Our Staycation

We had a last minute change of plans over spring break. Dave took a few days off work, and we were going to go up to gold country near Sacramento. I've been wanting to go there ever since my parents went last year and I read an article about it in Family Fun. But we decided the day before we left that it wasn't a good time because some of the things we wanted to do are only available on weekends. Plus we couldn't take Levi down into the gold mines because he's too young, so one of us would have to miss that too. So we ended up cancelling all our reservations and doing a "staycation" instead. We listed all the things around here we love to do or have always wanted to do, and we planned out each day.

The first night we went to the Sunset drive-in theater in SLO and watched Rio (super cute) and Rodrick Rules. We left Levi with Kristen and loaded up the back of the Suburban with blankets, pillows, popcorn, chips and soda. It was such a fun night! Sunday was a recovery day, since we didn't get home 'till midnight. Then on Monday we went to our favorite place: Morro Bay.

In order to make this feel like a real vacation, we pretended like we were out of town. Dave set up the tent in the backyard, and the boys slept out there every night. We left first thing in the morning and went to Bob's Big Boy for the breakfast buffet. In fact we ate at a restaurant 1-2 times every day! It was wonderful. Heck, we were saving all that hotel money, so we really lived it up.

After breakfast we headed down to the embarcadero and went to the Shell Shop, where Spencer bought a shark tooth necklace.

Then we went over to the bay and watched this sea otter eat his breakfast.

I don't care if they are pests that have all but wiped out the abalone population, they are stinkin' cute. We don't see them here too often, so this was a lot of fun.

Next we drove over to the Harbor Patrol dock and watched a seal.

Or maybe it was a sea lion. I never can tell. (Spencer just informed me it's a sea lion)

Levi loves birds, and there were lots for him to go nuts over.

Then we went over to the bike path and rode scooters and roller blades.




Mostly I walked slowly with Levi and took pictures.

Then we put the scooters away and unloaded the kayaks.

They did races around the buoys.

Levi did amazingly well for missing his nap every day.

After they were done kayaking they climbed around the rocks and cliffs.

And Spencer can't go to the beach without finding some kind of sea animal.

Brennan had no interest in going out in the kayak, but he had fun pulling them out of the water.

We had a late lunch at Giovanni's. We used an online "double take" deal where you spend, say, $10 and get $20 worth of food at a local restaurant; it's at http://www.couponclipper.com/. Then we got salt water taffy and parked on the ocean side of the rock. There's nothing like eating taffy and watching the waves - it's become a bit of a tradition. When we came home we had a campfire in the backyard and roasted hot dogs, snake bread and marshmallows for s'mores.