Weekend with the Wozniaks and Other Fun Stuff

Early in the week the boys and I drove up to Santa Cruz to visit my dear friend Rebecca and her family, who were vacationing there for the week.

It was a dream come true when the Philips Family moved onto Silver Dr. 18 or so years ago. Before that, I was the only little girl in the neighborhood and so b-o-r-e-d. We had so much fun riding bikes, babysitting, having sleep overs, swimming, tormenting the Miller's and all the other fun stuff neighborhood kids do.

Santa Cruz is beautiful! We enjoyed the day at the beach playing in HUGE holes dug by the men-folk and watching the flocks of pelicans fly overhead. Sadly, we came home to a very sick daddy, who was down with the flu for a good 3 days, which we think could have been induced by a very bad sunburn he got the previous Sat. (have any of you ever heard of this?). On Wed. they came to Monterey. We rode the trolley from our house to the aquarium and then had a great lunch at Bubba Gumps.





On Thurs. we had a surprise visit from the Dyer cousins (from Sac) on their way to a family reunion south of Carmel. They were only here a couple of hours but we didn't miss out on any fun. We took a walk down the beach to let the travelers stretch their legs where they enjoyed climbing the rocks, collecting crab legs, sea shells, rocks and playing in the tide pools.

The special appearance from the baby sea otter was the highlight of the excursion (and this time I had my camera)! It's the most adorable thing to watch. S(he) comes right up near the shore, floating on her back with a rock sitting on her belly. She then proceeds to repeatedly whack a shell on the rock with such persistance. I wondered why it took so much effort to crack one shell but then read at the aquarium that often the otter pups mistake rocks for shells so this may have been the case. Occasionally, the rock slides off her belly and she has to dive down and get another one. She's not at all disturbed by the adoring on-lookers.


The Wozniak's arrived on Fri. evening. We ate well (of course), had beautiful weather, Micah finally got to play Bocce on the courts near the warf (the balls are always in a locked compartment but Sat. was his lucky day)and Jaden finally got to ride a Surrey (we had to get the "limo" to fit everyone) The babies weren't thrilled about sitting in the front basket. Beckam warmed up to it but wanted to sit in his dad's lap and help him drive, which is not allowed and Carter (Wozniak's 15 mo. old) wanted no part of any of it. The Wozniak's ditched the Surrey and took Beckam to play at the beach while we rode a little further. I'm happy to report that we won the race against the other Surrey limo (which had 3 teenage kids in the back with the parent's up front--not a very equal match I admit) but our chain couldn't handle our high speed and came off just as we were gaining our distance.