We flew to Sacramento, CA for a relaxing vacation seeing friends, family, and explored new places.
Our terrific friends (the fabulous dD's for short) picked us up from the airport in a diesel Ford Expedition vehicle of theirs that they allowed us to borrow/use for our entire trip! After our arrival, we joined Mr. dD at the Air Force Base. He needed to do some work, so we spent a couple hours exploring the bases' Air Museum.
To run some energy off the kids and to keep them occupied, I told them to collect as many pine cones as they could find. They had a blast and it did the job - kept them happy, occupied, and burned off some of their energy. After collecting a big bunch of pine cones, I had the kids pose...
The next day we departed to spend a few days in the Santa Cruz area. The dD's once again blessed us tremendously by allowing us to stay in/use their family cabin in the area for several nights.
We took a drive down to Carmel, CA the following day and spent a couple hours on the gorgeous beach with this as our view. Boy, did that ever help "fill my bucket", as they say. There is something wonderful and therapeutic about having your feet in sand at the beach. :)
On Friday we drove into San Francisco and met up with our good friends (the Vs for short). We enjoyed lunch on the pier in San Fran, settled into our hotel, and enjoyed a terrific and relaxed dinner at the V's home. Saturday morning we enjoyed a great breakfast in their home followed by a fun outing to this miniature steam train place. (That's the Vs in the background behind my 3 guys.)
