We decided to take a little trip to San Diego during Layne's 1 week break between Spring and Summer semester and my birthday. It was a little colder than we had hoped for, but still very pleasant. Initially I thought we were in for quite a vacation when within minutes of our arrival we ran into a bit of a problem.
We took all of our luggage and Corbin and rode the shuttle over to the rental car office to pick up our car. I proceeded to the counter as Layne stayed back with Scoots and the luggage. The lady at the counter asked me if I wanted to have another driver on the car and I told her to add Layne. I got his drivers license and handed it to her to add. After a second or two she gave me a strange look and informed me that his license had just expired on his birthday a few weeks ago. I turned (a little disgusted at his irresponsibleness) and informed him of the news and then turned back to continue with the check out process. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before she informed me that my license would also be expiring the next day which happened to be my birthday! She then informed us that she would be unable to rent us a car under those circumstances. Needless to say...I nearly crapped my pants! I informed the lady that we couldn't be without a car and she sincerely apologized, but reassured me there was nothing that she could do to help. I asked to talk with the manager who essentially gave me the same response. After much pleading and begging to no avail....I retreated to the back of the office and Layne and I frantically called the DMV for further assistance. To no surprise....they were of even less help to us and almost downright rude!
Fortunately, the manager of the rental car place took pity on us and began calling every low down rental car place in town. Before too long he had someone on their way to pick us up. On our way to the new rental car location, Layne was thanking the man for helping us out with our predicament and the man replies "no problem, happens all the time....in fact I haven't had a license for about 10 months or so."...should have been our first clue!
Once there...I went to the office to take care of the paperwork while Layne transferred the luggage into the rental car. After a few minutes he came in and asked me to come look over the car and sign for any previous damage (it would have been much simpler and much more efficient to go over the areas of the car that weren't damaged!). This thing was beat to all heck! Still grateful for the car....we finally took off for our hotel. It only took seconds before I was totally overwhelmed by the cigarette smoke smell of the car. Being pregnant it was almost too much to bear, but being as desperate as we were I just plugged my nose and continued on. As we merged onto the freeway and started to increase our speed...we noticed that the car had a death wobble and the back window suddenly fell down into the door. We quickly named the car..."THE HOOPTIE!" Corbs really loved the hooptie and could spot it among a million cars....and besides...Beggars can't be choosy!
Once that ordeal was over, we were able to really enjoy our time in San Diego. We took Corbin to Seaworld on Tuesday and we had a blast. The park was relatively quite and we were able to get around without much of a crowd. One of the first things that we saw was the Shamu show and we decided to be brave and sit dead center in the "splash zone." Needless to say we got WET!!!
Thank goodness we decided to buy a poncho at the last minute that we threw over ourselves for some reprieve. Corbin was just amazed by these enormous whales.
The remainder of the day we covered the rest of the park and Corbs just ran himself into the ground.
We had a great time and when it was all over it was literally seconds in the car before he was dead asleep!
Wednesday we decided to go to the beach. When we woke up, however, it was not looking like such a great day. We decided to go anyway. We got ourselves some sandwiches and our swimsuits and headed for La Jolla. Once we got there we realized just how cool it was outside, but we weren't about to let that spoil our day.
We sat our our blanket and began eating when within minutes we had sworms of seaguls moving in on our food. Corbin thought that they were hilarious and spent the rest of the time frantically chasing the seaguls around the beach. It was adorable!
On Thursday, we took Corbie to the San Diego Zoo. It was really cool. We were able to see lots of animal and spend time together having fun.
The highlight of the trip for Corbs, however, was undoubedly the POOL. Every second that he possibly could...he wanted to be swimming. The hotel was very quite so we were able to pretty much have the pool to ourselves the entire time. We bought Scoots some little dolphin squirt guns at Seaworld and he loved squirting Mom and Dad every chance that he could.
All in all....despite our slow start....we had a great trip and Corbin hasn't stopped talking about Shamu and the sharks! I think they were a big hit afterall.
We took all of our luggage and Corbin and rode the shuttle over to the rental car office to pick up our car. I proceeded to the counter as Layne stayed back with Scoots and the luggage. The lady at the counter asked me if I wanted to have another driver on the car and I told her to add Layne. I got his drivers license and handed it to her to add. After a second or two she gave me a strange look and informed me that his license had just expired on his birthday a few weeks ago. I turned (a little disgusted at his irresponsibleness) and informed him of the news and then turned back to continue with the check out process. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before she informed me that my license would also be expiring the next day which happened to be my birthday! She then informed us that she would be unable to rent us a car under those circumstances. Needless to say...I nearly crapped my pants! I informed the lady that we couldn't be without a car and she sincerely apologized, but reassured me there was nothing that she could do to help. I asked to talk with the manager who essentially gave me the same response. After much pleading and begging to no avail....I retreated to the back of the office and Layne and I frantically called the DMV for further assistance. To no surprise....they were of even less help to us and almost downright rude!
Fortunately, the manager of the rental car place took pity on us and began calling every low down rental car place in town. Before too long he had someone on their way to pick us up. On our way to the new rental car location, Layne was thanking the man for helping us out with our predicament and the man replies "no problem, happens all the time....in fact I haven't had a license for about 10 months or so."...should have been our first clue!
Once there...I went to the office to take care of the paperwork while Layne transferred the luggage into the rental car. After a few minutes he came in and asked me to come look over the car and sign for any previous damage (it would have been much simpler and much more efficient to go over the areas of the car that weren't damaged!). This thing was beat to all heck! Still grateful for the car....we finally took off for our hotel. It only took seconds before I was totally overwhelmed by the cigarette smoke smell of the car. Being pregnant it was almost too much to bear, but being as desperate as we were I just plugged my nose and continued on. As we merged onto the freeway and started to increase our speed...we noticed that the car had a death wobble and the back window suddenly fell down into the door. We quickly named the car..."THE HOOPTIE!" Corbs really loved the hooptie and could spot it among a million cars....and besides...Beggars can't be choosy!
Once that ordeal was over, we were able to really enjoy our time in San Diego. We took Corbin to Seaworld on Tuesday and we had a blast. The park was relatively quite and we were able to get around without much of a crowd. One of the first things that we saw was the Shamu show and we decided to be brave and sit dead center in the "splash zone." Needless to say we got WET!!!
Thank goodness we decided to buy a poncho at the last minute that we threw over ourselves for some reprieve. Corbin was just amazed by these enormous whales.
The remainder of the day we covered the rest of the park and Corbs just ran himself into the ground.
We had a great time and when it was all over it was literally seconds in the car before he was dead asleep!
Wednesday we decided to go to the beach. When we woke up, however, it was not looking like such a great day. We decided to go anyway. We got ourselves some sandwiches and our swimsuits and headed for La Jolla. Once we got there we realized just how cool it was outside, but we weren't about to let that spoil our day.
We sat our our blanket and began eating when within minutes we had sworms of seaguls moving in on our food. Corbin thought that they were hilarious and spent the rest of the time frantically chasing the seaguls around the beach. It was adorable!
On Thursday, we took Corbie to the San Diego Zoo. It was really cool. We were able to see lots of animal and spend time together having fun.
The highlight of the trip for Corbs, however, was undoubedly the POOL. Every second that he possibly could...he wanted to be swimming. The hotel was very quite so we were able to pretty much have the pool to ourselves the entire time. We bought Scoots some little dolphin squirt guns at Seaworld and he loved squirting Mom and Dad every chance that he could.
All in all....despite our slow start....we had a great trip and Corbin hasn't stopped talking about Shamu and the sharks! I think they were a big hit afterall.
