It’s winter break and the kids are off school, so naturally, we decided to take them all on a week long trip to Southern California. The trip idea started because several months back the kids were asking about what was the biggest tree in the world. General Sherman, I said. Of course, they wanted to see it. So we figured we’d take the kids to see the biggest tree in the world and all the other fun kid activities that SoCal has to offer. As a fun surprise, we told the kids that we’ll be traveling for multiple days, but they won’t know what we are seeing or doing each day until we actually get to the place. Mystery trips are fun.

I asked PL to make what she thought the biggest tree in the world looked like out of legos. Pretty good actually I’ll say. She would have made it taller, but ran out of red bricks.

Since we are traveling with kids, we had our hands full and didn’t even take a picture until we got past security and into a coffee spot inside the airport.

Must eat chocolate croissant.

Already stressful, time for a drink.

Maybe reading some books will calm them down…it didn’t really.

On the plane and the flight is on time. While we are away from Austin, there is a giant cold front moving into almost all of US mainland and it’s supposed to cause travel havoc everywhere. Good thing we are going to SoCal where snow is less of a factor.

Please don’t go too crazy on this less-than-3-hour flight.

Just like a race car.

Just like a cattle.

We made it to San Diego! iPads kept the kids mostly occupied.

Shuttle to car rental.

Actually didn’t need to come here as I had registered already using phone, so should just go to lot and pick up car.

The world’s biggest grill.

I don’t like the new bmws, I don’t like idrive and stupid gesture control. But getting model guaranteed x7 was the one sure fire way to get AWD, which is sometimes necessary to go up into the snowy mountain roads to see the sequoia trees.

As expected, beautiful weather in San Diego.

Love the round ramp for the rental car center.

Headed towards LA.

5 of us and all of our luggage took up almost all the room in the car. Not very roomy for such a full size suv.

Mormon Church?

We made a detour to get some dinner at Din Tai Fung in La Jolla.

Traffic is really bad. The restaurant is located inside a mall, and it’s 3 days before Christmas so all malls are jam packed.

Made a couple turns and ran into more traffic before giving up. If it’s this crowded out here, it’ll be even more crowded in the mall. Such a shame to not eat at DTF.

RL found a sushi place just a little bit down a road, this will be our dinner spot.

Hangry, but thankfully the food came out super fast. Except little KL choked on some food and puked all over the table soon after this photo. Ugh.

Back on the road to Anaheim.

Tired. But excited for family vacation.

Stressed from all the traveling with kids. Got some of this as a night cap for the local Walgreens. Tomorrow will be a big day.

To be continued at Southern California Day 2.