Our Vacation to Monterey

Our family took a vacation to Monterey this year July 20-23.  It was awesome and so much fun. 

We stayed at the Embassy Suites in Seaside.  As always the hotel experience is always one of the highlights for our family.  This vacation was no different.

One big difference this trip was that we took full advantage of the pool.  With Evan swimming so well he couldn't get enough.  The girls were enjoying it a ton too!  Here we are after one of our pool times.

 

On Saturday, we dinned at Gianna's Pizza.  A local favorite.  We ordered way too much as you can see from he picture below, but enjoyed the leftovers at our hotel.

That evening we decided to go for a drive and explore the area.  On our drive we saw deer crossing the street.

We also got to see a cool Lighthouse.  It wasn't open to go inside, but just seeing it was pretty neat!  The kids were familiar with what a lighthouse was because of a recent episode of Jack and the Never Land Pirates. :)

 

Then we stopped at the beach.  We all had a blast climbing rocks, finding sea shells and hermit crabs.

I found this cool shell for Evie that was like a ring.

On Sunday, we visited the ever popular Monterey Aquarium.  It was great, but super crowded and kind of hot.  I think we dressed a little too warmly that day.  Overall, we had a decent time, but Elaine is at an age where she wants to be down exploring and this place was a little too crowded to let this happen safely.

We also were limited on the shows and experiences to watch, because she just wasn't patient.  I know we were asking a lot for our new little one year old.  Here we are attempting to see the Penguins get feed.

This is a fun picture that Evan actually took of Jim, me and Elaine outside.  Elaine was having a much needed nap at this point.

Here is Evie taking a much needed nap too!

After the aquarium we walked do Cannery Row.  Both big kids got to pick out a special toy.  Evan got one on Cannery Row (a little scuba people set) and Evie picked (stickers and a coloring book) at the Aquarium.

A fun fact about our trip, I ran into my OBGYN there and she recognized me and said hi.  She was there with her kids and some other Mommy friends during their stay in Santa Cruz.  So fun and such a small world sometimes!

That afternoon we went to this amazing park.

 

It had everything you could think of to play on.  It was so big I couldn't even get a picture of everything offered together.

Fun times in the hotel elevator.

On our final day we headed to Carmel.  It was super foggy when we got there.

However, during our visit cleared a bit.  This was a pretty lame beach experience for all of us because we were situated right by a ton of kelp and seaweed and Elaine kept face planting in the sand every few seconds.

We only stayed for a little bit.  The sand was also super hard to get off your skin and made for a miserable time of getting everyone situated and comfortable back in the car to continue our trip.

Luckily after some lunch at a local Safeway we were able to regroup and then headed back to Monterey to the rock beach area we liked so much during our first ocean visit on Saturday.

Overall, we had a wonderful time.  The trip went too fast as they always do, but so thankful for these amazing memories together!