Annual trip to Pebble Beach

It's summer time! One of the things that means for us is an extended trip to Pebble Beach. This year, because of the way the schedule worked out we were able to stay for 8 days. It was fabulous to move into the house and just enjoy each other and all that Monterey Bay has to offer. Since this has become a digital scrapbook for our family I am including a ton of pictures in this post for our memories, so consider yourself warned:)

Since our kids are such great car travelers...(read with a lot of sarcasm) we usually end up stopping once if not twice, making what could be a 2 1/2 hour drive into a 4 hour drive. This year we decided to take the train ride at Casa De Fruita. The last time we did this I was very pregnant with Hudson and Brooklyn. It was a fun start to our great week away.

The kids wasted no time climbing into the tree in the back yard.

It was quite chilly and windy the first couple days we were there, so despite the fact that it is June we were bundled up as if it were January. Here the kids are checking out one of the first crabs caught on our trip.

Of course no trip to Monterey is complete without a visit to the aquarium. They have a new jellyfish exhibit which was a lot of fun to check out. In this picture the kids are drawing their own jellyfish on a computer screen and then "releasing" it onto the big aquarium screen.

Checking out the touch pools. Hudson and Brooklyn really enjoyed seeing all the fish.

One night we took the kids out to dinner at Il Fornio. We like to take them out to eat at nicer restaurants every once in a while to teach them to sit nice and behave, even though it is a little stressful. We've found that it works best to get to the restaurant around 4:45 to beat any sort of dinner rush:). They did great. When we sat down they gave the kids some pizza dough and told them to make a shape and then they would bake the bread for them. The kids had a lot of fun with that.

With our trip to Il Fornio it has become tradition to stop at Pebble Beach Golf Links to take some pictures and admire the view.

On our way back up to the Inn we saw a gentleman with a large owl. We got to talking to him and he said that he is hired by the resort to walk around every couple weeks with a large owl (Louise) because it makes the smaller birds afraid to build nests on the building. It was quite fascinating. He even got Louise to fly from pillar to pillar, talk about big haunting eyes and a huge wing span! The kids thought it was great.

Beach time! We spent most of our time on the rocky beach, but we hit the sandy beach a couple times so the kids could build sand castles and get their feet wet.

We invited some friends up for a couple nights. It is fun to share the house with friends and give the kids a chance to play with people other than our family and then we get some fun adult time as well. Kevin and Kevin got to do some golfing and Janey and I got to do some shopping on Saturday.

Ethan and Mason loved climbing on all the rocks to check out the tide pools. They kept very busy and were very brave heading out quite a ways on the rocks.

We always love to take friends to see the bag piper at Spanish Bay. The night we chose to go was SUPER windy, like blow you over windy. The kids didn't seem to care though and had a blast running around. Since it was so cold we had our choice of fire pits since most people chose to stay inside.

New this year, we decided to check out the Municipal Wharf and Old Fisherman's Wharf. Now that the kids are older they enjoy seeing new things. We loved checking out all the fishing boats and looking in the fish shop.

In the spirit of keeping it real, here is Miss Mo less than thrilled to be posing for a picture with her brother.

We loved watching the harbor seals and sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf. This day it was gorgeous weather. We were actually hot walking around which doesn't happen too often in Monterey.

Since it was so warm we decided to head down to the beach after naps. Unfortunately by this time the breeze had picked up and it wasn't quite as warm as we had hoped, but Kevin, Ethan and Morgan got in the water for a while.

Nothing says beach time like being buried alive!

The whole crew. Note Brooklyn's outfit. She was not thrilled to be down by the water until I figured out that she was cold so we put her hood on and Hudson's hat and then she was as happy as could be to be digging around in the sand.

Sea turtle in the sand.

We LOVE the beach!

Another highlight is spotting all the deer that roam around the area. Ethan likes to keep a count and according to him we had over a 100 spottings, now that is of course the same deer over and over...but I'm still not sure how accurate the count was:)

The second to last day it was overcast and a little chilly so just the boys headed down to the beach to throw rocks and be boys.

Check out this crab they caught on the last crab hunt of the trip, significantly bigger than the first one! Ethan even got into catching them himself, quite a big step for our cautious little guy.

We had such a great time together as a family. It is always refreshing to spend time relaxing and playing together. We also went to the Dennis the Menis park, out for lunch a couple times and Kevin and I got to play twilight golf and go out to eat the last night when my mom came up to watch the kids for us. Thanks mom! Not to mention lots of time in the backyard "golking" (as Hudson calls golfing) with wiffle balls. Ethan said several times on our trip, "Can't we just move to the beach house?" I think that sums up how all feel about leaving. It sure is a blessing to be able to enjoy this great part of God's creation as often as we do.