the grandparents even shooed us away while we were there so they could have the kids to themselves for a little while.  it didn’t take too much convincing (ok, ok, it didn’t take hardly any!) before phil and i hit the road toward pismo beach for a short little getaway.  in a word, it was AWESOME.  pure and simple. we took our time getting to pismo beach, stopping first in san luis obispo to wander around, do a little shopping, and have lunch. always gotta check yelp first to make an informed decision before ordering… first came the jalapeno cornbread muffins.  yum.  also loved the deep blue plate i got.…

packing and all things related to moving have officially kicked me in the behind and now i’m pooped.  so i’ll just jump right in with the rest of the pictures and then head to bed.  can’t.  think.  any.  longer.  too.  fuzzy. but as promised, grandpa took mikey and the rest of us fishing again.  this time, we went to a pond near my dad’s place.  we decided to walk over to it. it was a rather long walk.  uphill both ways. but the lure of finally catching a fish was enough to bring on the much-needed second wind. so while mikey walked the whole way there and back, the other…

ok, so to resume the vacation recap… since we spent a whole week at grandpa’s house, we had lots of time for outings in between all the time hanging out at home.  unfortunately for me, most of the outings happened right around when the sun was high in the sky.  but i worked with it as best as i could since i didn’t want to miss out on the memory-making moments as they were happening.  🙂 mikey had wanted to go fishing while we were there and grandpa was happy to teach mikey the finer points of how to cast out the line, how to tell if he got a…

one of the drawbacks of being in survival mode for a prolonged period combined with moving and/or having a baby every couple of years is that, uh, certain basic parenting duties fall to the wayside.  (ok, maybe it’s not the survival mode thing, maybe it’s just me).  so take for instance, routine trips to the dentist.  our dentist back in minnesota said we didn’t have to bring mikey in til he was three.  so i put that duty on the back burner of my mind and went on my merry way.  and then we moved to a new house.  and then allie was born.  and then we moved to california. …

in an effort to save money and spend some good family time together, we decided to spend a week at grandma and grandpa’s house while phil was on vacation.  we all had a great time and it was time well spent as we haven’t stayed that long at my dad’s place since we’ve been married.  the visit was long overdue and it was much anticipated by both grandparents and grandkids. the job of packing our family of five falls entirely to me.  which makes the anticipatory excitement a little less thrilling on my end.  thankfully, i have a saved packing list that i print out each time we go anywhere…