San Diego: Part 3 (AKA Santa Barbara)

To wrap up our San Diego beach vacation, my mom, Eddie, and I drove north to Santa Barbara on Tuesday morning, October 3.  We met up with her grad school friend, Janice, at a Shoreline Beach Cafe, a cute little on-the-beach diner.  This place was perfect for Eddie because it not only had outdoor seating, but it was actually IN the sand and the restaurant provided sand toys for kids (and posts on which to tie up your dog if you brought one).  It was hot and we sat in the sunshine, soaking up the remnants of summertime.  (The food was pretty good, too.)

Then we drove up to Goleta to stay the night with some friends.  This was Eddie's favorite part of the trip because we stayed with Jonah--his bestest friend ever.  You remember Jonah, right?  I used to swap-sit with his mom, Morgan, before they moved for her new post doc position at UCSB.  These sweet boys of ours picked right up where they'd left off a year ago: playing, running around, talking our heads off, playing dress up, reading books together.  It was so awesome for them to be together again.

Sweet boys.

They love each other so much it's just adorable.

Morgan and Kristin made us a picnic dinner, which we ate at the beach.  We stayed at the beach until it was too dark to see where the boys were running off to, so we packed up and went to get ice cream at McConnell's.

After baths and stories, we tried to put the boys to bed.  Jonah usually sleeps with his moms but wanted SO BADLY to sleep in his actual room with Eddie, who had his own little mattress to sleep on.  So after a while, Kristin and I both ended up in the room, cuddling our respective boys to sleep.  I could hear Jonah whispering to her that "Eddie is STILL MOVING!"  He thought it was weird that Eddie twitches and rolls around until the moment he actually passes out.  Haha.

The next morning we had a yummy breakfast (minus the weird vegetarian soy bacon...) and everyone piled into their respective cars to take off. It was a super short visit with them, but I'm so glad we stayed there instead of at a hotel.  They let it slip that they might be getting a baby girl placed into their family the very next month...I was good and kept my mouth (and fingers) motionless on the subject until they posted pictures of baby Sofia on Facebook after Thanksgiving.  I can't wait to go down again sometime and meet her!

My mom, Eddie, and I met up with my good friend, Justin, and a local park.  Eddie played and ran around while we chatted about...well, a lot.  We were there for nearly 2 hours I think but it felt like 10 minutes.  I wish we could have spent all day with Justin.

Our drive back to Livermore was uneventful, if you count Eddie having a tantrum in Burger King while we got a milkshake as such.  We made pretty good time so Eddie and I decided to hang out in the garden with my dad for a while before taking off for Davis.  And of course we picked and took home a huge basket of veggies (his summer garden was still going strong).



So...that wraps up our fun beach vacation. I hope we can make beach vacations a regular thing.  We'll be living in Gualala but it's not that kind of beach, you know?  

Santa Barbara on Dwellable