When we woke up early on Sunday morning, we were starving! Sleeping through dinner the night before was wonderful, but my stomach growled constantly until we found a place to eat breakfast. We had reserved Sunday for driving, so we bundled up and started driving south along the Pacific Coast Highway (CA-1) towards Moss Beach. Everything about the "One" was beautiful. The roads were twisty and the fog was hovering over the water and there were places to pull off all along our route. The first place we stopped that was close enough to shore for us to walk cost us $10. Although the beach itself was stunning, the park was so dirty and campers had trashed the viewing area. I was disappointed, but we hit the road and kept on driving. I tried uploading an image on my phone to share, but ...
travel
San Francisco: Day Two
I had been stalking the weather in San Francisco for weeks before we left and since Josh was already in California for nine days, I thought I would be prepared. It turns out mid-sixties in sunny Alabama with high humidity is a stark contrast to mid-sixties in a foggy, drizzly, zero-humidity city. The moral of this story? Pack sweaters and jeans for coastal towns in Northern California. Thankfully, we knew that morning that we needed to wear our warmest clothes. For Josh that was workouts (again) and for me, it was my new jeans and sweater from Stitch Fix. Our plan for the morning was brunch in Haight Ashbury before heading south. We started out at The Grind and it was an even better breakfast than the day before. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I had french toast and hashbrowns again!! ...
San Francisco: Day One
In the days before we left for San Francisco, there was a lot of drama about when we would go and where we would stay. There was an entire week when we thought his trip would be canceled, so I waited until the last possible minute to book my plane tickets and find a hotel. Room rates continued to climb while we waited and a once reasonable timeshare that we booked was inexplicably cancelled at the last minute, we started looking at other options. Rather than lay down $1600 for a hotel room we didn't want, I took to AirBnB and started searching. In case you aren't familiar, it is similar to VRBO in that you are renting from an individual, but it's a much more secure process and there are hundreds of rentals available. Although it was advertised as a "gritty neighborhood", we booked an ...
I’m Heading Out West
I was getting ready to draft today's post and realized that I said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this topic last summer. Maybe you read it and maybe you didn't, but I think it bears repeating. I sometimes wonder if we have a strange relationship. We've been together longer than we were apart and that means we know each other really well. I don't mean that our relationship is the greatest ever or that we love each more than you love your spouse, but in a world where divorce seems like no big deal, you kind of have to pat yourself on the back for really liking somebody after seventeen years, right? Josh drives me batty. Like crazy, kicking, screaming, batty. He knows exactly what buttons to push, how to make me smile and how to make me scream. He knows I hate repetitive ...
Rewind: Beach Weekend
One of the down-sides to my crazy month of work was that the kids went on our summer vacation without us. Everything had been so up in the air for months and with my ever-changing schedule it was hard to determine if Josh & I would make it down or not. We debating him going ahead without me, but ultimately decided that he and I would do the same thing in the hopes we could travel together later in the summer. My parents decided to take the kids with them their entire two weeks, so our house was pretty quiet. Josh decided to go down the last weekend they were there and see the girls, eat some seafood and help them pack up and bring the RV home for the rest of the summer. At the last minute, I found myself with 48 hours at home alone and decided to make the long drive to surprise them ...
Spring Break | Part Two
Our last two days on the coast were decidedly different than the first two. We saw the sun shine and there was LOTS of shenanigans going on in the camper. Kids wanted pictures of themselves, they took silly pictures of us, made weird faces and generally traumatized their parents. When we got up on Saturday, the sun was shining and it felt great outside. I had on shorts and a tank and the kids were in short sleeves. We hung out around camp for a few hours, ate Arby's for lunch (we laugh that this has somehow been designated as "beach food" since we never eat it at home) and packed all of our gear. Imagine our surprise when we pulled into "our beach", as the girls like to call it (the Gulf State Park Beach Pavilion), and it was closed to the public. We later asked a guard at the ...
Spring Break | Part One
This is the first time since Kamin & I went to Disney World in 2004 that I can remember going somewhere for Spring Break. The girls are usually with my mom for the week and we operate on a normal schedule. How boring?! This year Josh & I were both having serious withdrawals and it seemed like a pretty good excuse to "take the camper down so we can get there quicker in June". Because spending money on two vacations inside three months makes PERFECT sense. Our girls had been counting down the days for weeks. We left on Wednesday after lunch and made the five hour drive (it takes an extra hour with the camper in tow), hoping to get there by dinner. We were super impressed with the girls, who traveled so well. There were several movies, lots of books and very few potty breaks. Sophie ...
a family tradition
I think this is my earliest childhood memory of camping with my family. My grandparents had a Winnebago and they took us to Gulf Shores for a week every summer. It's was "grand kids week" and my parents would usually come down at the end of the week and we would move into the tent with them for a second week. I LOVE thinking about the fact that my parents do the very same thing with our girls. The Winne was so cool. My grandparents had two twin beds in their "room" and the dinette folded out for a double bed at the other end (seen below). The coolest part, to me, was that there were cabinets above both beds that folded down into a bunk. I loved sleeping up there, even though there was only about 18 inches between the mattress and the ceiling. And even though we know of at least two times ...