Half Moon Bay Beach

On Thursday morning we went to Ikea. Can you believe I've never been to an Ikea? It was super fun (for me, not so much for Jim who was the designated kid-watcher). Jim wasn't impressed with the quality of the furniture (typical cabinet-maker) and said the price reflected the quality. I could have spent all day in Ikea getting ideas and picking out various items I wanted. Since Jim and the kids came along I tried to hurry, and I also had to fly home so I limited myself to just a few fun items: fabric, a duvet set for Hunty's room, and a few frames.

After Ikea we found our way to a beach by/near Half Moon Bay. We just entered "Half Moon Bay Beach" in our GPS and it took us to some suburb. Actually, it wanted us to go to the middle of the ocean by the looks of it, but the suburb cut us off. We found our way back to the main road and followed signs to the nearest beach which was called, "Venice Beach." We had to wade through an ankle deep stream to get to the beach, but once we were there it was SUPER nice. Actually, wading through the stream was kinda fun too.

Here are pictures:

Look at that big wave behind Hunter! The waves were really big this day.

Tralee was saying, "Nooooo!" in this picture because her sandcastle fell apart.

Hunty was crying because no one was holding him. He's scared of the ocean, and every time we went near the water while holding him he yelled, "No! No! No!" Then pointed his finger in the opposite direction.

Serious picture.

I like Hunty's face below. "Why the heck did they put me in this hole?"

A little cheesy a little cute.

I kinda love the picture below. Hunty was not in love with being this close to the water.

I really love the two silhouette-type pictures below. Tralee loved dipping her feet in the water with her daddy. Tralee's more like Jim (adventurous) and Hunter's more like me (scaredy-cat).

Chalk off another perfect day spent with my favorite peeps.

San Francisco and Pacifica

Jim, the kids, and I drove into San Francisco on Wednesday. I had a whole list of things I wanted to accomplish in the day, but only ended up doing the top two touristy things: Golden Gate Bridge and Pier 39. I also wanted to get to Golden Gate Park, ride on a trolley, and visit China Town but the kids (and Jim for that matter) were done with the city life after seeing the seals at Pier 39. Jim is just not a city guy (he was humouring me for the day), and the kids were tired and cranky after trekking across half of the Gold Gate Bridge and moseying around Pier 39. What we DID see of San Fran was FRAN-tastic! (hardy har har.) There's a video of Tralee checking out the seals below. The lighting is horrid, but Tralee sounds cute.

After our adventures in San Francisco, we headed to Pacifica to check out a beach there. We spent the rest of the day building sand castles, letting the waves chase us, and exploring.

We had a great day together.

Big Love for Big Basin

Before we left for California I e-mailed my cousin Meagan (who lives in the area we were headed) and asked her for fun things to do. A few days later she e-mailed me an amazing, well categorized, and detailed list. It was AWESOME (thank you to Meagan!). One of the categories was "Redwoods." Turns out there are a couple of Redwood forests close to our vacation destination, and one of them, according to Meagan, has some of the biggest oldest Redwoods in the area. I knew visiting this forest was on the top of my "to do" list. So, on Tuesday we headed to Big Basin State Park.

The drive was spectacular, but very windy. Hunter and I both got a little sick, luckily not to the point of revisiting our breakfast, just enough to make the two of us a little uncomfortable. We recovered quickly once out of the car and in the fresh forest air. Big Basin has several hikes you can take, we choose the one that's a little less than a mile long (perfect for little legs) and contains the biggest trees in the forest. We had so much fun on this hike together. My favorite part was when we stopped in a grove of ginormous trees and played hide-and-seek together. We moved right along to tag and as I watched Tralee dash in, out, and around the giant grove of redwoods with her daddy chasing right behind her, both of them giggling, I thought to myself, "I will never forget this moment." It was perfect!

We ended our adventure at a little mom-and-pop diner in Boulder City and ate some fantastic food. I swear, mom-and-pop places are ALWAYS better than the big chain restaurants.

Now for pictures:

The above pictures are of the kids and me in a giant tree right outside the visitor center. One close up, and one far away so you can register just how huge the tree is!

The pictures below are all of the same tree. One of Jim inside it, one of the entire hollow tree from inside looking up, and one from the outside looking up.

Below Jim and Tralee are hiding from me.

Yup Jim, that's a tall tree.

I took the picture below just cause she looked so pretty sitting on the bench in the middle of the forest.

The picture below didn't really turn out, but I still put it in so you can see how huge the base of the tree is we're sitting on. Craziness I tell you!

Tralee running out of a giant tree. Probably in the middle of playing tag or something.

Hunter sauntered through the forest, picking up various rocks, sticks, and greenery along the way. Such a little boy!

Jim and Tralee playing hide and seek. Tralee's running away to hide.

Isn't Hunter so cute?

Hunter found Daddy!

Now they're hiding together.

Jim standing by the "Father of the Forest"

Jim and Tralee by "Mother of the Forest"

Our whole family went inside the mother of the forest and played house for a bit. Tralee sat down, faced the inside trunk of the tree and said, "I'm going to watch tv." She sat like this for several minutes, every once in a while lifting her arm to "change the channel" and then announce what show was on. Then she would sit and watch for a few minutes until she decided to change the channel again. Jim and I just sat back and watched her imagination at work.

Here's Hunter climbing out of Mother Tree. Tralee's still in the background channel surfing.

I took a ton of pictures of Hunty looking up. This was the cutest one. He looked up a lot in this forest, I think we all did.

We had a lovely day together. The trees were incredible. I mean really really jaw-dropping incredible. Something everyone should see once in their lives if they're every near a redwood forest. The food was delish; the company, five-star. Definitely a day I'll want to revisit in the old memory jar for years to come.

First Vacation Day in San Jose

Do you like my rhyming title? I thought it was pretty clever. Now onto the task of writing about our adventures.

Saturday, January 29th the kids and I got on an airplane way-too-early in the morning and flew to San Jose, CA. It was an adventure in and of itself to fly with two kids by myself. I mean it was me, the kids, our stroller, two car seats, two bags of luggage, and two carry ons. In case you don't know, I only have two arms. I was outnumbered but we made it! I even got on a taxi in San Jose and made my way (with everything mentioned above) to Jim's hotel. Jim was working, so he wasn't able to pick us up.

I must say, when you're traveling with two kids, have a bum-load of luggage with you and said kids, and you're running on only a few winks of sleep, you're bound to do some pretty air-headed things. For instance, leave your cell phone on top of the taxi only to remember that it's there as the taxi driver (who doesn't understand English very well) starts to drive off into four lanes of traffic. I started out by saying, "Please stop, my cell phone is on top of your cab." He didn't hear or understand me. So, I tried again, "STOP! MY PHONE!" No response and continued driving. After a few more failed attempts to get him to stop, the taxi driver turned a corner and SLIDE. DING. CRASH. My phone hit the pavement. The taxi driver asked, "What's that?" I responded as calmly as I could muster (which probably wasn't very calm) "That's my phone! I need to get it." He mumbled something about not being able to stop, but finally did when I opened the car door and made a bee-line for my phone that was in the middle of the lane 15 yards or so behind the cab. I dashed, watched as other cars drove over it, and finally made it to check the damage. The battery was out, but my phone and phone cover were relatively un-scathed. I put the battery back in and miracle of all miracles: MY PHONE STILL WORKED!!

Anywho, a few minutes later the taxi driver dropped us off at the hotel, I checked in at the front desk, got my kids and all our stuff in the room, and then I crashed on the bed. Well, first I unpacked toys for the babies, found a cartoon on the tv, got out all the snacks the kids like, and then tried to rest as much as possible. The kids were so good this day as we waited for Jim to get off work. When Jim got back to the hotel we went out for a bit that night. We checked out some stores in the area, picked up some groceries we could keep in the room, then went back to the hotel to rest up some more.

Jim had to work on Sunday, so the kids and I just hung out again for a bit until we made our way to my cousins house. My cousin, Meagan, her husband, and three children live in San Jose and invited us over for Sunday dinner. I hadn't seen her since her wedding around five or six years ago, so it was nice to get together and let our children play. It was also nice to have something to do while Jim was working. The only downer was Jim's truck started acting up. We realized we'd have to get it looked at before we could really start our vacation.

So. . . Monday, Jim's first day off, and first official day of our vacation, we spent getting our truck repaired. Hooray! We rented a car for the day while Henry (our truck) got fixed. Luckily our trusty blue rental got us to the beach and back. This wasn't really how we planned on spending day one of our vacation, but it ended up all right. We hit another few snags along the way this day (thinking we left Jim's drivers license at the car rental place only to drive all the way back and discover that it was actually in my purse the whole time. Or pick up our truck, then go back to drop of the rental car only to get to the rental place an hour after it closed). Luckily, Jim and I were able to laugh each snag off while saying, "We're on an adventure."

So. . . yeah, day one wasn't all that exciting, BUT when we finally made it to Nature Bridges Beach in Santa Cruz at sunset all the snags along the way were forgotten. The beach was pristine, the weather accommodating, and the company perfect! We played until we couldn't see anymore then finally made our way to. . . well we weren't sure since we checked out of hotel numeral uno and still needed to find a place to stay. Luckily we found a really nice place for a great deal online in San Jose, and checked in there for the night. The hotel was a bit dated, but clean and comfortable. Our room also had a large jetted tub that we all climbed into and went "swimming" in. It was a great end to the first day of our adventures. So here are some pictures from the beach:

Cute Hunty Dizzle checking things out

Hunter scaling a cliff

Tralee being cute

Hunter and Jim walking my way

This is how Jim usually totes Hunter around. I kinda love it.

Tralee playing as the sun sets

Cute girl having so much fun

There was a little stream that the kids had fun climbing into and around. Jim made a little bridge for Hunter to hang out on in the middle of the stream.

Hunter. Beach. Birds.

I kinda love the picture below

Hunter wasn't too sure about the waves

Just hangin' out

My cute family. I like Hunty's sandy bum.

I told Jim, "Let's take a we're-sexy-in-California picture." This is what we came up with.

We tried for a cheesy kissy picture, that didn't work out too well either.

Lastly we did this one cause we're sick-os.

That's that folks! Check out my next blog post if you want to see some giant trees.

Back in Business

The kids and I are back from our California vacation. Jim has another few days of work there until he comes home. Here's a snapshot (a sneak peak if you will) to show just how fantastic our time was together. We went to a different beach almost everyday. We explored. We played. We waded. We shopped. We ate. We swam. We snuggled. We hiked. We built sandcastles. We slept in (as much as you can with kids). We had adventures. We loved every minute of our time together.

I have around 300 pictures to go through and decide which ones are blog-worthy, so hang in there (mostly speaking to you Mom and Nana, I know you've been anxiously awaiting another blog post). I'll get them up as soon as I can, and fill you in on our fantastic little get away. I'm still on vacation in my head. Getting back into the groove of regular everyday life is not going to be easy after 10 days of bliss.