Escondeedooo

After Christmas and New Years, Bud was itching to get out of town. We hadn't been anywhere as a family since last June, so we decided to finally try the Wild Animal Park and stay at the Welk Resort.  It was a great, quick trip, except that Elle woke up the morning of and almost threw up, then Jonah almost threw up after lunch at In-n-Out in Escondido and Caroline threw up 2 days later.  It was bizarre, but luckily no one else got it.  Mae had been sick with a fever and a cough that was lasting forever and Elle had that on the trip and I got it on the way home.  That darn thing went through just about all of us (except Bud, shockingly), and the stupid cough lasted for almost a month.  Sickness is the ONLY time I truly hate having a big family.

Anyway, we spent time at the resort on Friday, then hit the Wild Animal Park on Saturday (I think it's actually called San Diego Safari Park now).  It was really amazing, but a ton of walking.  We kind of took a weird route walking in, so we ended up walking like two miles before we finally saw elephants. Then we came down a hill and started to see the big attraction, a huge expanse with rhinos, giraffes, gazelles, etc.  It was amazing!  I had never seen anything like it.  By this point though, the kids were already getting tired of walking and wanted lunch.  We told them we were going to do the tram ride first then have lunch, but Mae wasn't very happy about that (check her out in the pic below with the kids and Bud walking - she looks like a Charlie Brown character!).  The weather was perfect, Cece fell asleep during lunch so we actually got to enjoy that and the Cheetah run was probably the coolest part of the day.  Bud had always wanted to see that and it lived up to the hype.  The kids also got to feed the lorakeets and I thought I'd die from laughter seeing their faces.  Elle wouldn't do it (she's a bit of a scaredy-cat), and one of the birds bit poor Mae and pooped on Jake, but it was really fun!  By the end of the day, we had walked over five miles (I had a pedometer on) and we were all exhausted.

At the resort, there was so much to do, which was good because there wasn't much else around.  They had great clubhouses with tons of games and great pools. The kids even tried fishing in the pond (lame), but it was a beautiful resort and we had an amazing two-bedroom, two bath suite that was perfect for our family.  The kids had to go to school the day after we got back, but it was a great end to Christmas break!