Sweden Here We Come!!

In the middle of organizing photos and downloading and emptying everything from the camera, I've been packing like crazy the last couple of days. Four suitcases, carry on bag, large handbag, three backpacks are about to be loaded up into the car and travel with us to Phoenix where we will stay the night tonight.

Early tomorrow, we will start our big adventure, the kids are so excited, and even if they scared me with getting fever and getting sick the last couple of days, it luckily seem to be under control now..(KNOCK KNOCK REALLY HARD ON WOOD...)

To travel with two sick, cranky kids for the first time on this long journey, wouldn't exactly be the way I wanted this to happen.

I'm hoping to be able to blog here and there from Sweden, but I do think that most updates will be through Instagram. See link to the left.

Not that I have been updating daily or even very often lately, I do check in on my favorites as often as I can and I do want to wish you all a wonderful summer! Take care, and I know that many of you also will make the trip over the pond this summer, so to all of you, safe travels too!

Now, back to the last minute packing and then we are off!!

Coronado Beach

On the last day in San Diego, we drove out to Coronado Island, to check out a for us new beach at the Navy base there. As it's only accessed with Military ID's, it's more or less a private beach, and we were maybe 10 people on the whole stretch of beach. It was beautiful!! Quite a wide beach and it was a far walk with all our stuff from the parking lot and to the water. But it was well worth it!!

Unfortunately, as it is here on the West Coast, it's always windy on the beaches, and the water is freezing cold. Not that fun, especially for these kids that are spoiled with such hot weather and from the warm Colorado River that we have been visiting lately during the spring. But, even if they were cold here and there, they had fun playing in the water and the sand. The only one of us that actually went in to swim or get all wet was Cassie, the rest of us were chickens and thought it was too cold..

I have a lot of pictures from the beach, but as I really don't have time to go through them all now, I just post the ones that I have easy access to here from my phone and some of you have seen a few on Instagram already. Later, when I have a day where I miss the beach a little bit extra, I'll dig through the pictures and post more from our wonderful day at the beach!

 Finally here!

 Driving back over Coronado Bridge

 These big ships deploy all over the world...and yes, my husband has been on them.

Killer Whales

Beautiful Killer Whales, (Orcinus orca), also referred to as the Orca whale or Orca. So big, and even if we skipped the show this year, as we otherwise wouldn't have had time to do other things, we still made a stop at the pools where they were hanging out. Very impressive animals, and one look really small next to them at the window!

A long and intense day was going to it's end and the park was closing up. Considering that Sea World are having their 50th anniversary  this year, we didn't think that there was anything extra or more spectacular as one could think. Still, always worth a visit, and especially if you have kids that love all kind of water animals! 

Cirque De La Mer

This time we skipped the killer whale show, and decided to visit the Cirque de la Mer show instead. This is one that we didn't see last time, and thinking that acrobats would be fun for the kids. It was a big surprise and it was great! The show was great and all, but the funniest part is that they really invited the public to laugh and to participate. They were looking for the strongest man in the audience, and they made several stand up and show off, dance and do handstands etc. All with a lot of mocking and laughing. Then ofcourse the acrobats were very good, all high in the air, without any safety nets, even if the water is underneath, it does look scary to someone like me that is very scared of heights!! Anyway, if you go to Sea World, 20 minutes worth spent!

Sea Stars

 My three stars!

Another place we stayed at for a long time was at the pool where the sea stars were. You are able to touch and feel them gently, without lifting them over water. The kids thought that this was really sweet, and they were very gentle, and even if they needed a small reminder here and there that they needed to keep them under water, they were doing great! So cute how they stood there, and they were able to reach great too, as many of them were "sticking" to the sides of the pool, totally within reach.

We also spent a while inside this aquarium, but as we have visited so many aquariums, I didn't really think that it was that special, and it was very small, and as there is so many other places to see and other things to do, we soon moved on.

Stingrays!!

Isabella had been asking and bugging us about "the fish that we saw in Phoenix" but she couldn't really express what it looked like or what it was called. She got more and more annoyed that we didn't understand what she meant, and it got to a point that we tried all kind of names and color of fish that we could think of with no luck.

Then somehow, Chris got the idea, and guessed Stingray, and Isabella lit up and said YES, that's what I mean!! So, what else to do but to look up the stingrays and make this little girl happy! What the turtles are to Ben, and the dolphins are to Cassie, the Stingrays apparently are to Isabella!!

Happy at last!!