalized ice cream sandwich.
We walked the one street back over to the walkway and there sat to enjoy our sweets.
Kaiya and I had 2 funfetti cookies with strawberry cheesecake ice cream... sharing it was just enough for the two of us. Kotah had chocolate chip cookies with mint chocolate chip ice cream. Kenai had funfetti cookies with vanilla ice cream. Jeremiah had white macadamia nut cookies with cookie dough ice cream. While this was a yummy dessert, it isn't anything special that you yourself couldn't make on your own.
Upon completion of our ice cream sandwiches we began our long walk back to the Jeep. After getting back to the parking lot I looked up how far we had walked... it was 2 miles down and 2 miles back. The trek back didn't seem quite as long after the boys each found some discarded boogie boar.. although I can't know for certain, I think they actually made off with one that wasn't intentionally left for the taking...
That night at the beach (a beach night we hadn't planned on having, but HAD TO) the kids spent our last night in San Diego learning how to "catch the waves"... They would take turns and shared the boards better than I expected them to do.
The boys were sad when it was time to leave. They knew it would be a long time before we'd be back to the beaches with such fun waves to play in.
Friday, April 3
Knowing we had a 12 hour drive to get home we checked out of the Lodge at 5:20AM. The kids slept for the first section of our drive. The second section was pretty mellow. Leaving Vegas at 11:15 I started my turn to drive. Jeremiah got in the back between Kaiya and Kenai... ALL 3 of them slept until Cedar City.
Leaving Cedar and feeling like we were already "almost home".
We didn't get home until close to 7 (thank you Utah County construction traffic, accident in said construction zone and "rush hour traffic" out of SLC.) It was a really great drive for all of us. We didn't take our DVD players this time on our drive because we wanted the kids to pay more attention to their surroundings. We played the "License Plate Game" and found almost every state's plate, a few Canadian plates as well as a few from Mexico during our time in San Diego/driving home.
This I know, EVERY family needs to take a "big" family vacation every year.
I also believe that EVERY couple needs to take a "honeymoon" each year to reconnect.
This vacation is something our family needed without really realizing it.
Take the time to invest in your families.
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