Our Beach Vacation

We just got back from our wonderful little beach vacation! I blogged each day, but here's a slide show if you're interested in seeing more pictures. We all had a GREAT time and can't wait for our next trip to the beach!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Vacation - Day 1

We started our vacation with a Thomas the Train ride in Felton, CA. We wanted to take the kids on a train ride and when I went to check the info Thomas just happened to be there the same day we wanted to take a ride! What luck! We left the house around 9am and got to the train station around 10:30am (maybe earlier). We walked around - they had some steam engines running on the tracks, Thomas tattoos, coloring station, toy train area, souvenir store and some other stuff to look at. Our train ride was at 11:45. We boarded around 11:30a and went on a 25 minute train ride through the redwood forest (beautiful!) The weather was perfect and the kids had a nice time riding the train. I have to say the Thomas part was a little disappointing. He was so small compared to the steam engines they normally have running at this station and to take a photo with him you have to wait in this VERY LONG line! We skipped that part since neither of our kids are really that much into Thomas. They were more interested in hitting the park for lunch! Next we drove to a small park near the train station and had a picnic. The kids played on the playground equipment for a short bit and then we drove to our hotel to check in. This trip we decided to rent a one bedroom suite at Seascape Resort in Aptos, CA. I have to say, this is a great idea for families with little kids. We spend a lot of time in our room and this place has a nice table they can work at, couch, kitchen, etc. We even have a nice little view of the ocean. We spent most of the afternoon here in our room (watching GOLF), took a quick walk down to the beach and had an early dinner at the Japanese restaurant. When we got back to our room the kids made their special beach treat for dessert, took a bath and now they are in bed (7:18pm)! Let's see if they fall asleep. Daddy is in there with them so hopefully they'll get a good night rest. Tomorrow we are off to the beach!

Vacation - Day 2

When we woke up this morning it was actually drizzling! We decided it was going to be too cold to take the kids to the beach so we took them to the Seymour Discovery Center. What a find! This is the BEST place for small children. It is very small (like the Lindsay Museum except for sea life!) They have touch pools, an aquarium section and some other exhibits that don't include live sea life. We spent about an hour there and the kids (and me and Clark) learned a lot of new things. We even saw how (some) baby sharks grow inside these seaweed pods! We saw things in the little museum we've never seen in larger aquariums and there were lots of volunteers around to answer every question you may have (or not have). After we finished looking around the center it was still dreary so we took the kids to the Boardwalk to ride the merry go round and play skeet ball. When I was little I remember going to the Boardwalk to play skeet ball! Skeet ball is still a little too hard for them, but they had a good time. I think Daddy threw most of the balls for them, but they tried too. After the Boardwalk the sun started to come up so we picked up lunch from this little Japanese hole in the wall take out (just the perfect lunch! we may do it again tomorrow!), ate in our room and headed down to the beach! Our hotel has a nice beach and it provides shuttle service from our room to the beach so we called for a ride and loaded our beach stuff up and away we went. We spent a couple of hours on the beach, came back to our room to take a bath and decided to call in a food order to Chili's (we were planning to eat there, but no one took a snoozer and Gregory took a header on a rock trying to move out of the way so a shuttle could pass us so we're staying in and resting). Daddy picked up our dinner and we enjoyed it in our room. For dessert I ran across the street to pick up Popsicles for Daddy and the kids. We had planned to stop by Black China Bakery for some vegan cupcakes, but they closed early today so we didn't make it in time. Maybe we'll go there for scones in the morning!

Vacation - Day 3

Yesterday one of the volunteers at the Seymore Discovery Center said there were some great tide pool in Davenport so that is where we headed. Well, we found Davenport Landing and it was full of all these surfers - no families, no kids, just surfers. Should've been a clue, but since this lady told us it would be great for preschool aged kids we decided to make the trek down to the beach and way across the beach to the tide pools. Well, the walk was rough and Clark kept telling me this wasn't a good idea, but I asked the surfers if there were tide pools over there and they said yes so we kept going. Well, the tide was starting to rush in, the kids (and me) got their shoes all wet and we only saw some hermit crabs and muscles. Boo. We walked back up and decided to go to the hotel and head down to the beach where the kids could play. We picked up lunch on the way back, ate in the room and had the shuttle take us to the beach. The kids played for a couple of hours and we headed back up so we could take a bath and pick up dinner for our BON FIRE NIGHT! I picked up dinner from a place called Gayle's Bakery and Roticceria (YUMOLA! If you're ever around this area try this place. If you're into desserts you'll just drool over their bakery selection!) - we had ribs, rotisserie chicken, fingerling potato salad, fruit salad, ceasar pasta salad and bread - they picked us up from our room and drove us down to the beach where a guy built a fire for us and provided us with s'more fixins (we brought our own kit for the kids just in case they were allergic to anything) and water. We had a delicious dinner, saw dolphins swimming in the ocean, 2 parachute guys landed on the beach near us, the weather was just perfect and the kids had a great time roasting marshmallows and eating s'mores (and running around the beach afterwards to burn off all the sugar!) Both kids said the bon fire was their favorite part of their day today!

Vacation - Day 4

This morning we packed up our bags and headed back to Black China Bakery to pick up more scones for breakfast before heading to Monterey to visit the Aquarium. We wanted to get the yummy pineapple coconut scones we had yesterday, but they had cranberry scones today. Just as delicious. Wish I picked up more. Honestly, they are better than traditional scones - so light and absolutely DELICIOUS! Anyways, back to our trip - We took the kids to the Aquarium today and when we got there Clark was wondering why the line was so long. I figured it was still early so people were just getting there, but once we got in it was another story. The place was PACKED full of people. The combination of too many pushy people, two tired kids and two parents who were just about done with vacationing wasn't a good combination so we decided to call it quits and come home. The kids saw the sea horses and jelly fish (Bailey's favorites) and played in the kids area for a bit so they had fun. All in all, we had a great vacation, but it sure is nice to be home!