Five Ways to Survive a Trip to San Diego with Fourteen Kids

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You may already know that I have four children. If not, “Hello, and nice to meet you! I have four kiddos!” Four is already to some people considered a lot of kids.

What you may not know is my brother has 3 kids, middle sister has 3 kids and youngest sister also has 4 kids. So, between us, there are FOURTEEN cousins!

Every summer after the end of the school year, we pack up the kids in the Phoenix heat and drive across the desert to the cool beaches of San Diego. More specifically, we head to Mission Beach!

We look forward to this trip every year as a time for the family to spend quality time together, relax, eat good food, play, and just generally have a fabulous time. Even more amazingly, we all stay TOGETHER! Ten adults and fourteen kids in a two story condo. All. Of. Us.

I know that you are thinking that this does not sound like the relaxing vacation I am describing at all. We all know that I am a glutton for chaos, but how much chaos is too much chaos? We have a few things we have learned along the way to keep the kids busy, happy and *mostly* not fighting every day. These tricks would absolutely work even if you don’t have a massive group of kids and just need to keep a few entertained for the week.

1. Bring surprises.

I love to plan to bring a few things that the kids don’t know about. This keeps things fresh and can be done on a super tight budget. If the kiddos start to get bored or antsy, I can pull something out of my surprise stash. It redirects their focus and creativity into something positive and fun.

One great idea for a surprise is mini travel games. Since travel games are meant to move, they are small and can be used in the car, the hotel, the airplane, wherever! We recently fell in love with some fun travel games from Take ‘N’ Play Anywhere, including Hangman, Matching Game, Go Fishing, and Bingo on our last trip.

Other ideas for surprises are card games, clipboards painted with chalkboard paint and a set of chalk, sidewalk chalk, and anything else you think would interest your kiddos and keep their interest for a bit.

2. Plan an easy craft.

All of our kids love to do crafts and art and mess with paint and other materials, even the older ones. We plan one or two simple crafts with supplies that can be packed easily in our bags or with supplies that can be easily purchased at a local grocery store—less time shopping means more time for fun.

I love to use a beach theme, and we have made these cute and easy crabs in the past. The supplies were minimal and could be purchased pretty much anywhere. I threw the red paint in with my toiletries while packing.

3. Bikes and scooters are a must.

If you are making your beach trip a road trip and can bring your own bikes or scooters, do it! You can also rent bikes of all sizes at a number of places if you are travelling via air.

This year, scooters were the ride of choice for most of our kiddos. These not only kept them busy on the patio when we were staying around at the condo, but made it easy to take them longer distances than walking alone. A three-mile round trip to the farmers market was easy with most of them on scooters.

4. Stay close to the beach or bay.

If the kids had it their way, they would play on the beach all day, every day. Although you can definitely save some money by staying further away from the water, we have found that saving on a few excursions in exchange for a staying very near the beach is 100% worth it.

We choose a place that is actually between Mission Beach and Mission Bay which is perfect for us. We are about two houses from the bay and about six houses to the beach meaning we can quickly walk either direction. It also means we are close to food, drinks, and a bathroom! As we know, these are critical to keeping kiddos happy!

5. Plan a few “activity days”, but only a few.

In general, on a normal vacation with just our family of six, we are BUSY! We love to be go-go-go and see as much as we can of the place we are visiting. Our larger family vacation to San Diego/Mission Beach is different. The ultimate goal is time with family and relaxation, not exploring every single thing the city has to offer. On the other hand, never leaving the condo is a little TOO MUCH relaxing for me, and even too much for the kids. After a few days, “What are we doing today?” starts to be a regular question.

We have found that planning a few days of an activity helps break up the trip, give some break time for any kids who have started to get a little testy with each other, while keeping cost down for families that don’t want to spend too much on vacation. The San Diego Zoo, Sea World, LegoLand, The San Diego Zoo Safari Park, The San Diego Natural History Museum, a boat cruise around the San Diego Harbor, a walk around La Jolla to see the sea lions, The Birtch Aquarium at Scripts in La Jolla, and hiking at Cabrillo National Monument to explore the tide pools are all perfect activities for our variety of ages and can be easily done in a single day or less. We have tried them all!

Planning a trip to San Diego or Mission Beach? Need more ideas for your trips with kiddos? Have some great ideas that have worked with you and your tiny or massive tribe? We would love to hear about it in a comment below!