awful beautiful life :)

 this picture has nothing to do with this post, it just makes me smile.

Memorial Day is the first holiday Matt gets every year. We've never really made a big deal out of it but this year Stephanie is 3 and Josh is almost 2 and I'm 17 weeks pregnant. We are done with projects around the house for a while (I will post an update soon). We were ready to get back to the "us" that we used to be before kids.

So we went camping. For the first time in 3 YEARS! We found one available site at Morro Strand. Which I think is a great campsite. we really enjoyed it and will probably use it again in the future. We had made "hobo" dinners that we cooked in the fire, they were SOOO good!! we had cherrie cobbler and roasted marshmallows. Matt and Steph slept in sleeping bags and Joshua and I shared the air mattress with a TON of blankets. Everything was great until about 4 am when Josh woke up and wanted a bottle(we just weaned) and it was bright from street lights and he couldn't go back to sleep. did i mention that matt and i didn't go to sleep it at least midnight? It really was a great camping trip, if you don't count the lack of sleep or the running around trying to keep our son out of the fire. I unfortunately didn't take any pictures of the evening. but i was able to remember once we were about to leave so i snapped one of matt and the kids real quick.

 this is our saturday:

 We went to Frankie and Lola's for breakfast right next to the "smoke stacker ronket launchers"

stephanie had a HUGE hot chocolate that she thoroughly enjoyed

 Josh had orange juice.

 Coke really isn't my thing at 7 am but Matt enjoyed it.

The Kids wanted to see all the boats at the bay so we walked the embarcadero but nothing was even open that early for shopping.

 after a quick trip to see Aunt robin and Grandma and Grandpa we headed home for nap time :)

after nap we went to the strawberry festival held in the Arroyo Grande Village.

we told Stephanie that she could choose one carnival ride to do. She chose to ride a camel. and she was SOOOO Thrilled by that short ride. can you tell by that look on her face?

 Josh enjoyed eating strawberries. LOTS AND LOTS OF STRAWBERRIES

 Sunday was a beautiful restful day. Then there was Monday:

I woke up with the brilliant idea that we should drive up the PCH with the kids and go hiking and to Carmel, just like we used to do. 

This is my girlie saying hi to the Zebra's by Hearst Castle.

 This was our first "hike" of the day.  Just past the elephant seals view point there is another turn out that has a little known bluff trail head. on this trail you can see the elephant seals much closer than you can at the other spot. 

 everyone's an airplane :)

 this was our second hike, also the biggest. we hiked up to Salmon Creek falls and then spent the majority of our time climbing up and around rocks trying to avoid poison oak but ultimately get to the upper/main fall. that was unsuccessful. but we had a great time hiking around and getting dirty :)

 our third and last "hike" before we got to Carmel was to the Julia pfiefer burns state beach. with this amazing waterfall right onto the beach. it was so very pretty.

 it was stephanie's turn to ride in the backpack.

 then we took the final leg of our journey north to carmel. after spending nearly an hour looking for somewhere to park we finally got to the beach. the kids played in the sand and Grover enjoyed playing with the other dogs in the water. josh got pretty brave and played a bit in the water also, but smart mommy forgot to pack extra clothes so by the end of the night he was just in a big T-Shirt.

it had also been 3 years since we were in carmel last. 

we got some fancy cheese from the cheese shop just in the nick of time and enjoyed some very nice dinner at a local restaurant. didn't get home until nearly 11:30 that night but it was so worth it. we had such an amazing time sharing so many of our favorite places with our kids.  I seriously cannot believe how fast time is going by. I LOVE THIS TIME IN MY LIFE. I love the sound of my children's voices, their giggles, their sass, the way they are so eager to learn and to DO everything they can possibly think of. I wouldn't change a single thing about my life. 

My life is BEAUTIFUL!