“War and Peace” by Kwadwo Ani

When I saw this painting by Kwadwo Ani at the San Diego Museum of Man, I thought, “This is my life!”

Hanging out with two kids for eight days straight isn’t really peaceful, but I have to say that the ceasefire was pretty calming.

The kids had a blast!

My daughter got along with everyone:

My son was totally engrossed with this Mayan exhibit:

Seriously, though, San Diego is a great place to take kids. It looked like it would also be a pretty fun place to be an adult, too, but I couldn’t say for sure. The trip was all about spending time with my children.

I packed a lot of activity into six full days. We went to Legoland. We went to SeaWorld. We visited both the zoo and the wild animal park, and checked out real wild seals, sea lions and pelicans in La Jolla. We resisted the temptation to cross the border, but we took a photo of it, then drove up to Old Town for dinner.

One of the best things about the trip was that I learned things about my kids that I might not have discovered otherwise.

For example, who knew that my son would like this hat:

It didn’t surprise me that he liked this slingshot nor did it surprise him that I refused to buy it. He did get the hat, though!

I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d be more excited about trying a grapple as he would about trying guacamole for the first time.

It’s an apple that tastes like a grape!

Both kids raved about Alta Dena milk, incidentally.

Since I traveling with a four-year-old, there was lots of giggling over butts… even bony ones.

On our last day, my daughter was looking like this for a bit:

But these zebra butts cheered her right up:

I loved that after seeing a dolphin show…

… and a Shamu show…

…my daughter decided that she wanted to be a Beluga whale trainer, even though they didn’t do anything but spin around a little.

Then again, even though we got to feed dolphins…

…my daughter said her favorite thing at SeaWorld was the Sesame Street show!!!

Of course, that review comes from a kid who fell asleep in the panda exhibit!

I love pandas!

My daughter was too young to go on any of the deluxe tours at the Wild Animal Park, but we still got pretty close to some of the animals. I’m not sure how well the exhibits replicated their natural environments, though:

There are cubs in the sleeping in the back.

You gotta love geese who want to shop!

One of the best things about the Wild Animal Park is that it has more baby animals than you see at the regular zoos. This baby elephant was adorable:

I think what we’ll remember most are the seals and sea lions, which we saw at Legoland…

… at SeaWorld…

… in La Jolla…

… and even at the zoo!

Mostly, though, I just hope the kids remember that we had eight days of relative peace.

Over the past week, the kids and I have seen Lego pandas and real pandas, giraffes and okapis, killer whales, beluga whales and sea lions at three different sites.

We saw a pet emu and a costumed Big Bird.

We saw lions in a simulation of their natural environment – sleeping in and on an SUV — at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

We saw baby elephants there, too!

We saw the Shamu show and a walrus who pretended he was in the Shamu show. We got splashed by performing dolphins, then went to feed their buddies in a different tank.

We watched polar bears, grizzly bears, sun bears and koalas that aren’t bears.

We also looked at wombats, pygmy marmosets, echidnas and prairie dogs.

In case you didn’t guess, our trip to San Diego was all about animals. Even our museum visits included the body cast of a dog who died in Pompeii and tons of dinosaur bones. We even drove up to see the seals and sea lions in La Jolla.

Yesterday we headed home.

By some bad planning on my part, we ended up with a four-hour layover in Kahului before flying into Honolulu.

To kill some time, the kids and I cabbed it out of the airport for lunch and walked back by way of Krispy Kreme.

On the walk back, we saw roosters, hens and chicks all over the place.

My four-year-old was just as fascinated with the chickens as she was with every other animal we saw on vacation, including the squirrel she chased up a tree and the pigeon foolish enough to let her touch his tail (yes, I carry antibacterial wash with me everywhere for just those kinds of situations).

Next time I’ll save money and just take the girl to the dump.

Just kidding! I’ll fill in more details of the trip after I get some much needed sleep.