Showing posts with label family vacation. Show all posts

Mini Pismo Beach Vacation

Monday, June 12, 2017

Hi friend. So glad you stopped by. It's been awhile and I've missed you. Back in April my family took a tiny road trip to Pismo Beach and I want to tell you about it and share some photos because sharing is good and also because the older I get the more miserable my long term memory gets. If I don't record what happened I'm likely to forget. Am I the only one?

 We actually decided to take this trip at the last minute and since I didn't have a lot of time to research and plan we hired a travel planner to help us. You guys! It was the best decision ever! I'm including a link to the planner we used, Get Globetrotting, because her prices are super amazing and she came up for stuff for us to do that we totally would have missed on our own.

 We started out driving down the gorgeous California coast to our Bed and Breakfast in the tiny town of Arroyo Grande.

Here's Ellie on one of the hammocks on the property. It was so perfect, only minutes from a darling downtown and maybe five more to the beach. Jonathan was only able to join us for part of the time because he had other plans with friends that he felt were more important than his family...and I'm only a little bitter. 

 Bah! Do you remember those days when you were a teenager and your friends seemed so important and your family was just always there? I can remember coming home from college being so excited to see my friends and my parents being like, "Wait! WE'VE missed you..."

 Anywho. We went to a fun restaurant.
And then the next day we went to Morro Bay. The weather was a bit cool and overcast, but it was perfect for beach combing, and boy was that beach ready to be combed! There were hundreds of sea stars washed up on the sand, and the most interesting rocks we'd ever seen. It was treasure hunting at it's finest.

We spent hours exclaiming over all the beautiful bits of rock and glass we found before heading to the Madonna Inn for lunch and their famous cake. This place is seriously over the top! The formal dining room wasn't open for lunch but we had to sneak in and wander around.

Crazy right?!?!
And the slices of cake were like a whole cake. We could barely make a dent in them.
We spent the rest of the day wandering the shops at Pismo Beach and playing games back at our inn. 
Jonathan arrived that night and the next day we got up early to ride dune buggies. This was a suggestion from our travel planner; I wouldn't have thought of it myself.
Waiting for our ride out to the dunes.
 Ellie and I were both a bit timid on our buggies and mostly enjoyed tooling around up and down the hills and watching the boys be crazy. They both managed to get thrown off their bikes while jumping the hills.
This both scared me and made me laugh. Ellie was really the only one who would stay still long enough for me to get a good photo.
After the buggies we spent some time poking around the beautiful San Luis Obispo Mission. It was established in 1772.
I had fun playing art history teacher and pointing out to J and E how those early builders would have been trying to mimic the opulence of the European churches they left behind. They didn't have the wealth or resources of the church in Europe so they got creative with their wood carvings and decorative paintings. I was totally hitting my geeky stride, and the kids were even interested, when all of a sudden this mass of noisy teenagers comes barging in and threw me off my groove. We were a little annoyed and about to leave when they all gathered up and started singing.

 It was amazingly beautiful! The acoustics in the chapel were so good, and the kids must have been on a choir field trip because they were very talented and we felt like we were being blessed with a little sacred experience to get to hear them in a place where so many have come to worship for so long. I took a little video for you
On the last day of our vacation we visited Hearst's Castle. It was something I've wanted to do for a long time and while the kids were maybe a teensy bit bored, Marc and I thought it was fascinating. Jonathan bailed on us because his back was hurting from his dune buggy stunts, but Ellie was a trooper.
All of it was almost obscenely extravagant, but man it was fun house to spy inside! I was maybe a little obsessed with the indoor swimming pool. Or a lot obsessed. It's just so sparkly! 
 Who wouldn't want to swim there! I'm adding it to my bucket list right now, filed under "nearly impossible but it's worth dreaming."
After that we drove back home along the coast making a little detour at Seal Beach so we could laugh at the antics of those funny seals and make up stories about them.
Let's end with a video of their floppy goodness.

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One Day In L.A.

Monday, March 21, 2016

Last weekend we took a quick trip down to L.A. to visit Marc's family. Like, super quick; we drove down Friday afternoon, spent Saturday together, had hugs goodbye Sunday morning and were back home in the Bay Area by dinner time.

When we realized Jonathan and Ellie have different Spring breaks we decided we couldn't wait all the way until summer to see the fam so a quick trip was in order. 

Marc's sister Stephanie and her husband Blake were in town from Virginia so it was an extra good weekend to visit. We ended up staying in the very same hotel that Marc and I spent the first night of our honeymoon 25 1/2 years ago. Yes friends, that is where the magic happened. Ooo La La. It was super fun watching our kids squirm as we reminisced about how very romantic it was.

This beautiful tree was right outside our hotel.
On Saturday morning we had breakfast at Great Maple. It's such a pretty restaurant.
We were some of the first diners there and the fresh, as in hot and gooey, maple bacon doughnuts were so so yummy.
Great Maple
Just, I mean, come on! These were maybe the best doughnuts I have ever had. Unfortunately I also ordered the popover plate with a poached egg, squash blossom stuffed with goat cheese and sauted mushrooms and tomatoes.

I was stuffed with doughnut but it was so pretty I had to try and eat some.

I hurt myself doing so.

We spent the rest of the day with Marc's mom and dad, sister Jenna, and Stephanie and Blake.
We were so busy visiting I only took this one picture. Arrrrg! Jonathan and Stephanie had fun playing the guitar (J) and the ukulele (S) together and Jenna and I made a special dinner to celebrate Mom and Dad's upcoming 50th anniversary.

The next day we headed home but on our way out we stopped for an early lunch. Can you guess where?
Pinks!
Can you believe with all the trips we make to L.A. we've never been to Pinks? Well, Marc can because he hates hot dogs but I do not hate hot dogs, unless it's a gross hot dog, which these were not. This was a very nice hot dog and I'm glad we got to try it.

We also made a quick pit stop at California doughnuts so Miss Ellie could be happy but I forgot to take a picture.

All in all it was a nice trip even if it was awfully quick.

P.S. Last week I opened an Etsy store to sell my zipper pouches. You can visit it here. I'll tell you the story of how I decided to open it later this week.
My pouches just chillin' in the Marriott bathroom. They travel well.






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The Elusive Weekend Away Finally Happens

Monday, October 8, 2012

Our plans for the weekend shifted suddenly and we found ourselves on Friday night with a fairly open couple of days in front of us. We love General Conference, but the chance to get away almost never presents itself, and we decided to take a fly by the seat of our pants trip up the coast to see the California Giant Redwoods.

 Okay, really Marc and the kids wanted to take this trip. I, in my hate for all plan changing ways, wanted to stay home and paint my bookshelves and clean my bathrooms and maybe get out some Halloween decorations. But whatever. I got over it and I'm glad I did.

 The drive was actually a lot of fun. On Saturday morning we just threw a ton of sleeping bags in the car and took off. We laughed and sang and talked, it was really nice to be smooshed all together in our new non-mini-van. We pulled into a camp ground around 2pm and decided to splurge on a $50 cabin since we didn't have our tent.


 We ate sausage and hot dogs and s'mores.

Every tiny little rest stop we drove past had a sign claiming to be the "World Famous" something or other...but the next day when we got onto the Avenue of the Giants we really were blown away. There are no photos (that I took) that can do it justice, but I'm posting away.



“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.”

-John Steinbeck

Thank you Mr. Steinbeck. We felt it, but I couldn't express it.

I can't 'splain my son.
We hiked all over. The kids climbed, oh, everything. Jonathan took a nasty fall off of one big stump and got scratched up pretty badly, but he is man, and kept his stoic on.

 This is the official tallest tree in the world.
It is world famous, while we were there we met people from Texas, Denmark, and Ireland. So there. Ellie won't look at the camera because she is mad because the whole world isn't revolving around her, darn it!

 This family weekend was about a million times better than if we had stayed home and done what I wanted. Sometimes I wish we were better planners(!), but sometimes being impulsive works out just right.
p.s. I just realized the sweater I'm wearing has been worn by both Maddie and Katie on "ugly sweater day" at their high school. But I make it work.

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