I can't believe our little girl just turned three! We had a little Alice In Wonderland themed party, and it worked out great. The weather was beautiful, but since last year's weather was a disaster, we planned for an indoor party with just a few of P's friends who were close in age.

I turned 40 this year! It's funny  how society puts so much emphasis on milestone birthdays and even birthdays at all. Everyone kept asking me what I was going to do, did I want a party, even poor hubby was stressing out on what to do. Well, the answer was simple: nothing. I do not like the spotlight. I was never into celebrating my birthday. When you have a birthday on December 23, it's hard to expect people to be around    and in the past we usually traveled somewhere.

Harvest time is here! Halloween costumes and pumpkin patches were on today's agenda at Avila Valley Barn. We met up with Bode and family and bumped into other kids from P's past (there's a lot of history in two and a half years!). 

We fed the farm animals, took lots of pictures, and ate some lunch. This is probably one of their busiest times of the year, so there were a lot of people. It was like a zoo! Definitely need to spend more time here on a weekday.

It was a beautiful day and a great place for families to enjoy sweet treats, baked goods, ice cream, local veggies, and during the summer--all the berries and pie! Their pumpkin patch is huge, and they have lots of apples to pick, although I didn't see the orchards, hence another trip for another time.
It was fun to watch the kiddos interact and go wild (especially after the ice cream!).

This is what the Ranger asked me as I handed over my driver's license to purchase something at the Pinnacles National Monument general store. We had been trying for a long time to camp with some friends of ours and this was the only weekend when we could get it together.

Everyone kept telling us that it was going to be hot. I checked the forecasts on weather.com and NOAA, and all sites were telling us high 80's. So, okay, while not ideal, it was definitely do-able and especially knowing the nights would be chilly.

So, again, the comment, "Did you want to escape the fog?" I did a double-take, and she proceeded to tell me that the temp today was going to be 102 and tomorrow 109. What the heck???

We arrived in the dark the night before and the night air was crisp and quite chilly. Our modest tent trailer has no A/C or other comforts of home. The nearest restroom was quite a ways away. We did have electric hook-ups but we didn't have anything we needed to plug in. This was turning out to be quite the camping trip.

Well, with the heat kicking in, we knew that a hike or outside activity was out of the question! We hit the campground swimming pool in the morning and then had lunch. It was scorching hot. We tried to get the kids to go to sleep, so we all piled in the Cragheads' cabover camper (which gloriously had A/C). We hung out for a while and tried to get the kids to sleep. Nothing was working. P was having a lot of tantrums and a major meltdown. Could you blame her? She was really tired, super hot, and probably hungry. Finally, I suggested to RT that we take a little drive in our air conditioned car and hopefully P could get some rest. That did the trick! This is how we were able to get photos of the Pinnacles, even though we didn't hike any of the trails!

We had an early dinner, put the kids to bed, and the adults had some time to relax. We had some awesome food, courtesy of the Cragheads. Boy, when they camp, they eat like kings! We try to keep things easy and low-budget, so it was a welcome surprise to have gourmet burgers and some fat steaks!

We tried to pack everything early in the morning so we could just get up and take an early hike. No dice. P has finally hit "the terrible twos" and this continued on the following day. It was very frustrating, and I was at my wit's end. We decided to call it quits and just headed home to beautiful, foggy Morro Bay.

While the company was fantastic, P and Bode played well together, this was not my favorite camping trip. The hot weather was a bust, the long distance bathroom sucked, Aunt Mary came to town, and P's frustration issues compiled my stress and lack of R&R. We hope to go back, though, when it's cool and visit some of the caves and get up closer to the Pinnacles.

Home away from home.

Let's ride!

Uh, so heavy, but I can do it.

Yup, look at those guns.

Lovin' the icy cold water!

Pinnacles peaking through...

Bode trying to cop a feel (in other photos, he succeeds!).

It's all hugs and games until it's not!

C'mon "Puppy" let's go!

I was feeling anything but...

We look so joyous because we were headed home!

Over the years, I had many of my friends say that I should do something with my scrapbooking skills: "you should go into business" or "you're so creative" and so forth. Well, if you've ever scrapbooked (not digitally), you know how time consuming it is so I would pretty much net zero! Also, I loved to scrapbook because it helped me relax and I do love the ability to be creative without the pressure. I have enough pressure with P growing up so fast, I don't need more!

I haven't really dived into digital scrapbooking, although I'm sure I would love it. Just haven't had the time to dedicate to learning since having P.

But, I was able to take a couple 3-hour sessions of Adobe InDesign private tutorials through work from a Cal Poly professor, and now I'm hooked! I have been designing our outreach pieces and redesigned our quarterly newsletter and have gotten lots great feedback and compliments. The organization is able to save quite of bit of money doing everything in-house, so I decided to take a class to become more efficient, learn the shortcut keys, and just get a deeper understanding of the program.

So, I thought I would share with you one of my first assignments in this class. Now mind you, this is a very rudimentary design, and I'm actually a lot more advanced than this, but I had so much FUN creating this, that I find I'm more excited to share this than my professional work! I'll eventually put a digital portfolio together. Who knows, maybe this could lead to something else, but I'm not holding my breath!

We took an impromptu camping trip to San Simeon. It started out as a plan to go to Big Sur, but without reservations and a Friday start time, we didn't think we'd luck out. Luckily our friends, the Davids, are optimistic and adventurous enough to try it out. So, they left Friday morning and didn't hear from them until the afternoon.

No such luck at Big Sur! Our back-up plan was San Simeon--only a half hour drive from our house, but a nice place to visit and hang out for the weekend. We lucked out and got the last site!

We got there Friday evening and had no plans for the weekend, which was so nice to not have an agenda. From our last trip, we had hoped that having another kid for P to play with would be the ticket for more relaxation for us. Not sure about the relaxation part, but at least Jakob and P had each other to entertain. They also go to the same daycare, so they know each other very well!

We spent lots of time at the beach and the kiddos were so tired that they fell asleep easily and left the evenings free for the adults. We had such a fun and entertaining time being silly and carefree. We saw lots of birds at our campsite, went and scoped out the tidepools one evening, and even saw zebras roaming the grasslands!

As usual, a trip just isn't a trip unless P gets a scrape or two. The dads and kids went for a walk the last morning while the moms cleaned up breakfast. P did fine on a declining part of the path and then bit the gravel as she came to the flat part. Lots of bleeding and a good-sized upper lip. Ouch! Poor baby, but she recovers fast and doesn't cry too much. Still, I'm sure it hurts a lot!

A fun time was had by all, and we want to do it again soon. We are loving our tent trailer and can't wait for the next adventure!