San Diego Trip - Wednesday

 

Wednesday was a low-key day in comparison. We started the morning by visiting the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum since it was right there on Miramar Air Base where we were staying. The museum is open to the public (we actually had to leave the base in order to get to the museum) but it has a great display of aviation machines including planes and helicopters. 

The kids loves running around and checking out all the planes. Benjamin, in particular, is a big fan of anything with wheels. The kids had a scavenger hunt to find all the different symbols on the planes.

 Benjamin and this statue were the same size which was pretty cute.

After the airplane museum, I drove David and the kids back to our hotel room and then I drove to Poway to meet my dear friend Nicole for lunch at the Wholly Crepe, a restaurant located in Poway's old town district. The crepes were delightful and we had a great time catching up. But like an idiot, we forgot to take a photo as evidence. 

After our lunch, we drove to Nicole's parents' house to pick up Nicole's newborn son. I got to hold him because I love, love, love newborns. I know many people don't love the infant stage, but it's one of my favorites. I need to get in newborn love whenever I can since I don't plan on having more tiny humans myself. 

I returned back to the hotel room where I discovered David and Benjamin napping and the girls bouncing off the wall. I took Adelaide and Zara to the playground across the street from our hotel. After a little playtime, we woke the others up so we could go to the beach. 

The kids adore the beach, sand, and water and we had promised that we'd go to the beach at least one more time before we left. 

We went to La Jolla Shores, my favorite beach. David and the kids got right to work digging a big hole and warding off the encroaching tide. 

The beach was still really crowded for being a late Wednesday afternoon. We only had a small patch of sand to ourselves but we had to keep scooting back because of the tide. 

The kids adore the beach and didn't want to leave, but we didn't want to stay too late either. We had a big day the next day. We packed up and headed home, stopping at In-N-Out for our last meal there. 

It was a good day.

Charleston - Day Four

Day Four - More Historic Houses and Folly Beach

I anxiously watched the weather all week, trying to find the perfect day for a beach trip. But the weather predictions kept changing on me, promising rain one day, sunny skies the next. Though rain was predicted for Thursday afternoon, we decided to chance it and head to the beach on Thursday afternoon.

But first, we needed to knock off two more historic houses in the city. These homes were just two blocks apart from one another in the south of Broad section of town (the ritzy part). Our first stop was the Nathaniel Russell House which features a three story free standing spiral staircase which is very impressive and which no one is allowed to walk on.

It was built by wealthy shipping merchant Nathaniel Russell in 1808 and is one of America's most important Neoclassical homes.

It stayed in the family until 1857 when it was purchased by Robert Allston, a rice planter, who lived in the mansion while he was governor. 

It was a boarding school from 1870 to 1905 and was in jeopardy of being parceled off or torn down in 1955 when it was saved by the Historic Charleston Foundation.

The house has been beautifully restored and is lavishly decorated and furnished. The docent was more than knowledgeable but the tour dragged a little between stops as he talked on and on. I loved the historical detail, but the kids were growing restless.

The gardens were beautiful as well. Our next stop--the Heyward-Washington House--was only two blocks away.

The Georgian double house was built in 1772 by Thomas Heyward Jr., one of the youngest signers of the Declaration though it was the third house to stand on the site. It was rented and used exclusively by George Washington during his 1791 tour of the United States where he stayed for 8 days. 

Thomas Heyward sold the house in 1794 to John F. Grimke, a Revolutionary War officer and the father of Sarah and Angeline Grimke, who would become famous abolitionists and suffragettes.

 It currently houses the priceless Holmes Bookcase, considered one of the finest and best preserved pieces of Colonial furniture.

After the Grimkes, the house was considerably changed when a baker purchased the house and put his shop on the ground floor. It was acquired by the Charleston Museum in 1929.

It also has a beautiful backyard garden and an 18th century kitchen and stable. 

I attempted to take a family photo. It's pretty much impossible to achieve. After our two tours, we headed back to our AirBnB and ate lunch before heading further south to Folly Beach. The skies were still overcast but the promised rain never came. The temperature was still in the low 80s and the beach was sparsely populated and the water warm. We found a nice spot with a small pool where we attempted to build sandcastles.

 Benjamin seemed to enjoy his first trip to the beach. He loved the water.

We went for a walk along the beach and collected sea shells. The water slowly rose up the beach, reclaiming our sand structures and nearly soaking our blanket of stuff. (David valiantly saved it just in time.) We spent a lovely three hours there. I almost wish we had come to the beach earlier and maybe several times during our trip. The kids, of course, loved it and the weather was perfect and it was delightful to be there on a day when so few other people were crowding its shores. And I always forget how warm the Atlantic is compared to the Pacific Ocean where I grew up.

That night we finally got the foretold rain in the form of a very impressive thunderstorm. Of course, it came at 3am and woke up all the kids but I love a good Southern storm.

The Beach

While we were in San Diego, we went to La Jolla Shores, one of my favorite beaches in San Diego to give Zara her first experience with sand and surf. She greatly enjoyed the sand part and was tolerant of the surf part but all in all, we had a great time. Zara loved playing in the sand--eating the sand, mostly--and knocking down all the sandcastles that David built for her. David tried to bury Zara on many occasions, which she didn't mind in the least, because it brought her that much closer to more delicious sand. David also built a sea turtle out of sand which I found rather impressive because it actually does look like a sea turtle and many of David's other artistic endeavors don't always resemble what they're supposed to. (Unless he's made them out of Legos. He's a Lego master.) Here are a few of my favorite photos from the beach. Hopefully, I'll get up more photos from our road trip soon.