First of All: The Theft

Here's the sad, sad story in a nutshell:

After arriving in San Diego and picking up our rental car, we went directly to Balboa Park. We moved and parked the car a few times while we were there. We think that one particular time it did not get locked. (The buttons on the keyless entry of the vehicle were backwards from the ones we are used to, making it a very conscious effort to get it truly locked.) We had all of our belongings in the car. Luckily, whoever took what they did left our luggage in back and the kid's backpacks. Here's what we know was taken:

• Daniel's work laptop and bag
• Noise cancelling headphones
• Daniel's parent's GPS (and everything that came with it) that they kindly let us borrow
• Daniel's mountain biking GPS
• Daniel's planner
• 4 sets of ear buds
• Lots of cables and chargers
• All of our paperwork for the trip, including reservations, tickets, and other misc. items

All in all, it was $3,700+ in stuff that was taken. It was very sickening to realize what had happened. Gratefully, most of the items stolen can be replaced by money and don't have too much sentimental value. We were thankful we were able to reprint the admission tickets to SeaWorld and Legoland. Daniel had had one of his hard drives fail on his laptop recently and spent a lot of time getting it up and running again just before the trip. He lost some work files he had made too. Obviously he suffered the most loss.

The hotel we stayed at upgraded our room when they found out, which was nice. We arrived there after asking at a gas station where it was. Without the reservation, address, or GPS we were unprepared.

There really wasn't much else we could do other than report it to the police.

Despite this happening, we did manage to have a great family trip. The up side of it is that other problems you encounter don't seem quite so big. :)