San DIego, Post 1.

First of all, I want to thank every single one of you that have reached out due to our learning issues with our boys. I plan on getting back to every one of you personally. It just might take a while since I need to parent all those kids. As always, you can contact me through the comments section of this website, via Facebook, or at amie at brockwaymetcalf dot com.

So. Our four-day weekend. In CA we have Vet's day off on the Friday and the following Monday off for teacher's conferences. After the last weekend (for those of you not on Facebook, it was one of those times that one needs to follow through on a threat, and it was just an awful weekend for us all) we needed to regroup.

I wanted to Go Away. We had four days off from school, and the previous weekend wrung us all out. I wanted to get away and spend a night somewhere else. Here's the rub: our kids are crabpots, and we are broke.

I did a lot of research. Santa Barbara? Beautiful, a zoo we could attend for free with our Turtleback Zoo membership.

Every hotel was $500/night.

Santa Monica? The pier, the beach. We haven't been to the beach since last year, and we are beach people.

Rains projected. Say we take the kids to the pier. We spend $20 for each kid to ride the rides on the boardwalk, and then we need to fend off the pleas for the boardwalk games. Plus the cotton candy that makes our children into crazed drooling angry zombies. No thanks.

Palm Springs? Cheap, awesome, out in the desert enough that we didn't need to worry about the rain projected for the weekend. But every hotel that was highly recommended on TripAdvisor was "adults only requested." Not the place for my rambunctious crew.

I went back to our original thought. San Diego is about 2 1/2 hours from Burbank, and a good stretch of that is driving down the beach. Our family loves zoos. Our membership to the Turtleback Zoo in NJ was the best $65 we spend every year. We met friends, swanned around the zoo for an hour or two, and when there was the inevitable meltdown, we left, always knowing that we could come back a day or two later. At the Turtleback Zoo, we weren't discovering exotic animals. We were visiting old friends. We developed friendships with the handlers and learned the names of the names animals (Dante, Donkey, Arbuckle) and we named those that didn't have names (we named the 12-ft long boa Muffin).

So. In the Brockway/Metcalf family, when all else fails, we go to the zoo.

San Diego is far enough away that we needed to stay over a night or two. So I Pricelined a cheapo hotel and got a Kids Suite at the Choice Hotel for $74 a night, including breakfast. We got some free tickets from Evan's job for the zoo, and then upgraded them for a small fee to full-fledged (and tax-deductible) memberships. I packed three lunches and untold snacks in our cooler, researched cheap eats and printed out coupons, and we were off.

We didn't tell the kids that we were going away for the weekend. We told them that we were going to the zoo, and they assumed that we meant the LA Zoo. I packed everyone's bags secretly and Evan loaded them into the car while the kids were watching crappy morning TV.

More tomorrow. O, bejebus, I am a tired girl.