The Swell Six: Spring Break 2013

(This is a long post...for family history sake)

So after Sacrament Meeting was over on Easter Sunday we told the kids we were going home. They questioned why because they really like going to primary, but we convinced them that we needed to go. Once we were in the car Nate told the kids that we thought we would start heading toward Salt Lake. Now just a side note. The kids had been talking about going to the Salt Lake Hilton for Spring Break for a few weeks. This is what we did last year and they loved it, so for some reason they just thought that was what we were doing again this year. After Nate told them we were heading toward Salt Lake they were super excited. We went home changed clothes, ate lunch, and packed up the car. I had already secretly packed almost everything, but anything the kids saw they thought was just needed for Salt Lake. We headed out and got to Salt Lake, but we drove right past. The kids recognized this but didn't say anything until we were almost to Lehi. They finally started asking when we were going to turn around and go back to the Hilton. That's when Nate told them that we thought we would go a little farther and stay at the Hilton in San Diego. Gavin was thrilled because it meant a trip to Sea World and the Zoo. Liam and Ashlyn were a little crushed at first until they realized that there would be a swimming pool at our hotel so they wouldn't miss out on swimming. It was a fun surprise overall. Although there was immediate questions of "How much longer do we have to drive?" :)

We ended up driving to Las Vegas that day. It was a long but nice drive. The kids kept busy with all the stuff I brought for the drive. We only turned the DVD player on for the very last hour. The next morning we got up early, ate breakfast, and headed to the car. We were all ready to go but the car wouldn't start. Bummer!! We didn't think it was the battery because the car did try to start, but just didn't turn over all the way. We called triple A and they said a tow truck would be there in 45 minutes. Over an hour later we were still waiting for the tow truck. When the tow truck guy finally showed up he tried starting our car and said it was in fact the battery. He pulled out his cables and jumped our car. We were sad that we had wasted all that time waiting when we could have just found someone to jump us. We were worried that the battery was bad so then we spent another hour or so waiting for it to be checked out at an auto place. Luckily everything turned out to be fine. We finally came to the conclusion that the lights must have been left on in the car and ran the battery down. We were finally on our way! (only 4 hours later than planned). The drive was long, but beautiful. We were bummed that we missed out on half a day in San Diego, but grateful that there wasn't anything wrong with our car.

Once we were in San Diego we went right to Old Town. This was our original plan before all the car issues, so we were just a few hours later than we had hoped. We went to the Mormon Battalion visitors center. It was awesome and very different from when Nate and I had been there 11 years ago (We went to San Diego for our honeymoon) They changed the whole thing and made it very interactive and great for kids. After spending time there we grabbed some food and then headed to our hotel. We were all pretty exhausted after a crazy day. Here are some pictures of the first day.