Let me Explain....No, let me sum up

That's really how I feel. A week's worth of adventures and now I have to write about them with clarity in hindsight.
February was when I realized there would be no daycare for our daughter during Spring Break, and so with that in mind, I thought it would be a great time to take a break. Husband is going crazy with school and I'm going crazy being here, so it seemed like the prefect time to escape for a few days.
Looking at rental cottages in Monterey was super fun, initially it was to be a larger family affair, at least in my mind. My parents, siblings and possibly nieces and nephews. But I guess my family is feeling the crunch of poor economic times. That or they are lazy. And cheap. That's right, I said it, cheap. I really wanted to spend time in the same spot I spent many summer vacations, near the beach, watching MTV. Okay maybe minus the MTV part, since I have MTV at home, it longer holds the attraction, and they stopped showing music videos years ago, so it's rather pointless anyway.
Found a tiny little cottage that was a decent price and booked it. I didn't look forward to the all day drive, but it was either take extra days off work and stay somewhere is Nevada (the armpit of the West!) or just push through. I wanted to push. We had done it before and we could do it again.
At 5 am on Saturday we got up and packed the final items and were out of the driveway by 6 am. Opting to head over Donner's pass since the weather looked decent it was a long boring drive, our only little bit of excitement came as our check engine light came on, but it went off again after a while, so we pressed on. The miles seemed to multiply as we drove, the day dragged on longer and longer, but luckily our 2 and half year old held up remarkably well. This is what can happen if one has a strong imagination and a portable DVD player. Many movies were watched and thank goodness, a nap was taken, which is quite different the the rest of the days.
We got to Monterey late and missed some of the good scenery in the darkness.
The cottage was quite adequate. It wasn't anything amazing, but it had all the things we needed. a bed, a fridge and a couch bed. Thank goodness Hayley has no spine, because the pull-out bed was terrible, even to sit on. We slept and were ready to spend a lazy Sunday. Hayley and I awoke and she was restless, so I took her to the nearby park. It was just a short walk, even for her tiny legs and very nice, plenty of slides and things to climb. We came home and got ready for church, we elected to go to church someplace that didn't start until 1. It was our vacation and we'd celebrate however we wanted. After church we drove along the coast and stopped at another beach side park. Hayley got her first good look at the water, we walked on rocks and played on the huge trees and ran around the grass. It was nice to see that other places are already experiencing spring.
The next day it was off to the aquarium! The Monterey Bay Aquarium is world renown and is amazing. I've been there many, many times but they are always changing little things and obviously I don't retain all the sea life information you can pick up there. I had never realized how much stuff there was for kids. Hayley had a blast, there were slides and play areas and coloring areas and stamps, not to mention bright colors, pictures, buttons to push and levers to pull. She had so much fun pushing buttons and pulling levers we almost had to force her to look at the fish. She really loved a little child sized cave where they had a few bright exhibits including a clown fish and seahorses. She loved the seahorses, I watched as she pointed them out to other children and even parents who crawled through the tunnel, and was almost as fascinated by the other kids as she was the underwater creatures.
Still, being a toddler and dealing with a toddler are both difficult experiences, so we had to make a few trips to the aquarium to finish it all, but once I decided to let Hayley move at mostly her own pace, things were a lot less tense. Of course if I had let her, she would have stayed all day turning the wheel that made the wooden penguins bow and bark at each other.
We went to restaurants and had amazing world class food. Husband had a filet minion that he said melted in his mouth (it better have for $50) and we had fresh seafood that had probably been caught the day before.
We went to the Fisherman's Wharf, which is a collection of restaurants and shops, and we shopped and ate and walked and it was almost just like it was when I was little. Although there are more restaurants that hand out free samples of clam chowder, if they had done that, we all would have eaten a lunch of free samples as kids, I know my dad would have appreciated a free lunch for all us kids.
The next day we went on the 17-mile drive, which I had never driven along, just walked some of it It was very interesting to see all the different golf courses and the enormous homes. We even pretended to be house hunting and picked up flyers for homes asking 1.6 million. Although, if you have a spare 35 million, you can have a home on the 18th hole on Pebble Beach! I'm going to start saving my pennies!
After the few hours of driving, Hayley needed lunch, or at least chocolate milk, so we drove into Carmel to eat at Friar Tuck's, which was even smaller then I remembered. A handful of little tables and a counter to sit at. The owner knows my grandparents, but even without him knowing who we were, he treated us a guests and came and chatted with us, but mostly wanted to tease Hayley, she didn't know what to make of him but was happy as a clam to get her "chocolate" milk, apparently if she can't see that it's white, it tastes like chocolate milk. Bless all the ovlatine she drinks and think is chocolate milk. Of course this was the last straw in the whole buying-her-food-when-we-eat-out thing, we spend quite a bit on food she wouldn't touch, not just not finish, but absolutely refuse to eat. From spaghetti to chicken nuggets, I tried to eat what she didn't but with my own large portions, it was not fun for me. So instead we would feed her before we went out to eat, since she mostly just wanted chocolate milk anyway.
After food, we went to the beach in Carmel. Beaches to the rest of the world means fun and sun. This beach has sand and water, but it's also freezing, even in the summer, but seeing as how it is not summer, it was colder still. Windy and cold, but we were not there to swim, we were there to put our feet in the water. Hayley loved it regardless of the numbing effect. She danced and ran and giggled. She was tired when we left, but I gave up on naps after 2 days there.
We spent our nights inside watching TV, after it gets dark, it also gets cold, so we stayed cozy watching movies. I took Hayley to Dennis the Menace park and she had a great time exploring. It wasn't as big as I remembered and most of the dangerous playground equipment had been replaced with plastic sets. There used to be tall sliding polls and metal slides that would get hot, but looks like they are all being replaced. After 2 hours Hayley was even ready to go and didn't fight to stay, she was all funned out!

Over the next few days we finished up seeing the aquarium and shopping on the wharf and on cannery row. As the time grew to a close to being done, it seemed like it had flown by.

We packed up and headed to Clovis to visit my family. It was a pleasant drive inland and we ended up in real Spring. It was great to see my family again, we don't get to spend a lot of time together as we live in different states, but these are my favorite cousins, the ones I spent the a lot of time with growing up. It also helped that all the ages of my sibling matched up with the cousins, so we all had a built in friend.

We had a lovely time eating BBQ ribs and chicken and awesome salads, not to mention good California produce, grapes and strawberries. If only we could afford to live there!

After not enough sleep we woke up and made the 12 hour drive home. Husband had never been through Los Vegas, so that was interesting to him, but we mostly just kept moving and driving. We hit some winter storms coming home, but nothing that slowed us down too much and then we were home. It felt like we hadn't left at all. Next time I'm going to have to stay a whole month, then maybe it'll feel real after we get home and get back to work. But I have a hoody that says Monterey on it, and hopefully it will keep me warm until we get some Spring here!