This year we headed to beautiful San Diego for spring break.
Here is the crew in line at airport security.
Of course our middle son was stopped by TSA with something suspicious in his bag. He had a water wiggler fidget toy that was setting off all types of alerts. Insert palm to face emoji here.
We had an evening flight to California - everyone was excited for the West Coast.
We made it! So pumped to see a palm tree. :)
We were up early the next day thanks to the time change - first things first, we had hotel breakfast. There was a huge group of high school students in the lobby, they were in a mariachi band competition. Love to see it!
After filling our bellies we took an Uber to Coronado Beach. We saw sand castles and the Pacific Ocean. Good stuff!
There were all kinds of surf boards along the beach to rent.
It was a beautiful day - fun to get our toes in the sand and to find shells along the beach.
The children climbed the rocks and hunted for tide pools and critters.
Sweet Brothers on the beach.
These Wisconsin kids sure loved the water!
The Coronado hotel was so beautiful!
Leo was living his best life.
Lucy has always been our lover of water.
Roman visited California when he was just a tiny guy back in 2014 and he was thrilled to be back.
The beach flowers were so beautiful!
The Coronado hotel was just lovely! We popped in for a bathroom break and checked out the shops. This was built in the 1880's and is an iconic beach landmark.
It was too fancy for our family to book a room but beautiful to see!
After spending the morning on Coronado Island - we walked to the Ferry stop. We made a few stops for photo ops along the way {We took more than 22000 steps on this day!}. Leo liked this dragon statue at the local library.
We made it to the ferry! It was a fun little cruise back to the city.
Here is the San Diego skyline - picture courtesy of Roman.
And here's a selfie of my boys.
We could see our next stop from the boat - the U.S.S. Midway museum.
We disembarked the ferry and walked over to the Kissing Statue.
Here is a closer view. This is based on the famous photo taken in Times Square after the War ended so I am not sure how it landed in San Diego but it was cute!
We had a snack in the park and marveled at the size of the ship we were about to board.
All aboard! We made our way to the USS Midway Museum and learned about all kinds of aircraft carrier/military facts.
There were all kinds of aircraft to see - let's just say that some of use were more interested in the history than others ... See Lucy's facial expression. ;)
We got to see all of the nooks and crannies of a big ship.
The museum was highly interactive and the Storm children loved playing with the radar and helping land planes.
This ship was actually deployed during the Gulf War so all of the videos and footage in these rooms was real and from the early '90's.
Let's just say that Mr. Storm would have had a rough time on one of these naval ships - He is way too tall!
We worked on our knots.
Did you even know there were so many options?
Leo exclaimed, 'This is the biggest rope ever!'
Here are the chains for the giant anchor.
U.S.S. Midway - Here is the official plaque for the aircraft carrier.
We explored the deck and looked at airplanes until we ran out of energy.
It was a very full and fun afternoon!
We went back to the hotel and cleaned up before dinner. Our hotel was very close to the Little Italy neighborhood.
We had the dinner of champions.
Followed by the dessert of champions - gelato!
No better way to end the first day of vacation.
You can tell that our faces are all windburned and sunburned. Eeeks!
We got back to the hotel and crashed; we needed good rest because the next day we were headed to the San Diego Zoo.
