Fred Leavitt: Spring Break

Before Alex headed off to school he asked if it would be OK if he brought a few friends home for spring break. Figuring a "few" meant 2 or 3 we of course said it would be no problem. We began to be concerned when we saw a facebook page all about the upcoming spring break trip to San Diego and it looked like there were many interested people.

The first car (Alex, Wendy, Ryan and Harrison) arrived in the wee hours of Friday morning. The second car (Parker, Felix and My) arrived Friday night. There was a trip to the airport on Saturday to pick up Mark and the third car (Matt, TJ and Scott) arrived that night. Sam and Sarah got here on Tuesday. All totaled we had thirteen people here for spring break and it was a lot of fun.

If you're not familiar with Instagram you should be. It is an app for smart phones where you can upload a picture and give it a short description and share the picture with your friends. You can add little tags to the pictures and tie all the pictures together. Alex and his friends took a ton of pictures of spring break and tagged them all "sdtothe13". It doesn't make a lot of sense to me but I guess it was supposed to be a cool way of saying "we are going to San Diego for spring break in 2013". Clicking on the flag you will find over 100 pictures of the fun these 13 kids had here for spring break. Rather than try and describe the week I have chosen to upload all of their pictures and share them with you.

It would take far too long to sort the pictures in the correct order so you will have to excuse the random order.

The fun actually started before they even got to San Diego. They had to stop in Las Vegas and drive through the strip.

This is Sunday dinner at our house. We must have gone through $500 worth of groceries this week. These boys ate a lot. For Sunday dinner we boiled up a full bag of potatoes and cooked two large roasts.

One of our kids favorite places to eat is In-n-Out. One smart thing that In-n-Out has done is they have a complete "off menu" list of specialties. Such things as "animal style"meaning the onions are fried. This is a 4x4. It is a hamburger with four hamburger patties and four slices of cheese. You won't find it on the menu. It doesn't seem possible but some of the boys told us they were still hungry after eating one of them. I've never had one myself.

Alex and Wendy down by what looks like mission bay somewhere but I'm not sure.

This is somewhere around La Jolla Cove I believe.

Scripps Pier

Instagram has all kinds of filters you can apply to make the pictures look all fancy. Personally I don't like any of them and I usually upload my pictures as they were taken. This picture showing off Alex and Wendy's new coats at the beach has some weird beige colored filter on it.

Some rich old lady built a large wall to protect a section of the beach so the children could swim without the surf knocking them around. The seals decided it was a nice place for their children so now the Childrens beach is Seal beach. Alex decided to pose next to one.

Tuesday was Alex's twenty second birthday. It was fun to have him home for his birthday because the last time he was home for his birthday was in his senior year in high school. Alycia posted this picture of when her and Alex reconstructed the scene from Lady and the Tramp when they were sucking on spaghetti.

I think Mom posted this picture.

This one would be Sarah

We celebrated his birthday with a barbecue. I cooked over thirty hamburgers and I'm sure if there had been more they would have disappeared.

Alex and Wendy back at the beach.

This is Alex and Scott. They served together in Chili and knew each other quite well. It is a bit of a coincidence but Scott came on the road trip with another friend of his not knowing that he was coming to Alex's house. They had a ton of fun reminiscing about Chili.

There are many wonderful places to have very good Mexican food but one of our favorites is Cotija's.

Cotija's carne asada fries. Not exactly pure Mexican but they are good.

This is a Grande Burrito. It is as big as Marks head.

Alex's Grande Burrito

A half eaten Grande Burrito

I'm not sure why but some of the boys apparently went into the local pet store and took a picture of this budgy bird.

No sooner did the guys wake up but what they headed for the beach. I'm not quite sure what Parker is doing here but it looks like it might be some Matrix stunt.

Parker cliff jumping at La Jolla Cove. This is a very pretty beach.

Matt Roundy used to live in our neighborhood. He was loving being back home. Here he is skim boarding at La Jolla Shores.

I think this is Scott skim boarding

Parker still playing.

Parker

Matt Roundy

Ryan and My served their missions in Riverside California which is an hour and a half up the freeway. Sunday evening they both headed to Riverside to see the old stomping grounds. I'm sure this place means a lot to them but I know nothing about it. Maybe I'll have to go give it a try some day.

This dude kind of looks like Einstein but I have no idea where it is or what its for.

Sarah goes to UVU and had spring break the same week as Alex. Sam however goes to BYU and they do not have a spring break. Some how he managed to break away for a few days and they showed up Tuesday late. Sarah and Sam brought the total number of people staying in the house to fifteen. There were beds everywhere. Here is a picture of them at Sea World. Sarah loves Polar Bears.

While the weather at our house (8 miles inland) was absolutely beautiful the marine layer at the beach was quite heavy making the beach a bit on the cool side. Here Sarah and Sam are at La Jolla Shores but she eventually decided that while she loves the beach she could freeze in Utah. That is when they came home and went to Sea World.

It looks like Sam is about to eat that lizard. They are at Sea World.

I assume this is while Ryan was in Riverside but I have no idea what he's doing with a signed baseball.

Sarah and Sam

This might look like a serene picture of some seagulls gliding by the setting sun but it is no such thing. Alex saw a bunch of seagulls on the beach and decided to run into them. As they were frantically flying way he was snapping pictures as fast as he could. He got some rather amazing shots like this one.

And this one.

The Beach

All I will do for this picture is quote Alex's comment that he posted with it. "Spring break has officially started!!!"

One of the nights they were here they went over to the church to play basketball. All but one of the guys are wearing Alex's high school uniforms.

Alex found a friend at the beach.

You can imagine that when you get ten unmarried young adult men together, a common topic around the house was girls. I don't know the story behind this picture but I know that on one of their trips to the beach they did hook up with some girls. This must be one of those occasions.

At the beach

On Wednesday night they all went to the beach and had a bonfire.

The very first day the first car load of boys arrived I warned everyone to wear lots of sunscreen. The first day they all came home with some pretty nasty sunburns. They didn't let it ruin their week but we did have to be careful how we touched them.

Mussels

This is the crowed before they all head off to a young adult dance on Friday night. They had a lot of fun. they came home with some phone numbers. We'll see if they actually call them. Everyone but Sam and Sarah are in this picture so I will try and name them. Standing left to right is My,TJ, Mark, Parker, Ryan, Scott, Matt, Wendy and Alex. Kneeling left is Felix and right is Harrison.

Playing cards out on the deck in our back yard.

Fish taco's at some joint at one of the beaches. In case you've never had one, fish taco's are very good.

A few of the boys really wanted to go deep sea fishing so Thursday morning they headed out on a boat. I was hoping for some good fish for dinner on Friday. It never happened. What little they caught they cooked up on the boat.

Dinner on Friday was three large New York Giant Pizza's. We actually had some left overs.

They were all rather excited.

I'm very interested to learn the story behind this picture. Parker never left any description on it.

Everyone was going full steam this week and they were always dead tired. We had two air mattresses in our front room?

It was only ten minutes to the beach but Harrison couldn't keep his eyes open that long.

Friday Sarah and Sam went to Sea World a second time and the rest of the boys went for their first time. There is Sarah's favorite animal, the polar bear enclosure.

I don't know where this is or what it's about.

Thursday night a car accident on the freeway took out our power. Everyone is eating their In-n-out burgers by candle light.

And Harrison is heating up his soup on my camp stove with my headlight.

Beans and Rice. I'm not sure why they like to take so many pictures of their food.

Going for a run on a beautiful sunny day.

Settlers of Catan

More Settlers

Seagulls (presumably this is before Alex ran them down)

Sarah and Sam arrived late Tuesday. They normally make the drive in two days but Sarah was so anxious to get here she talked Sam into doing it in one day. As you can see, long car rides drive her a bit batty.

Sam enjoying a turkey leg at Sea World. Looks better than that lizard did.

Alex knows the best place to sit at Sea World for the Killer Whale Show. This is Shamu.

A sea shell?

Once again, I don't know anything about this shot.

There is Alex's friend again.

Street taco's, they are very good. I believe this is on Ryans trip to Riverside.

A turtle at Sea World

This is a huge tree at Balboa Park. It's too bad you can't get an idea of how huge the thing is.

The boys had two or three plans to go to the temple but they all fell through. They did make a few trips over there to look at it though.

They were doing their best to get some fancy angles with the cameras. Some of these pictures look pretty nice.

Our back yard opens up onto a small canyon that leads to the Penasquitos Canyon Preserve. Hiking (or running) through this canyon is gorgeous. One of our traditional hikes was to the waterfall in the preserve. Some of the boys made the hike.

The hike to the waterfall crosses the Penasquitos creek. It is one of my favorite places in the world. It is also where I broke my toe on a run last year. By the bridge is this huge tree that is growing sideways. It is fun to sit on.

Alex fell off this cliff when he was a kid and broke his thumb. He is lucky he didn't crack his head open. It sure scared us.

Parker doing his lion king act with his back pack.

A very common pass time was playing on the XBox. One team is in the family room and the other team is in the guest room.

Saturday morning we all packed up and headed different directions. It was a sad day. Some of the boys were near tears. Sarah and Sam headed up to Placentia to visit Ben and Sharley.

And to play some more XBox

Wendy left Alex a nice love letter on our car window and then they head for Salt Lake City.

The other car load of boys decided to go up and see Los Angeles. This is Santa Monica.

Lisa, Alex and I headed for Arizona to go to the home coming talk for one of his missionary companions. On the way we had In-N-Out for lunch. Alex had to take a parting picture.