Road Trip

Ava and Arlo had  off school in October, so I wanted to take a road trip for a little excitement. I also wanted to visit Raeann, my best friend from high school, who is living again in Venice Beach. To our dismay, Dave had to schedule a work trip to Honduras during the road trip, but he was going to be able to meet us on the Saturday night in LA and drive back with us.

We left on Thursday afternoon and drove to the Monterey Intercontinental, had a wonderful pasta dinner, watched the Giants get into the World Series and had a great night on the water.  The next day, we went to the amazing aquarium.  The kids were amazing all along the way. In the afternoon, we drove to LA - more than 5 hours.  I had to pee so bad, but didn't want to bother the kids because they were being so quiet in the back seat. Finally, about an hour out of LA, I HAD to stop, so we took a 30 minute break at McDonald's, played on the playground and had ice cream cones.

In LA, we visited with Raeann (who was just a few weeks pregnant and very ill!) and Garrett and Billie. We mostly just talked, but also went to the beach, had some good food, went to dinner with Jennie and then met up with Dave!

On Sunday morning, we left LA to head to Pasadena and spent a few hours with Tom, since he had just recently moved there for his new job! It was great to see him, because we hadn't seen him since we got back from our trip.  It will be nice to have them all so close from now on...well, closer than ever at least.

After lunch and a visit with Dave's dad, we headed off to Santa Barbara to stay at one of our favorite places - El Capitan. We stayed in a cabin, roasted marshmallows and hiked around the mountains for about 24 hours. Then, we drove back to Mill Valley late on Monday. It was an eventful and super fun road trip...that I am sure we will do again.