Over the past week, the kids and I have seen Lego pandas and real pandas, giraffes and okapis, killer whales, beluga whales and sea lions at three different sites.

We saw a pet emu and a costumed Big Bird.

We saw lions in a simulation of their natural environment – sleeping in and on an SUV — at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

We saw baby elephants there, too!

We saw the Shamu show and a walrus who pretended he was in the Shamu show. We got splashed by performing dolphins, then went to feed their buddies in a different tank.

We watched polar bears, grizzly bears, sun bears and koalas that aren’t bears.

We also looked at wombats, pygmy marmosets, echidnas and prairie dogs.

In case you didn’t guess, our trip to San Diego was all about animals. Even our museum visits included the body cast of a dog who died in Pompeii and tons of dinosaur bones. We even drove up to see the seals and sea lions in La Jolla.

Yesterday we headed home.

By some bad planning on my part, we ended up with a four-hour layover in Kahului before flying into Honolulu.

To kill some time, the kids and I cabbed it out of the airport for lunch and walked back by way of Krispy Kreme.

On the walk back, we saw roosters, hens and chicks all over the place.

My four-year-old was just as fascinated with the chickens as she was with every other animal we saw on vacation, including the squirrel she chased up a tree and the pigeon foolish enough to let her touch his tail (yes, I carry antibacterial wash with me everywhere for just those kinds of situations).

Next time I’ll save money and just take the girl to the dump.

Just kidding! I’ll fill in more details of the trip after I get some much needed sleep.