Mother's Day trip

Bob arranged for a fun mini vacation for us this past weekend, to celebrate Mother's Day, and to get away and just hang out as a family. Although we try very hard to not get over committed, we found ourselves with one free day in the foreseeable future, so we grabbed it and left town.

Strawberry Pancakes

Sharing raspberry pancakes, and we still had left overs!

Banana Fosters Pancakes... no left overs, we all licked the plate!

Noah packed jelly beans in his pockets for provision on the hike

The Redwoods are just soooo tall!

Not a new backpack, just the emergency one... :-)

Lunch on a log in the woods.

Bob taking a picture of a Redwood

This is the picture he took!

Some fun along the way

Can I hang from this branch?

Waterfall, and we did hike there, all of 40 stairs...

No, we did not get any free bagels..

Capitola Pier

Lukas taking his own picture

Just to start off the vacation right, and to avoid dishes and messes in the kitchen, we went to the Breakfast Club known for its large pancakes. The three that we ordered served us well for several days!
We headed to Big Basin, north of Santa Cruz for a hike among the Redwoods, and to see some pretty waterfalls. It turned out that the easy 4+ mile hike to the falls was closed, so rather than the 11+mile hike we to drive to another set of falls and climb down the stairs to see it. It seemed like a good compromise as we got in a 4.5 mile hike and we got to see water flowing fast down the mountain. Noah on the other hand reluctantly accepted the notion that the we did not hike to the falls, but rather drove. Cookies from the Pacific Cookie companies seemed to soothe the disappointment quickly.
We ended the day in Capitola eating Thai food at a restaurant located right on the beach, Thai food holds a special place in our hearts, our first dinner date was at a Thai restaurant 13 years ago this week.
It was a wonderful and very special outing with my three favorite guys.