October Break- Mission Beach

 

We spent October Break with my side of the family in San Diego!

This is no easy feat finding a place big enough for all of us.
Making sure we are all 100% comfortable.

We have bounced all over the southern coast of CA as we outgrow the last
"perfect" beach house.

Because of that, this may have been the last beach trip all together.
Who knows... but lets hope not as the cousins would be sad to see this
tradition end!  I love that they all hang together, no matter the age!

My dad always seems to pull through and figure it out for us!
We were spoiled this trip!

He rented out a building that had 4 separate units.
 All lined up next to each other.

All you had to do was walk across the boardwalk and there was the beach!

For referencing, the address was:
3607 Ocean Front Walk, San Diego 92109
Right in front of lifeguard tower 18.

I loved the location as it was in the middle of the pier and Belmont Park.
You didn't have the public swarming in and making it crowded.

Everything was still very walkable.

Things to remember:
We were there during a freaky heat wave.
We were bakin' like toasted cheesers, it was HOT!

And not all of our units had air conditioning.
A couple of my brothers went and bought window cooling units so they could 
sleep without drowning in their sweat!

This is the LAST October break without Lane!
He will get to join us next year!!

We have hit the jackpot era of our kids not needing us!
I think I sprayed a kid with sunscreen ONCE!

Like... we are living the dream, ha!

We started the week with a heat wave, then ended the week with a hurricane!

OH!!
And on one of our morning walks, Casey and I reached the pier to have it caution taped
off. There was a shooting homicide that happend earlier that morning.

You can't make this stuff up!

 Since our kids slept in, we got what felt like morning dates.
We would walk the boardwalk and get our breakfast.

Casey and I didn't know it in this picture, but we unintentionally started an acai crawl
throughout the area! 

I jumped up and down when I saw they had a Bonzai Bowl!

He is a kid magnet!

This ice cream man hit the jackpot with us!

Stephanies family and I stuck together the most.
We didn't want to cook, and have older children who don't melt down in restaurants

anymore:) We would walk to eat during some epic sunsets.

Ode to General Conference biscuits and gravy!

Funky Lemon with all the girls!

My mom hired a professional photographer to take pictures...

which happened to be at homicide pier, lol!

News vans were still in the area, and a news man came up to us wondering if 

we were relatives of the victim!

This guy in the background could have cared less that he was the focal point.

We can't wait to get the pictures back:)

My dad and his stretching...

This morning he was sprawled out on the table!

Which I can't blame him, the floor was disgusting by this point in the week.

These were a top contender!

I brought a henna tattoo kit.

I was thinking the teenagers would like it, but the littles sure were inking

themselves up!

We missed the San Diego temple open house this Summer.

It was fun to let the kids do baptisms!

Leah and Shaun came for the first half of the week!

They stayed in their own place, but walked down and hung with us

during the day!

Sea World day!!

No babies meant, I was riding the rides again!
Which, is mostly all you can do now that animal activists took away the point of Sea World!

Phil's BBQ will always and forever have my whole heart!

Ding, ding, ding!

Juice Wave, won our vote for best acai!

Look at the finely chopped fruit, beautiful!

With homemade granola and fresh squeezed juice in the cutest glass bottle... 

We have matured enough to trade sand shovels for BOOKS?!

Casey speaking his Spanglish to our ice cream amigo!

He knew zero English.

I love the he got some actual relaxation time on this trip.

He was conked out he didn't even realize we were starting to clean up, ha!

I neeeeeeded Bonzai one more time!

We let the girls walk down with us to get a bowl.

Pizza on the beach for our last night.

Getting a picture with your almost 17 year son is impossible!

Our souvenir of the week was getting an ant infestation in our car, AGHH!!!
We must have parked right over a nest in the lot the car sat in for a few days.