Indianapolis - Day 4

Today was nothing more than a very long travel day. We awoke at 5:00am, caught the shuttle to the airport at 6:00am and were immediately stumped by the idiotic self check-in counters that you are forced to use. We spent five minutes trying to shove our passports into the slot where the tickets come out before finally discovering the passport scanners a foot off to the side. Everything appeared to work OK until the very end of the process, when the terminal issued an error, claiming that it was unable to complete our transaction. Given our previous difficulties with the United/Air Canada Star Alliance partnership, we immediately talked to one of the United employees. The system had printed us off boarding passes before crashing, but she printed us new ones for the two United flights we were on.

We went through security, bought a bit of breakfast and sat down to wait a couple of hours for our flight to Chicago. The gate we were at had an earlier flight to Chicago that was boarding as we arrived. Once everyone was aboard, they announced that if anyone was in the terminal for our flight, there was room on this earlier flight. Since it really did not matter where we waited, we took the earlier flight.

In Chicago we sat around for four hours until our flight for Toronto left. The flight only took an hour, but we taxied for 30 minutes before taking off. In Toronto, Sandra had a small supper while we waited for our gate agents to arrive. Sandra wanted to confirm that our boarding passes from the self check-in counter were valid, since you can't leave anything to chance on these flights. After supper, there were two agents at the counter, so I walked up with the boarding passes. They said they were dealing with the arrivals and were not my agent, so I sat down.

For the next 20 minutes, various people on the flight to Regina arrived, were ignored by the two agents until abruptly told to sit down or that they could not help them. These two agents were very bitter and reminded me of most of the employees at the Regina General Hospital - constant complaining about their job and their bosses and how difficult things are, and absolutely no desire to help anyone. In fact, once the flight arrived, they were supposed to help people find new flights, since it was late arriving. In every case, they took the person's information, looked stuff up on the computer, talked among themselves about how stupid things were and then sent the person to the main customer information desk. You know, it has been far too long since we have flown WestJet. I am so sick of Air Canada.

When our agent arrived, the poor guy was jumped by everyone who wanted to talk to him. The majority of people wanted their seats changed because they weren't sitting together, including a number of adults. I was a bit surprised, as he actually rearranged half the plane to accommodate everyone. I checked, and our boarding passes were fine, so there were no issues boarding the plane.

Our flight to Regina was uneventful, but longer than it should have been. The plane had to be de-iced, so we were late leaving, and the flight took longer than it was originally scheduled to. Regardless, we finally arrived home, got our luggage and then waited for a cab. It was better than last time, as there were actually two airport employees taking names and making certain that enough cabs were arriving. However, the cabs were very slow in coming. I don't know what all the problems are with this city and airport cab service, but there are problems and they aren't really fixed yet.

The boys were ecstatic to see us and Xander was even more excited when he found out we brought presents. He put on his jersey and posed for pictures. Evan didn't last long before he had to go to bed, but Xander and I stayed up late playing video games. Thus successfully ends my convocation trip.

Indianapolis - Day 3

Game Day!

We slept in a little bit again today and discovered a note under our door from the hotel. Most of it was regarding a busy checkout period, since the hotel is full, but at the end they mentioned that there would be a pre-game party downstairs starting at 10:00am. As that was when were were expecting to go for breakfast, we figured we should go a bit earlier. The lobby was fairly full of people in Colts gear waiting for breakfast and people not in Colts gear waiting for their cars. There was a wait for breakfast, but we were seated right away, as there was a table beside the front door that no one else wanted, due to the chill. Being tough Saskatchewan folk, we sat down and ate there.

After breakfast we got ready and then walked over to Lucas Oil Stadium, which is only two blocks away from our hotel. At the gate, they patted us down and searched Sandra's camera case. After that, we were in the stadium, though I had to force the doors open due to a massive air pressure difference between inside and outside the stadium. As we stood there trying to find our way, a staff member came up to help us find our seats. It turned out that the seats we purchased were actually the seats provided for the club seating. As we did not have access to the club area, we had to go the long way around to get to our seats, rather than using the posh elevator.

Lucas Oil Stadium is very impressive. There are a ton of seats and they all appeared to be cushioned, with a decent amount of leg room. The stadium was nice and warm and we immediately took off our jackets once we arrived. I had been worried that our seats wouldn't be that great, but they were awesome - right at the front of a section that really wasn't far from the field. I think it was the perfect spot to watch the game, as you could see everything that was happening. We arrived early, so we just sat and waited for the game to start.

The game was extremely good as it included everything I wanted to see, with the exception of a coach's challenge. The Colts dominated the game and ended up defeating the Bengals 35 - 3. One of the big highlights of the game was when Peyton hit Marvin Harrison on a post pattern and Marvin ran for 67 yards, coming very close to a touchdown. Marvin's career may be nearing its end, but the fans in Indianapolis are still VERY appreciative of him, as some of the loudest cheering of the day occurred when he caught that pass and when he caught his touchdown pass. Conversely, the loudest boos occurred whenever Chad Johnson touched the ball. Speaking of the cheering, it was very eerie whenever the Colts had the ball, as the entire stadium would go quiet. I don't think I have ever heard that many people make that little noise.

Sandra took a ton of pictures (somewhere around the 300 mark) and managed to get a picture of every touchdown, though in a couple of cases you will just have to take our word for it, since all you can see is a player and no football. We had a couple of happy drunks sitting beside us, who spent most of the game talking on their phone, leaving for more beer, or discussing the latest movies they had watched. Near the end of the game, the one guy started talking to me and was utterly amazed that someone would come from Canada to go to a Colts game. He was a cook in the US Army and was at the game with his brother, who was also in the army and had just returned from Iraq. After the game was over, they took the time to phone their sergeant and had me talk to him, just so he could talk to a Canadian Colts fan.

We left the stadium and went to a restaurant near the hotel for supper. It seemed pretty packed when we arrived, but they were seating people very quickly and we managed to get in and eat in a fairly short time. We then returned to the hotel and watched the rest of the football games. It has been a very good weekend.

Pictures

Peyton warming up


Cheerleaders


Colts team introductions


Opening kick-off


Peyton in the pocket


Housh stiff-arming the defense


Peyton directing his team


Rhodes scoring the first touchdown


Dallas Clark fumbling at the goal line


Marvin Harrison's touchdown


Marvin Harrison's big pass


End of the game

Indianapolis - Day 2

We slept in this morning, which is likely the first time we have both done that in the past three years. It felt pretty good - sleeping in is one of those little things that you have to give up once you have kids. We awoke to snow falling, and it continued to fall all day - those big fluffy snowflakes that everyone loves to see in the winter time. The temperature hovered around zero and there wasn't much wind, so we did not find it too uncomfortable to be outside.

We started the day by taking the bus to Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Oddly enough, after riding the bus here, I have come to appreciate the loonie and toonie more, as trying to shove dollar bills into an automated machine in order to pay for a bus ride is far more annoying than just dumping coins in a slot. Anyway, the bus goes straight from downtown to the Speedway and our bus driver dropped us off right at the entrance to the museum. It is a tunnel that goes under the short straight between turns one and two, but I didn't realize that until we had walked through it and turned around to realize we were inside the track. The infield is huge, which should be expected, given that the track is 2.5 miles in length. It was snowing pretty hard at this point, so there were no bus tours around the track, since even though the track is "flat", it is banked slightly in the corners and is likely a bit treacherous in bad conditions.

However, the museum was open, so Sandra and I spent a bit over an hour going through it. There were a whole bunch of winning Indy 500 cars from throughout the years, including Jacques Villeneuve's car from his win. I did not know his car was there, so it was very neat to see it. There was also a replica car that you could sit in. I got in and there is no way I could ever drive an Indy car. The cockpit is too small for me. We also watched a short movie on the history of the track and then looked at some more cars, including a couple of Cup cars - the last car that Richard Petty drove and Tony Stewart's winning car from the 2005 Brickyard 400. Tony's car was preserved exactly as it had come off the track, which was very neat to look at. As we left to catch the bus back downtown, a security guard asked if we wanted to see the track and directed us to a spot with some small stands. It is hard to tell that you are looking at the track, since it is covered in snow, but we took some pictures anyway.

We took the bus back downtown and then went to look at a couple of tourist locations. The first was a war memorial that is a huge pillar with a statue on the top. The statue must be about 9 stories up, since it is level with our hotel room window and we are on the 9th floor. I figured that the memorial was for a big war, such as World War II, but I was surprised to discover that it was for the War with Mexico in the 19th century. I was a bit amazed that Indiana would create such an elaborate monument for such a small conflict until we walked a few blocks to the north and found the monument for World War I, which is utterly freaking huge. It covers about half a city block, and is built at the top of a huge stone stair case. It is a giant square structure based upon an ancient building that was one of the seven wonders of the world. Apparently the people of Indiana really love to create big monuments. We climbed the stairs and walked around the structure, as it provided a good view of downtown. By this time we were cold and hungry, so we headed back to the hotel.

During this time, I kept noticing the interesting way that they dealt with the snow. Basically, they cover the entire city with a layer of salt. While we waited for the bus at the Speedway, a couple of plows/sanders went by, and they were dropping salt over the entire road. Once downtown, we saw people with wheelbarrows of that melting stuff, covering all the sidewalks with a layer of it. We even saw a pick-up truck putting down a layer of salt in a small parking lot beside the hotel.

We went to the mall for our late lunch/early supper and ate at Johnny Rockets, a chain burger restaurant that tries to emulate the 50s diner experience. We ate at the bar and had some phenomenal hamburgers. We then spent the next couple of hours shopping. We spent an obscene amount of money at the Colts Pro Shop, buying a jersey for each person in the family. I got a Peyton Manning jersey and Sandra got a Dallas Clark jersey. I wanted to get the boys a Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison jersey, but they did not have any Marvin Harrison jerseys for youth/children. Apparently, Marvin's career is nearing its end, and they don't make many of his jerseys any more. So, I got Evan a Reggie Wayne jersey and a Joseph Addai jersey for Xander. The rest of the mall was mall-like. Sandra bought some clothes, and we went through Nordstrom's, where there are some absolutely shocking prices.

After finishing shopping, we went out to see the first memorial at night, since it was covered in lights for Christmas and then returned to the mall for ice cream. Tomorrow is the football game!

Indianapolis - Day 1

We have safely arrived in Indianapolis, where it is no warmer than it is at home. It is currently 18F, which is around -8C and the forecast for the next couple days is for temperatures below zero, so I'm quite glad the football game is in a dome.

Today started off with a very rough morning. Xander didn't sleep much during the night and Sandra had to hold him on his bed and on the couch all night long. He was very clingy in the morning and did not sound very good. It was really difficult to leave him. It was even harder for Sandra, as she had the extra complication of being very tired. Just to make things perfect, when the cab arrived, Sandra was taking Xander to the bathroom and he pee'd on her pants. I was outside shoveling the driveway and walked back into the house to see pretty much everyone crying. Not the greatest way to leave for a trip.

The flight from Regina to Toronto was uneventful. Sandra slept, while I finished off my assignment. It took almost the entire flight, but I got all the code working, which made me quite happy. We had a quick late lunch in Toronto and then flew to Indianapolis on one of those tiny Bombardier jets. As a native of Saskatchewan, it is sometimes difficult to realize how populated the eastern part of the US is, but I was reminded of that fact when, during the flight, all you could see out the window was a landscape full of lights. As we landed in Indianapolis, I kept a watch for Indianapolis Motor Speedway, but I'm pretty sure that the way the plane arrived meant that the speedway was on the other side of the aircraft. I did see Lucas Oil Stadium from the plane, though.

Once we got our luggage, we took a cab rid to our hotel. The cab driver was pretty crazy - speeding down the Interstate and changing lanes whenever he felt like it. We drove right by the stadium in the cab, as our hotel is only a block away. In fact, if the Colts were still playing at the RCA Dome, we wouldn't even have to go outside, as there is a skywalk from our hotel to a mall and then to the RCA Dome. The hotel is very high class, which isn't where we normally stay, but the location was a big factor. The mall is huge - three or four levels covering most of a city block. We walked over to the mall for supper, as there is a Taco Bell in the food court, and Sandra and I LOVE Taco Bell.

We phoned home from the hotel and Xander is feeling better, though he made Grandma watch Wall-E twice during the day. That made both of us feel better, though we just realized that we completely forgot to mention his birthday this morning. Actually, given how difficult it was to leave him, maybe it was a good thing that we forgot it was his birthday.

Tomorrow we just have a couple of things planned. We are going to go shopping at the mall, as I want to buy some jerseys and Sandra just wants to shop. We are also going to go to Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I checked the bus schedules and it appears that there is one bus that we can take from the mall straight to the track, which is what we will do tomorrow morning. We discussed taking a cab, but the cab ride here was crazy, and $3.00 is a lot cheaper than $30.00.

As an aside, I was reminded of the difference in Canadians versus Americans (or possibly small city versus larger city) today. Our cab ride in Regina cost $11.20, but the cab driver immediately told me that $11 was fine. After a few seconds fumbling to find a loonie, he then said $10.00 was fine. The cab ride in Indianapolis was $30.85, though the meter said $29 and change when I started taking my money out. I gave the driver $30 dollars and he objected, pointing out that I had not given him enough money. Not as bad as the cab drivers in Paris, but still not as friendly as in Regina.

Indianapolis - Day 0

Tomorrow morning, Sandra and I leave for Indianapolis, in order to go to the Colts and Bengals game on Sunday. The trip is a gift to me for finishing university. Sandra figured that we needed to do something special to celebrate and as I have never been to an NFL game, I decided that was what we were going to do. While I am not technically a Colts fan, I am a huge fan of Peyton Manning, so I am taking this opportunity to go and see him play. I picked the game early this year when the NFL schedule first came out and I figured it would be a great game - two high powered offenses, with the Colts at home. Of course that was before Carson Palmer got injured and the Colts decided to underperform. So, I am hoping that it will still be a good game, even if Cincinnati doesn't show up to play.

We paid an arm and a leg for the tickets, as we missed purchasing them when they went on sale, and all the Colts home games sold out fairly quickly. We ended up buying them from Ticketmasters ticket switch site, where season ticket holders attempt to recoup their costs by not attending two games a year. Originally, I wasn't going to spend a lot of money and had picked tickets way up in the nose-bleed section. However, Sandra was concerned she would not be able to see from that far away, so she approved paying more for better seats. We ended up with tickets on the third deck, at the 35 yard line on the opposition side of the field.

I was pretty excited to attend my last class on Tuesday, and the excitement for this trip was building all the way until this evening. While I am done classes, I am not done my last assignment, and after staying up until 2:00am the previous two nights working on it, I really hope I can get it finished tonight, so that I am not working on it while we are in Indianapolis. And to make things worse, both kids have become sick in the last couple of days. Evan has a cold and is teething, while Xander developed a very nasty cough today. He sounds hoarse, his nose is running, his cheeks are extremely red and he keeps breaking out in coughing fits that make him cry. It makes me feel pretty bad leaving them here in Regina.

The rest of tonight will be spent getting everything packed up and ready to go for tomorrow, as well as attempting to finish my last assignment. With any luck, tomorrow evening will just be a relaxing evening in the hotel room.

Tijuana/San Diego - Day 8

Today was a most horrible day. Not the most horrible day I have ever had, but one that ranks in the top 5. We got out of bed at 4:30am and I could immediately tell that my stomach was upset. Three trips to the bathroom and a bunch of Imodium and Pepto later, I was somewhat ready to go. Sandra had the kids up and dressed Xander. We had decided not to change Evan's clothes, but as we left the hotel room with the first load of luggage, I could feel that his clothes were soaking wet. There wasn't time to do anything about that, as we were already late for the 5:00am shuttle, which we ended up missing. When it returned, I helped the driver load our luggage while Sandra secured the car seats. We were finally off, though there were other people on the shuttle, so we did not go straight to our terminal, and it was 5:30am by the time we got to the United terminal.

A couple of United employees brought over a luggage cart, loaded our luggage on it, and walked it up to the ticket counter. We quickly discovered that despite assurances from the United employee in Edmonton that the ticket problem had been taken care of, it had not. Their computer still said we had paper tickets and this employee was not going to let us board, and as there isn't an Air Canada ticket counter in San Diego, we would have been stranded. I had to stand there holding a wet, stinky baby, as he and Sandra discussed the problem. Finally, he asked if we had our boarding cards from the trip down. Luckily, as Sandra never throws anything away, we did. He found the ticket number on the cards and got us on the planes. I was left wondering how their computer system works, since it sounded like he could not search for us by name, but he could search for us by ticket number, and once he found us in the computer, all was good.

All of this meant that we were getting to be late for our flight. We stopped outside security so that I could change Evan, as I did not want to unload all our stuff while juggling a wet baby. Security took some time, but there were no problems - Xander even walked through on his own without any prompting. Once aboard the flight, we settled in and took off. There were no real problems with the flight (except my stomach) until we started to land in Denver. The seatbelt light went on early and there was no friendly announcement that there might be turbulence, so I figured that meant there was going to be turbulence, and I was right. Thunderstorms were moving through the area and the landing was extremely rough - the plane bounced around, turned a couple of times and then Xander threw up. We couldn't call a stewardess, due to the turbulence, so Sandra tried to clean him up as best she could with one of Evan's spit up blankets, while we waited for the plane to land. Once on the ground, we stopped outside the terminal, as we were 20 minutes early, so our gate was occupied for the next 20 minutes. That left us sitting on the plane with a sick, stinky child. At least the lack of movement allowed us to contact a stewardess, get a plastic bag and change Xander's clothes.

Once we were finally off the plane, we went to a washroom, cleaned everyone up, got a muffin for Xander and Sandra to eat and went to wait for our next flight. The problems continued once we boarded, as once we got onboard, a thunderstorm passed over the airport and they closed the ramp, which meant that we sat there for almost an hour waiting for the rain and fairly large hail to stop falling. After that long wait, we got in the air and flew to Winnipeg, where the landing was a bit rough, likely just because our nerves were raw and we were sitting near the very back of the airplane.

We were the last ones off the plane, and as we were heading towards the elevator, another flight arrived, so a United employee took us to a different elevator to get down to customs. I'm not certain that helped, as we ended up last in line behind two airplanes worth of people. Evan was quite tired at this point, so someone had to hold him, which made for a very long line. At long last, we went through customs, where we collected our checked baggage and, once again, left the secure area. ARRRGGHHH! Why can't these airports design it so that you don't have to leave a secure area and go back through security once you have cleared customs? With four carry-on bags, liquids, a laptop, two digital cameras, two kids and two strollers, it takes forever to unpack everything, go through security and then repack everything.

So, we dragged all the checked baggage, as well as the carry on and two kids all the way to the Air Canada ticket counter, where they took our checked bags and gave us new boarding passes. We then went up to security, dumped out all the water bottles we had purchased for ourselves and for Evan's formula, went back through security, bought new bottles of water, changed the kid's diapers and got on the last airplane of the day.

I had hoped to let Evan sleep while sitting around in Winnipeg, but due to the long customs line and the security hassle, there wasn't time, so he was extremely tired once we got on the plane, and he started screaming immediately. Now Evan doesn't cry - he just lets loose with loud, blood-curdling screams, and this was not a large aircraft. Luckily Sandra was able to force him to go to sleep, and we took off. Xander fell asleep while the plane taxied and did not wake up until we landed in Regina. Evan slept the entire time as well, so the final flight was fairly uneventful, except that we were early again, so our gate was occupied when we arrived. That one confused me, as there was only one plane at the Regina airport at that time. I guess they only use one gate.

In Regina, we met Mom and Dad, overheard comments from the other passengers regarding the lucky fact that "the baby had fallen asleep, or the flight would have been awful", got our luggage and drove home.

Thus ends our adventure in Mexico.

Tijuana/San Diego - Day 7

We got up at 6:30am to try and be on the road at 7:00am. That didn't work, but we did leave the house around 7:30am, on our way to Legoland in California. We were early enough that we ran into rush hour traffic in Tijuana, and the line at the border was longer than the last time we crossed. It did move quickly, though, and after about an hour we were at the front of the line. The border guard took more time than the last guy, as he opened all the doors, checked our faces against our passports and asked a bunch of questions about where we were going and what we were bringing back from Mexico. All the questions turned out to be a good thing, as he let us through without a secondary search, unlike the first time we went through the border.

Unfortunately, as soon as we left the border area and entered the highway, Colette tried to get everyone's attention, as she realized we only had 7 passports. A quick check showed that Sandra's was missing, so we took the first exit and drove through the border town to the pedestrian border crossing. There weren't any obvious parking spots, so we let Sandra and Colette out, while Rick found a parking spot in a very small Jack in the Box parking lot. It did not take very long and they were back with the missing passport.

With that problem out of the way, we were on our way to Legoland, which is a little bit north of San Diego. We arrived around 11:00am, so decided to go to Taco Bell for an early lunch. We may as well have been in Mexico, as no one in the restaurant spoke English. The lady who was taking my order got it wrong twice and I ended up going through the line a second time in order to get everything I wanted. Our next stop was Legoland.

The first thing we saw in the park was a life size Darth Vader and R2-D2, made out of Lego, so I had my picture taken with them. We then went on a safari ride, where you sat in a small jeep that went around a track. Arranged around the track were large animals made out of Lego. The next ride was fairly similar, just with the jeeps replaced by boats and the animals replaced by fairy tale people and creatures. After that was the first store, which contained a lot of Star Wars Lego, so Xander and I toured it. I bought Xander a shirt with a Lego Darth Vader on it that says "The Force is strong in this one", and I bought myself a keychain with a Lego Darth Vader on the end.

The rest of the day was a filled with various rides, either with the kids (if they were tall enough) or Rick and Colette would go on their own and leave the kids with us. Frankly, I was expecting more than just a theme park with a few Lego statues scattered around, but I guess it is the rides that keeps normal people interested. In the castle area, which had no kid rides, I bought a chess set made up of knight and skeleton mini-figures and a Lego photo frame. While Legoland wasn't what I was expecting, Xander had a great time. He loved all the rides, though he would never admit it. Whenever I asked him if he liked a ride he would say "No. Again?".

Near the end of the day we toured Miniland USA, which is more of what I was expecting. There were miniature versions of Washington D.C., New York, Las Vegas, Southern California, New Orleans, San Francisco and Daytona (the NASCAR racetrack). Xander was enthralled by the moving vehicles and spent a very long time standing in front of the Daytona model, watching the race cars move around the track. I was really impressed with how all the various buildings and landmarks had been recreated in Lego, though I was disappointed with the fact that they had been outside for a long time and were starting to show their age - the bricks were faded and peeling in spots.

With just under 15 minutes before the park closed, I quickly ran over to the shop that sold Lego in bulk ($7.99 per quarter pound) and filled a plastic bag with various bits of Lego from the bins that were there. I wished I had more time to actually browse and think about what pieces I wanted, but the store was closing in five minutes, so I basically just grabbed handfuls of Lego bricks and shoved them in the bag. I left with 4/10ths of a pound of assorted Lego bricks and a book on building Lego models.

We left Legoland, with Evan screaming because he was hungry and headed towards San Diego. As it was 5:30pm, we encountered the famous California freeway traffic - six to eight lanes of stopped cars. We actually were never stopped for very long, but there were parts of the trip where we were not traveling very fast. We finally arrived at our hotel, unpacked everything and ordered a pizza. Rick and Colette stayed for supper and then left around 8:30pm to return to Mexico. We are getting up at 4:30am tomorrow to get to the airport around 5:30am for our flights back home to Regina.

Tijuana/San Diego - Day 6

Today was a very slow day. I slept in and then spent the morning downloading pictures off of Sandra's camera and then posting some of the pictures on Facebook and the blog posts. Sandra's new camera takes huge pictures, and my old iBook just doesn't have the horsepower to easily display them within iPhoto. That means that in order to view them, I have to import them into iPhoto and then export them all out of iPhoto at a smaller resolution, which takes a lot of time. If we take any longer vacations, I'm going to need a new laptop.

After lunch, we packed the kids in the van and drove back to the beach. It was a nice day, sunny but not too warm and the waves were huge (at least to a Saskatchewan boy like me). They couldn't have been too small, as there were four or five people surfing and wake boarding. We set up some chairs, put the babies on the sand and let the two year olds run around in the waves. Xander was fairly scared of the water at first, but soon opened up and had a lot of fun running around in the water, though he had to hold my hand the entire time. It wasn't until we were getting ready to leave that he was willing to run through the waves on his own.

While Xander and I splashed in the waves, Rick wandered deeper into the ocean and noticed that as the waves came and went, they moved the sand and exposed some small crabs that would quickly scurry back into the sand. It took some time, but he was able to quickly grab some sand that contained a crab, which he brought closer to shore and showed the kids. It was pretty neat how quickly the little crab would dig into the ground as soon as it was able to.

As we played in the water, Evan sat on the sand and proceeded to eat large amounts of it. That wasn't a huge deal, as what kid doesn't eat sand? However, cleaning him up required using wipes on his face, which took off his sunscreen, but no one thought of that at the time. Right now, his cheeks look fairly red, so hopefully he did not get sunburned too badly.

We then went home and proceeded to make supper. Sandra is currently packing things up, while the kids are eating ice cream for their night lunch. Early tomorrow morning we leave Mexico for the last time, as we are going to spend the day at Legoland in California. At the end of the day, Rick and Colette will drop us off at a hotel near the San Diego airport, where we are going to spend the night.

Tijuana/San Diego - Day 5

Today we drove to Ensenada, a tourist town south of Rosarito. There are two roads to Ensenada, a toll road and a free road. On the way there we took the free road, though the roads run right beside each other for half the way there. It is at the point where they separate that things get interesting, as the free road starts curving through a number of large hills/small mountains and small villages. The road was very narrow and steep, with no shoulders or guard rails and we kept meeting semis coming from the other direction. I was a little scared and more than glad that I wasn't driving.

We survived the road and arrived at Ensenada around lunch time. We weren't sure where we were going to stop for lunch, as we did not have a lot of information about restaurants in Ensenada. In the end, we played it safe and went to McDonald's. Mexican McDonald's are very similar to ours, except there are fewer food options, the Coke was sickeningly sweet, though it may have been Coke Zero, and the kid's playland consisted of three video games. I'm pretty certain the video games were boxes containing an N64 with an arcade style controller hooked up to the machine, as the games were regular N64 games. The biggest pain was that the bathroom at McDonald's was for customers only, so you had to show your receipt to get the door unlocked. That meant that Sandra and Colette took all four kids to get their diapers changed at once, just to prevent us from having to ask for the bathroom to be opened multiple times.

After lunch, we walked down to the harbour, where there was a cruise ship docked. We wandered past the regular boats, and were approached a couple of times regarding taking a ride out around the harbour. Rick was interested in doing that, but the first price we were given was $75, which was a bit expensive. A little while later the same boat operator came walking up to us on the dock and said that he had some other people already on the boat, so we could all ride for $10. I guess he just wanted $75 in total for a trip. Xander wasn't very happy at first, due to the loudness of the engine and the fact that the operator had to lift him on board, as Sandra wasn't able to step from the dock to the boat carrying him. Passing the cruise ship calmed him down. The big draw of the boat trip was a bunch of derelict ships that were strung together in the harbour and used as a habitat for a large number of sea lions. They were on top of and inside the old boats, and our boat stopped right beside a large number of sea lions sleeping in the sun. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, though Xander was quite excited by the cranes and semis that were on the container ship unloading dock.

Once we were off the boat, we just wandered around Ensenada for a little bit. Evan was extremely tired and would not go to sleep in the stroller, so we walked along with him screaming as loud as he possibly could. I found the zoning laws, or lack thereof interesting, as the main street along the harbour had a strip club next door to a Nextel store and a fairly seedy looking bar next door to a FedEx store. We walked back to the van, where we stored the strollers and walked to a nearby street where we had been harassed regarding horse drawn carriage rides. (Note: I do mean harassed - they shout at you from the other side of the street.) The tour just took us around the main harbour road, but it was a nice and relaxing ride.

We then left Ensenada and went to a tide pool area that Mike had shown to Rick. Sandra had confirmed that low tide was around 4:00pm, which was roughly when we arrived. I thought the entire thing was a bust at first, as the kids had fallen asleep on the way there and were extremely cranky when we woke them up. I also could not find any sea animals except for some anemones in the shallow pools of water. However, after dumping a screaming Evan on Sandra, Xander and I started tossing small rocks into the water. As he dropped one into a pool, I noticed a moving shell. I looked closer and saw a whole bunch of moving shells, as there were lots of hermit crabs moving around in the water. When everyone else arrived, Rick and I carefully picked them up out of the water and placed them on a nearby rock so the kids could watch them scurry back into the water. The kids had woken up by this point, so everyone had a good time.

Our last stop of the day was a hotel restaurant back in Rosarito for supper. It was extremely good. Our waiter was very friendly, especially with the kids, and the food was awesome. Sandra had beef tacos, I had chicken enchiladas and Xander had a quesadilla. The beef tacos were a lot like the ones from the taco stand, chopped beef in a soft tortilla, though these had lettuce, tomatoes and cheese (which looked like goat cheese or feta cheese). Again, they weren't very spicy, but a plate of peppers and onions was delivered to the table. The enchiladas were spicy, and I added some hot sauce to them, which made them extremely good. I'm not certain how authentic the hot sauce was, though, as it was from California. The entire meal was also extremely cheap - it was only $41 for four adult meals, one kid meal and six drinks.

It sounds like we are actually relaxing tomorrow, as the kids are becoming difficult to manage due to the lack of naps and disrupted schedules. On Friday we'll head to San Diego, possibly to Legoland, after which we will stay the night in a hotel before flying out Saturday morning.

Tijuana/San Diego - Day 4

Today started off slowly, as we were all recovering from yesterday. Sandra slept in, as Evan was awake for an hour early in the morning, while I ensured all our pictures were downloaded onto the laptop. It also gave me time to add some pictures to the blog and to Facebook. I wanted to expand what we did at SeaWorld, but ran out of time. Maybe I'll update yesterday's post after I finish this post.

We went out for lunch at a taco stand in Rosarito, so I have now had an official Mexican taco. The stand had a wood grill where they cooked the meat and peppers. When the meat was done, it was chopped up and placed on a soft tortilla with beans, tomatoes and guacamole. It was very good, though it wasn't spicy. I found out later that there were peppers available to put on the taco, which would have made it a lot spicier. We also had quesadillas, which were a lot like the tacos, just with the beans and guacamole replaced with cheese.

After lunch, we drove over to the beach and showed Xander and Evan the ocean for the first time. I stuck Evan's hand in the water, while Sandra did the same for Xander. At one point, Colette had walked out towards the waves and Xander started to follow her. As she was standing in an area where waves regularly arrived, I told Xander to come back to me, but he didn't listen. A bunch of water then arrived - Colette walked away from it, but Xander stood rooted to the spot, even as she tried pulling him along with one arm (as she was holding Jordan with the other). Xander ended up getting his legs fairly wet, as did Colette and myself. Everyone else took that as an opportunity to roll up their pant legs and wade in the ocean, while I stayed behind guarding our stuff and holding a sleeping Evan. We finally left and returned home to change everyone's clothes.

Once everyone was dry, we went to a market to do a little shopping. I wasn't looking to buy anything, but I guess my wife was. She looked at some jewelry, but most of it was too expensive. However, at the one shop she was able to get the price for a necklace to $120 USD, down from the starting price of $500 for the necklace and matching earrings. She decided to buy the necklace at that price, so we did, though she really has no idea whether it was a bargain or not. Regardless, she now owns a very pretty necklace. I tried to get Xander excited about a rain stick, but he didn't want one. Instead, he wanted a ukelele, so I bought him one of each, though I bought a cheap ukelele and not the real nice one that the lady also showed me.

We wandered around the market a bit while Rick and Colette continued to shop, but Evan was extremely cranky, and I was not interested in shopping in such a high pressure situation. The shop owners would pounce on you the moment you walked by and try to convince you to enter the shop. Once you were in the shop, it was extremely difficult to leave without having something forced on you. One guy kept putting a hat on Rick's head to try and get him to buy it. Given that everything that was for sale was touristy junk, I didn't feel like repeatedly refusing to buy things just to browse.

We then did some grocery shopping and returned home for "Mexican" spaghetti and meat sauce, in that we made and ate the spaghetti in Mexico. Tomorrow, I believe we are headed to Ensenada, but I'm not sure exactly what we are going to see and do.

Tijuana/San Diego - Day 3

We got everyone out of bed early and packed into the van so that we could leave Rosarito just before 8:00am. Things sort of went downhill from there. We quickly arrived in Tijuana and got stuck in a traffic jam. For some reason the road we were on was not moving at all. There were police directing traffic, but they were just allowing traffic to move in the other direction, so we sat for quite a long time doing nothing. At the same time there was a marathon going on, possibly due to the fact that today was Cinco de Mayo. After a long wait, our traffic suddenly moved forward, though as we drove past, the policeman was trying to stop the people behind us, so I'm not certain if we were supposed to go or not.



After that long wait, we quickly arrived at the traffic jam for the border. Twenty-four lanes of traffic stretching for a very long way. It only took about one and half hours to reach the border, which was faster than Rick expected. Unfortunately, the border official tagged the van, which meant that we had to pull ahead to get searched. The customs official who did the searching was very strict and official until she asked us to get out the van and realized that there were four small children inside. She did not seem impressed that we had been tagged for searching, so she went as fast as she could. Once that was done, we were back in the US and on our way to SeaWorld.

The main attractions at SeaWorld are the shows, so we headed towards the sea lion and otter show, stopping to view the sea lions, dolphins and star fish as we walked by their pools. The star fish were the biggest hit, as you were allowed to pick them up and briefly take them out of the water. The sea lion and otter show was somewhat interesting, as the sea lions are very well trained, but they aren't elegant or attractive creatures. That goes double for the big ugly walrus that arrives at the end of the show. After the show, we went to a pizza/pasta place for lunch that "only" cost us $32. It never ceases to amaze me the prices that are charged inside theme parks. A small coffee cost $2.19!

Our first stop after lunch was the sharks. This was the first aquarium we went to where you could look through glass and see the animals underwater, and Xander was extremely excited about it. He really enjoyed the tunnel where the large sharks swim around and above you. The same cannot be said for me. After another aquarium, we went to see the penguins. By this point, the lack of a nap was beginning to take its toll on Xander, and Sandra had to take him along the moving sidewalk twice before he became interested in looking at the penguins. The next attraction was the arctic exhibit, which had a ride attached to it. Rick and Colette took the ride, while Sandra and I took the four kids into the exhibit. As we were entering, someone behind Sandra asked if we had two sets of twins (as our kids and Rick and Colette's kids are the same age). Sandra told me later that if we had two sets of twins, the last place we would be would be SeaWorld. The big hit of the arctic exhibition was a glass window where a giant walrus kept swimming past. It kept the kids occupied until Rick and Colette were done, which was good, as holding a baby and chasing after a two year old was becoming very tiring. The big disappointment of the arctic exhibition was the lack of polar bears. There was a mother and cub in a small area, but it was so crowded, there was no way were getting the kids to see the bear.

The next stop was one of the few that actually interested me. It was a pool full of rays that you were allowed to touch, and feed, if you were brave enough. To feed one, you held the food underwater on the flat of your palm and let a ray swim over top of your hand and eat the fish. I don't think I could have done it. However, I did touch quite a few of the rays - they are a bit slimy. I think rays are one of the coolest sea creatures. They just look neat as they swim along. The ones in the pool often stuck their heads out of the water to look at the humans surrounding the pool, which was pretty cool. Xander refused to touch the rays. I think the fact that they were moving scared him a bit, compared to the star fish.

After seeing some extremely icky moray eels, we took a break among the flamingos and then went into another aquarium. This one was ocean fish, so it had an aquarium with Nemo and Dory in it, which was a big hit with Xander. It was quite difficult to get him away from that tank. Due to popular request (of the two year olds), we returned to the star fish pool. This time, Xander was even more adventurous and actually picked up the star fish and took them out of the water. Many pictures later, it was time to go to the Shamu show.


While watching the killer whales perform was very cool, the cloying "Believe" message that was broadcast on the screens and through the words of the trainers really annoyed me. It was an obvious ploy to pull at the heartstrings of the people there, to make them think that something special was happening, rather than just watching captured animals perform tricks for our enjoyment. I mean, I'm not against captured animals performing tricks, but I don't think it is necessary to wrap that in some weird eco-message that implies that the performance is helping us bridge the gap between the two species.

After the entire day at SeaWorld, we found a fast food restaurant ($12, versus the $32 we paid inside SeaWorld for lunch) before heading back to Mexico. Unfortunately, due to Cinco de Mayo, the border crossing into Mexico was also very busy and it took longer to get back than we expected.

Everyone is really tired at the moment, and the kids aren't even in bed yet, so I'm pretty certain tomorrow is just going to be a relaxing day in Mexico.