I knew I should have blogged earlier.

We got back into town on Sunday, and now, a lot of the vacation is fogging up in my memory. Of course, that might also be partly due to the fact that it is 5:30 in the morning now, and i have to go back into work.

Anyway. (Really) quick update on how it all went down:

Left on the 5th - later than we probably should have. Got to our KOA campground at near sunset, set up the (complicated) tent in the dark, dealt with a horde of bugs, nearly called off the camping aspect then. (We didn't, but the happiness level at the time was pretty low)
On the 6th - went to the zoo. Neat fact that I did not know before - Apparently "San Diego Zoo" translates into "My feet are killing me". Who knew?
The zoo was neat, but also kinda sad. We spent about 8 or 9 hours there, I think. And by the end of the day we were exhausted. Too much walking. Too much sun. Steph's got good monkey pictures, though, so there's that.
Dinner that night was at the next-door Denny's. Where we were served coupons for "Kids get in free to the SD Zoo" along with the girls' meals. Too little too late. Oh well. We ended up giving them to "the children" (long story, I'll cover it later. Or Steph will.).

7th - went down to Seaport Village near downtown San Diego (don't take my word for that, since I am directionless). Had lunch with Cindy (starshine from the WD) and her son, Patrick. I must say that Patrick is a really cool guy. (Heh.) And it was nice to be able to see Cindy again. They're still on vacation (in fact, today, they are going to Legoland (I'm jealous) and it sounds like they've got a full plate ahead of them. I'm glad that we were both able to make our schedules fit so that we could meet up again. Cindy is good people.
After we parted ways, we did some more shopping at the Seaport Village, and we were going to go look at Old(e?) Town(e?) or Balboa Park, but instead decided to drive up to our hotel near Legoland, since that was the next day's destination. (Oh, yeah, we unpacked the tent and camping stuff that morning.)
The drive up to Carlsbad took FOREVER because apparently everyone decided to drive on the freeway at the same time. California driving is crazy.
Got to the hotel and was quite happy to sleep in a real bed again.

8th - woke up, had breakfast, met the Happiest McDonald's Employee on the Planet, drove down to Legoland... and it was open! Hooray!! We got there around 10:45 or 11. Had a GREAT time, for the most part. At the end of the day, the girls (and Steph and I) were saying that it was too bad that it closed so early (they closed at 8pm), but we did manage to squeeze in quite a few rides before leaving. The Dragon was probably the one the girls enjoyed the most. Even Harper! Splash Battle near the end of the day was a great ride that I took Saren and Harper on while Steph stayed behind with Irina. Having the Bean with us meant that we had to trade off a lot of the time, but it was still a good time. Legoland is no Disneyland, but it is still vastly enjoyable.

9th - Left the hotel, had breakfast, went to the beach, so that Irina could experience the Ocean for the first time. She liked it when she was being held, but othersiwe, not so much.
Saren and Harper and I all took turns burying each other in the sand.
I ended up getting burned on all the parts of my body that the sunblock did NOT cover, so i've got oddly shaped burns on my back. Bah.
Quite fun, though.
Headed back around 330pm, and got back home around 10 (there was major traffic right at the Nevada border due to lane closures).
When we got home we saw that Lickorish was skinnier, but we couldn't find any kittens. We ended the night kinda sourly, believing that she had had them, but that one of the males had ended up killing them, or perhaps they had died of natural causes, and then the bodies had been eaten. [frown]

10th - Steph woke up around midnight because she heard mewing coming from Harper's room. Turns out, the kittens had NOT been consumed. yay! Lickorish had, at some point while we were gone, given birth to two kittens. One pure white, one all grey with black stripes. Both were underneath Harper's bed. Sadly, the grey one was no longer alive. (Not sure why it died, exactly. It doesn't appear to have been killed on purpose, we think it was just too weak to survive somehow.) After we went back to bed, we woke up in the morning, and just kinda lounged around all day. The girls were thrilled to have a newborn kitten to examine/play with, and my repeated sayings to everyone that we are NOT keeping this kitten go pretty much unheeded. [sigh]
The other kitten was given a funeral around 7pm. The girls deocrated the "coffin" (shoebox) with pictures and post it notes. Saren even made a cardboard headstone.

11th - I woke up at 4am (partly due to the sunburns, partly due to knowing I had to wake up early to go back to work). Waking up that early made me think that I should never blog again, and that I should quit my job, and that we are never going to get out of this house, and a multitude of other negative things. But. I have blogged. And I'm not going to quit my job (yet). And we ARE going to get out of this house. And on top of all that, today, you can go in to any 7-11 and get a free (small) slurpee.
Life is good.