Road Trip For Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving began with us driving up to Aptos, CA to Nathan's Grandma Schmunks' house. Since we had all day on Wednesday to get up there we decided to take our time and drive up highway 1. We loaded up Jackson in the back seat and set out, we stopped at San Luis Obispo and had breakfast at a coffee shop, next we stopped at San Simeon and went inside the Hearst Castle visitors center, drove through the little town of Cambria, ate lunch in car, and stopped again in Carmel, one of our favorite places to eat. As the sun went down we took Jackson for a walk looking in all the shops and scanning every menu from all the restaurants till we finally found one that was in our price range and didn't require a dress code : ) . After dinner we drove to Aptos where Grandma Schmunk waiting for us. Later that night Bill, Darla, and Grandma Cottrell drove in and after visiting for a awhile we went to bed. Thanksgiving day was pretty relaxing since we didn't really have to cook due to the fact that Aunt Marie had it taken care of (we had dinner catered by Marie Callender's). After dinner, dishes, and football games, we took one of our many walks to the beach with Jackson and Sebena (Aunt Heidi's dog) in tow. Friday was again relaxing and quiet until we all decided to make the drive to the nearest BART station in order to take the train into San Francisco. We wanted to visit Union Square to see the tree lighting in front of Macy's. Before the lighting we all got a table at a nice restaurant just up the street and enjoyed sharing dinner as well as dessert till we were full. At 6:30 the countdown started and then the Christmas season began.

Beach House 2007

So it's been basically a whole year since my last post back in October, 2006. My last post was my trip up to my parents beach cabin near Brookings, OR where we enjoyed multiple sunsets on the beach, played a couple rounds of golf, and my dad and I hooked into 4 salmon (which we had smoked and canned).
This year we did the same trip only this time we had a few more people along, my fiance Jillian, my sister Heather, and my niece Sidney. Again we had many nice walks on the beach as well as building a driftwood fort for Sidney so that we had a place to use the bucket and shovel that she got and eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My dad and I "attempted" to catch some salmon (which we didn't), we did play 3 rounds of golf, and we did eat good food. It was nice to have more people this year and I was glad that Heather and Sidney were able to stay so that Jillian and I could see them.