Vacation Part II: Visiting the Family at Grampa's house

Grampa lives just outside of Los Angeles in a town called Oxnard.  It was a very scenic drive up along the coastline from San Diego to get to his house, and it's always so wonderful getting to spend time with family.

With the seafood that we picked up in most amazing market ever in Santa Monica, we put together a homemade dinner for them that A) mom didn't have to cook and that B)we could have more time to spend together.  

While the fish and shrimp were marinating, we all spent time in the backyard.  Grampa crushed cans.

 While I admired all of this flowers.

 And fruits.

And then I admittedly went a little crazy with the tree trimmers on the lemon tree.  There were some lemons that looked more like grapefruit in size.  It was also just fun to slice them down out of the tree.  I cut two dozen. 

This was photo op number three.  I think I finally figured out who Terry got his "scowl" face from.  Its remarkable especially when the scowl is side by side.  ;-)

Always so happy to see Mom!  

We spent a good bit of the evening together, and then we came back in the morning to have breakfast together (which reminds me Mom that I still need to get that quiche or egg bake recipe from you...so good!).  Aww man and now I'm not going to be able to get that Cinnamon Bread Loaf out of my head.  Stomachs growling now.  Go figure.

It was a quick trip with the family, but it seems more often than not that's how it goes these days unless you're coming here to visit in Dallas.  Speaking offfffff..... Who's coming to visit us in Dallas?!?!  Anyone??!!?

Up next: Vegas
Up after that: it wouldn't be a vacation without a post about all the food and wine ;-)

Mid-chaos Vacation Part I: San Diego and Laguna Beach

In the middle of transferring from St Louis to Dallas, we figured it'd be as good a time as any to hop a plane and decompress for a few days.  My last day of work was July 6th, and that night we drove to the airport en route for California.  We got into San Diego a little later than anticipated as we got hung up on the tarmac in Denver waiting for a storm to clear, so we didn't see any of the city Friday night. We were up bright and early though (yay for time zone changes but body clock not changing) Saturday to take on the day.  We hopped back in our car and headed over to Coronado to get some beautiful views of the city.  Highly recommended!

They had a cute market area with art galleries and boutique shops that we wandered through a bit.  Then we started driving down the coast to Imperial Beach. Full disclosure, we drove there because I wanted to go to the most Southwestern part of the US without being in Mexico (nerd flag flying and I don't even care), and Terry found reviews for a fresh seafood restaurant out on a pier (done and done! Will write about it in a food post about the trip).
Obligatory feet in the Pacific photo.

 He joined us for lunch on the pier.

We drove back into the city later in the day and went out around the gaslamp district to various restaurants and bars.  

The next day, we did the downtown tourist scene all day and had a blast.  We walked through a farmers market, we strolled through Seaport Village and the San Diego Marina, oh and we did a lot of fresh seafood eating while we could.

Monday we were up early to start our drive up to visit Terry's family.  His grampa lives right outside of Los Angeles in a town called Oxnard, so we drove up the coast and made a few stops in Laguna Beach and Santa Monica.  The views in Laguna were beautiful and we were the only ones on the beach. 

 I'm a lucky girl.

 

 We stopped in to Santa Monica to walk up on the pier and get some lunch.  We found a fish market on the way out of town that had us both drooling and wishing we didn't have to leave. 

We did happily pry ourselves out of the market though because we had family to visit.  I'm going to write up a full post about our visit, but here's a preview.

Until tomorrow :-)

Oh My, July!

I feel rusty in drafting a new post.  Its more of just having no idea where to start. To stay in chronological order of events?  To post about our move and the new house and all the updates of our old home? To just vent for a minute about my job opportunities (or lack thereof)?  Don't get me wrong though, choosing how to get back in the groove of blogging is not even close to how overwhelming this past month has been. 
So here's a few photos.  I'll explain them (hopefully) individually soon.  For the record, thank you to the few who have noticed the blogs absence and are calling for updates.  I've been off the radar, just in doing my best to keep my head above water.  We're creeping towards being back at the shallow end of the pool though, so communication will commence shortly.