San Diego Trip: Part 2 - San Diego Wild Animal Park & Orange Picking

The day after J.R.'s wedding Ryon's family and our family went to explore the San Diego Safari Park.  Here is T.J. carefully examining our map of the park to see where we should go first.

So we barely made it into the park and we had to make a stop at the Carousel.  At least there were fake animals to see and ride on!  :)

Ray liked riding the elephant.

The next stop was to try out some African drums.  The kids thought this was fun, too, but we still didn't see any animals!  :)  Here is Janna drumming away.

T.J. tried out this fancy xylophone-type drum.

We should start our own family band!  Here is Coleton.

Dyllon was taking the drumming lesson seriously!

After the drums, we had to stop and see the Zumba guys do their show.  Zumba competed on the America's Got Talent show.  They had Taylie and Janna come up to jump rope with them.  The girls did pretty well!

But- still no animals (unless you count the Zumba guys in their zebra outfits!).  :)

O.K., so we finally made it to see some animals (although you can't see them in this picture!).  At least Taylie looks cute!  :)

Coleton

Cole, Ray, Nichole, and Taylor

So, after seeing a few animals it was time for a stop at the "splash spot" in the park.  The kids weren't really dressed to get wet, but they got wet anyway!  Here's T.J., Jaymon, Janna, and Dyllon.

Cole had a blast just running around in his diaper.  Someday he will be so glad that I took this picture!  :)

It was a good place to cool off, but then it was time to see more animals!

The best part of the Safari park is the ride around to see all the animals.  You can just sit and relax and see lots of different animals.  Here is T.J. checking out the giraffes.

As you can see, this was also Ryon's favorite part!  :)

Here is our whole group at the end of our journey through the park.  We didn't lose any kids, and after a slow start we were still able to see plenty of animals.

On our way back to the hotel, we found a place to go and pick oranges.  Taylor's dad is a "produce man" and loves to check out the fields wherever he goes, so we thought we would keep up the family tradition.  Nothing smells as good as an orange grove!  Here's the line-up of kids ready to go pick oranges!

Jaymon had to try one out.  They were super juicy and messy, but quite tasty!

Taylor helped Ray pick a few.  Such cute boys!