Weekend at the Beach House with the Fam

Later that night my family (mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, nephew and eric) and I headed up to a beach house in Pescadero, right on the coast. We have a family friend that owns it and shares it with everyone: family, friends, and friends of friends. They are very generous people! I celebrated my 16th birthday there with about 6 of my friends...it was a blast. I was so excited to go to the beach house because 1. I have fond memories there and 2. I would finally be able to spend quality time with my family (no work or school to worry about...for them, not us, we were on vacation!). This is the beach house, isn't it gorgeous??

By the time we got home from Sonoma, packed for the weekend trip and got everyone in the car and ready to go we didn't leave until almost 11:00pm. That's how my family is, we say we're gonna leave at a certain time and we ALWAYS, ALWAYS leave a few hours later, without fail. And we always need to make a stop at Safeway (my favorite grocery store) before we go anywhere, whether it's somewhere close like Great America or whether it's a little further away. My family is late for everything but always prepared, my Dad never forgets a thing. The car is packed to the brim...but everything fits like a puzzle.
After we got situated and fought over the bedrooms, we ate a late snack and got ready for bed. The next morning we slept in...well I did, my nephew Samuel woke Eric up early because he wanted to play. I can sleep through anything so I wasn't bothered and got up later. Once I got up, a little too early, like 8, first thing we did was head down to the beach. Eric was cute and picked a flower from the pathway that leads to the beach and put it in my hair. He looks shy and innocent in this picture...you can barely see the flower in his hand...no worries because it was soon put in my ear (hope that's the right side, I think it's supposed to be on the left if you're taken).

The whole first day we just relaxed and didn't leave the house except to go to the beach...of course we didn't swim because the water was freezing, can't you tell? It was so nice to be lazy, spend time with family and not have a worry in the world. I love just being at home with family...my mom spoiled us...cooked for us and just gave us love and attention. I miss her...I talk to her on the phone almost everyday (not for hours, just for a few minutes).
The next day my sister, niece and brother-in-law joined us at the beach house. We celebrated our birthdays together...as we always do every year, again. I know we went out for sushi to celebrate our birthdays (as I described in a previous post) but your birthday only comes once a year so we party as often as we can! Hers is on the 22nd and mine is on the 26th of August...years ago I was supposed to be born on her birthday. My mom wanted to postpone her slumber party until I arrived b/c she didn't want to make my dad to have to take care of 6 screaming 13 year old girls. Days later I still hadn't come...so as luck will have it, the day she finally decided to have her slumber party my mom started having contractions and was sent to the hospital. So even though my mom tried to avoid my dad taking care of 6 13 year old girls, it happened anyway. My dad fortunately made it to the birth and...and there you have it...a random story that I don't even know why I shared. Any who, my sister and I are 13 years apart and are similar and yet so different...maybe because I'm 100% virgo and she's oh maybe only 80% leo...b/c she's borderline virgo...does that make sense??? Getting back to our trip...

My sister brought my favorite ice cream cake...since we didn't have candles my mom and niece improvised and used licorice...it worked quite well and at first glance it looks like very red candles. We still pretended to blow out the candles and make a wish! Doesn't it look good?
Here is part of my family, from left to right, my sister Ana, sister-in-law Iris, mom, niece Ashlee and me. Below are my two cute nephew's, Kellie and Samuel. They are eating junk food and watching Meet the Robinson's. I can't tell you how many times we watched that movie in the 3 days we were at the beach house...it was playing non stop. Samuel wanted to watch it over and over and over again. I liked it the first time around, but by the end of the weekend I'd had enough for my lifetime...wait til we start having kids, right!

My darling parents!

The day after the party we went and visited the light house which wasn't too far away but we drove because it was too cold and windy. It's such a cute lighthouse, they have a little museum inside that teaches you all you need to know about lighthouses, the different fog sounds, a video on the different ways lighthouses were created until they finally use what we have today (they first tried using candles, that didn't work very well), etc. I also learned that Northern California has one of the foggiest coast lines in the world, I should've known.

To end our last night at the beach house we sat on the beach and enjoyed the waves. Eric kept scooting further and further away from me to be closer to the water. He was playing a game...he was trying to "control the water". When I asked him what exactly he was doing in this picture he said he was telling the waves to come and then stop right before it hit his toes...it worked half the time. I tried it and it's a pretty fun game...a couple times he got soaked when a huge wave would come...it would get the bottom of his bum drenched. It was very entertaining to watch! He's such a kid...I love it.

Sonoma

On our next adventure we visited Sonoma Valley...I've been to Sonoma but never to a winery. So first thing on our list was to visit the Viansa Winery and Italian Marketplace. There are so many winery's in Napa/Sonoma we didn't know which one to pick. Luckily, Carolina - a close family friend (who now lives in Utah) - went home to visit a couple weeks before we did and went to Viansa. She did her research and chose this place because they not only specialize in wine but also in olive oil, pestos, aiolis, salsas, dipping oils, marinades, dessert sacues and cheeses. I trusted her and didn't want to do my own research.

We took a tour, and because we didn't drink the wine, we were still able to munch on everything I listed above...everything was delicious. We had to bring some of that deliciousness home of course! We could have been there all day trying taste tester food...like Costco, but a lot better!

This is where the wine is stored and aged, Viansa uses only the finest French and American oak barrels.

On our tour we learned a lot about the making of wine...and the tasting of wine. For example, you don't taste the wine until the second sip (we didn't taste it, our tour guide explained it to us) and all this other fun stuff...sorry, I just can't explain everything I learned, so you'll just have to make a trip out there to learn about it :)

We also visited the grape vineyards. I now appreciate wine...not for its taste, but for the intricate process it takes to make it.

The property was gorgeous.

Here is Eric taste testing ALL the delicious goodness!

To end our day we went to downtown Sonoma, it's such a quaint little town with amazing little shops and boutiques. We love walking around towns like this...oh and the weather was perfect! When we passed through San Francisco to get here this is what it looked like:
Once we passed the GGB it was perfect...hot and sunny. Eric was glad I made him wear shorts. Needless to say, this day trip was a thumbs up!

Winchester Mystery House

Once Eric read something about the Winchester House in a magazine and how it's one of the things that must be visited in your lifetime...or something like that. Anyway, ever since then he's wanted to go...I have too. I've never been before and every time I pass it while going to my favorite mall I say "one of these day's I'll go". So this trip we planned it in our agenda.

For those of you who don't know the story, I'll sum it up for you:
The Winchester Mystery House is a well-know California Mansion, it was under construction continuously for 38 years. When Mrs. Winchester's daughter died in 1866 and her husband died in 1881 she seeked solace so she got advice from the "Boston Medium". He told her that people die and their spirits now seek vengeance...so she must move to the west and buy a home and never stop building it, if she continues building she will live, stop and she will die...it didn't work because she eventually died. Since she could never stop building there are doors that need to no where, windows in the floor and stairs that lead to the ceiling...i guess she also did this so that the spirits wouldn't find her. The house reached 7 stories at one point (there was an earthquake and it didn't last).

This is the door that leads to nowhere

Window in the floor

Mrs. Winchester's bedroom...where she died!

This was the prettiest part of the tour, looking over the gardens!

The tour was pretty interesting...and the tour guide was weird. He spoke with a creepy tone, but when you asked him a question he sounded normal...which was hilarious! Eric and I thought the mansion was going to be a lot weirder than it was...there is only one door that leads to nowhere, one staircase that leads to the ceiling (don't even think we saw it), one window in the floor...and a ton of other weird things. The house is still crazy but you always talk things up in your head so it wasn't what we thought it was...but still very interesting.

Stairs that go down, just to go up again...pointless!

We definitely could get lost in the place, there are hardly any halls, you basically just move from one room to the other. The guide said it took him forever to be able to know his way around the house...it's creepy and I wouldn't want to give tours in it, that's for sure! I was scared to go to bed that night thinking I would dream of Mrs. Winchester...I didn't. We wouldn't do it again but we recommend it if you're ever in the area!

To finish off the night, we went and visited Eric's sister Natalie who lives in Walnut Creek. We went out to dinner, played mario kart on the wii (eric loved it so much of course we had to go buy it, but what's cool is we can play against friends and family who have it too!) and just hung out. It was good seeing her!

San Francisco

I love the City, so of course, our next stop on our trip was San Francisco. Since my parents had to work and could only take a few days off work, we ventured off into the city. When Eric came to visit me while we were dating, we went to S.F. and did Lombard street, Peir 39 and walked to Golden Gate Bridge. This time we visited new places (along with the usual). Eric had never been to Treasure Island, which is the Island the Bay Bridge goes through. It is a perfect view of the city...but always windy and cold. While we were there, Eric saw a family from the Philippines (about 8). He was nervous but I told him to go talk to them...he asked them if he could take a picture of them in English, then said "are you all going to fit" in Tagalog...they were shocked of course that a white boy was speaking Tagalog - even better than one of the kids there. They were kind enough to return the favor and take a picture of us. They chatted for a while and we were on our way to more sights.

We tried to go to Peir 39 to see if we could get on a boat to Alcatraz...turns out we needed to book it 5 days in advance. That was a disappointment so we left and went to the Marina by the Golden Gate Bridge. It's so pretty here...a lot warmer than it looks. Just a little misty. The Palace of Fine Arts is right there so we stopped to take some pictures. I love this place because of its beautiful Greek and Roman architecture...it's under construction now so its not as breath taking.

One of my best friends, Vanessa, from middle school and high school lives in San Francisco and goes to USF, so we made plans to go to dinner and a Giants game (Go Giants!) with her and her boyfriend. She lives right next to the Conservatory of Flowers so we hung out at the park until she got off work.
We were hungry so next stop was dinner, what better place than the Cheesecake Factory. There are many delicious places to eat in the city but since Danny had never been there, we had to go.

Eric has never been to a major league baseball team so this was the perfect time to go. We're all Giants fans and we converted Eric to be one too. They played against the Florida Marlin's and lost. Vanessa jinxed them because she said they were going to lose...and they did! We left at the end of the seventh inning stretch and the score was 7-0. LAME!!

We didn't finish everything we wanted to do in the City, so we went back again the next day to go shopping (haight, shops on Mission...and more). We also needed to get the famous sundaes at Ghirardelli Square...it was amazing.

We love to people watch so after our sundaes we sat around and did just that. We even witnessed an accident. As you can see, Eric looks quite amused checking out what all the camotion was about. No one got hurt (if someone did it wouldn't be amusing), but a car was trying to parallel park on this steep hill and it looked like she forgot to put her car in park because when she was done parking she ran into the car in front of her...all we heard was a loud crash/bang. Everyone was staring, we felt so bad but it was just hard not to watch. I was scared we were going to have the same problem going up the steep streets in a stick...but Eric is a pro and wasn't too scared (or at least didn't show it).

Carmel

We went to a cute little town called Carmel. It's really called Carmel-by-the-sea. Which is suiting because its right on the ocean. The day was perfect, not foggy or cold, just perfect. My parents had their honeymoon there...so we visit when we can. I enjoy not only looking at the views but shopping at the little boutiques there. Mostly we window shop because everything is so expensive.

After the shopping (I left my camera in the car so no pictures of this cute town) we visited a Cathedral called Carmel Mission. It has a lot of history...we almost went inside but realized they NOW charge 5 bucks a pop to get in. We figured we'd take pictures of this beautiful place from the outside. We walking around the premises and found (Eric found) an unlocked door on the side of the building, we poked our heads in and almost went inside...we didn't because that's just wrong and it looked a little creepy. The door led to un unused chapel so we left and headed towards the beach.
We found a cute little place on the rocks and had lunch, tortas that my mom made. We fed our leftovers to the birds and next thing you know we had a ton of them surrounding us. I was worried we'd get pooped on.
After our picnic on the beach we drove down 17 Mile Drive. It's a scenic drive through Pacfic Grove and Pebble beach (costs $$$ to drive on the road) but has many beautiful stops along the drive. One of them is the Lone Cypruss - it's a cypruss tree that grows on this rock - it's been there for many many decades.

To end the night we headed back home and stopped at San Jose to celebrate mine and my sisters birthday (hers is August 22 and mine is the 26th) at a Sushi joint. Spent time with family and hung out at the beach, it was a perfect day!