During the week we were in the Bay Area, we went on a mini-getaway (a vacation within a vacation for us) with Dan’s family for three days, and we chose to explore the Monterey Bay area, including Santa Cruz, Point Lobos, Big Sur, and Moss Landing, renting a beach house for two nights at Pajaro Dunes Resort in Watsonville. It was a fun few days in which we could really spend some quality time with Dan’s side of the family, and the girls had a blast!
Here are some photos from Day One, which was mostly spent in Santa Cruz.
Mirei enjoying the breeze!
There were clouds overhead and it was a little chilly, but still beautiful!
Mirei with her aunties
Santa Cruz strolling with Grandpa
Picnic lunch at Santa Cruz
Mio with Grandma on the boardwalk
Mirei with Auntie Jackie
The sun came out to make it the perfectly sunny day!
Mirei and I at the Santa Cruz Wharf
Sunbathing sea lions at Santa Cruz Wharf
Mio and Grandpa looking down at sea lions
Mirei with Grandma
After thoroughly enjoying Santa Cruz, we headed over to Pajaro Dunes in Watsonville to settle into our beach house where we’d be staying for the rest of the trip — we’ll share photos from there in our next post!
Dan leaves for a business trip this evening to Orlando, Florida, and won’t be back until Thursday evening. I’m a little nervous because this will be the longest I’ll have ever been alone with the Mio, but my mother-in-law will come take care of her on the days I’m at work as usual, and I’ll just have to fly solo with Mio in the evenings when I get off of work, despite my usual exhausted state on such workdays.
We made the best of this long holiday weekend before Dan leaves, though — here is Part I of our eventful Labor Day weekend!
On Saturday, we decided to take a day trip down to Santa Cruz, for Mio’s first time at the beach! We picked up some delicious gourmet sandwiches at The Junket to eat for lunch at the beach, and headed down in the early afternoon. We hit a lot of traffic on the way (to be expected, because of the long weekend) so it took a while to get to Santa Cruz, but we promptly set up spot on the beach as soon as we got there.
Mio's first time at the beach!
She already loves the beach!
The cutest babe on the beach!
(Random coincidence: I realized afterwards that the romper Mio wore that day, which is a hand-me-down from my cousin Yuko’s daughters, is the exact same one that Sakura was wearing exactly a year ago when we visited their family on Labor Day weekend. Except that Mio is 5 months old here, and Sakura was 10 months old at the time. Oh, Mio… you are growing way too fast.)
Anyway, back to Santa Cruz: after about an hour, it started getting pretty cloudy. Not quite the perfect day at the beach that we had been anticipating. π
We got Mio all bundled up, as it started to get chilly.
Our little spot on the beach.
Mio getting grumpy... time to leave!
So the trip to the beach started out nice, but it definitely could have been more enjoyable towards the end — hopefully next time, there’ll be more sun and warmer weather! We’re glad that we got to go to the beach before the summer’s over. Since the Bay Area typically experiences Indian summers, I have hope that we still have some warm weeks left before we enter the rainy season….
We also stopped by Buy Buy Baby in San Jose on our way back home, and picked up something we’ve been researching and eyeing for Mio for a while now. But we’ll save the big reveal for another day. π
