Saturday was a day…full of…driving! We left after lunch for a grand adventure.
The goal : drive somewhere we hadn’t been.
So we took off for the famous Carmel Valley! It was a yucky foggy day here in Monterey and a high of only 60 but out in the valley they were talking a nice sunny 77 degrees…I NEEDED some of that! The only issue was the fact that it took our family a nice TOO long of time (once again) to get out the door. Our original plan was to grab lunch out…but it took us SO long that it made more sense to eat before we left then get in the car just to eat minutes later and go again. So after lunch we left. The kids were only allowed to take their game things (Ella=DSi and Keegan= Leapster) each can take pictures with them and if they got too bored play games. But we’d been talking about the plains and valleys in school so they were going to experience them if it killed us all! I wanted to badly to go into one of the wineries on this way, but I just could bring myself to go in…I thought about trying to play my gut off like it was just that…a nice wine/beer gut, but who’s kidding who…too obvious…so I walked through a local art gallery while Mark took his own venture: taking ALL the kids to the bathroom! He can be SO sweet for this was HIS idea! So I didn’t get wine-time, but I did get a little ME-time!! I’ll throw in some of the pictures we have from this drive. My father-in-law would have been SO proud of me…this road we were on was one of those U-turn…curvy things that makes one from the city look at and puke…but I held my own.
After all we had the windows down and were jam’n to my Pandora! We did stop and get out a few times; me to stretch and take a picture of two, and Ella just to follow and use her little camera. Grissom and Keegan both fell sound sleep (they normally do when I sing…it’s kind of nice that I can bore them THAT much with my voice…can’t WAIT till they are teenagers!). Ella, Mark, and I stopped at one point and the sound was just amazing. The wind was blowing just enough to hear the grain and wheat fields hitting each other. What a peaceful sound. I know now how people could live out in the middle of no-where.
We passed many little and majorly huge ranches. At one point I had Keegan wanting to stop and taste the dressing at every RANCH (hidden valley ranch) hahahaha! After all my kids do seem to take after their uncle Jeffrey with the LOVE of ranch on everything – yuck! When I tell you we drove…I mean we drove! But it wasn’t hard to keep going even the kids were preoccupied with the views and the conversations we had. What a great time to talk to your kids about everything…they CAN’T run away! (Note to self…remember that when I need them to listen to me!!).
We stopped at this super cute town. In the heart of this town was a Salon…in fact it was McCintock’s Saloon! I’d heard about this place and just because it was close enough to my maiden name: McClintic we HAD to eat there! The kids were taken the moment we entered. The walls were covered with animal heads…IN CALIFORNIA!! For this dinner we got to feel as if we’d been taken to a ranch somewhere closer to home…it was yummy good!!
Mark wanted to try to hit the coast before sunset. It was only about 25-30 minutes away so after dinner we headed West back to the coast line. WE got sidetracked. We saw the fog…and the sun setting…oh, breathtaking…easily unearthly feeling. It reminded Mark and me of Hawaii standing atop of the Mauna Kea Mountain. Those clouds looked thick enough to run on and bounce around on and then you add the colors of the sunset AND the mountains…WOW! I’ll try to give you a picture, but they give it NO justice!
We knew at this point we weren’t going to make it to the coast so we decided to head back up to Monterey via highway 1 which runs right up to Seaside. The problem: the fog was rolling in…the dark was coming…and the curves…well…they made even Mark nauseous! This was the scariest drive ever…the fog would blow past the car with the wind which made you feel as if you were in the midst of a horror movie waiting for the dead to pop up from around the corner, not to mention the u-curves we faced with completely FULL tummies! Yes…YOU know where this led. No it was NOT me! It happened to be Grissom…poor little guy. We had NOTHING but a few wet wipes left in my bag to aid in this clean up. I did my best to turn around and try my hardest to stop it by screaming, “MARK…HEEEEELPP!!!!” I even took a bit of the puke on my arm…which almost allowed me to join in all the fun Grissom was having! I had to get out of that car as FAST as I could and I needed this stuff OFF my arm…my gagging wasn’t going to stop until then. So 20 minutes later Grissom’s now without clothing and wrapped in a towel. All the wet wipes are gone and thrown over the mountain’s edge (they’re disposable…right?). Everyone was cold from the wind and tired from this journey that seems to be taking longer than you could ever imagine (you CAN’T go very fast around these mountains)! The problem now: the air IN the bug…I kept gagging…so we had to ride all the way home with my window down and my head out the window like a dog! This wind was high 40’s low 50’s! And every time Mark tried turning the heat on to help the rest of the crew from their frozen destiny…I started gagging again because the smell was only exaggerated by the heat! Talk about a mess!! Luckily the kids became numb enough that it put them all to sleep! We got home at a nice 11 p.m. so we were happy! It WAS a good day all in all!
I’m amazed at how God works on our family even out here. We sat through the final sermon in Kevin’s series called Road trip with Jesus. This has been the theme all summer because this is when folks take their vacations and road trips. He’s gone through this summer speaking to mostly Mark and I about life and the paths and struggles that life brings and how God helps us, etc. This final sermon was about forgiveness and following Jesus…again. He talked about Peter and how even he denied Jesus 3 times within a short time frame (even after Peter SWORE he’d never do it) and how even Peter was forgive 3 times and Jesus asked him a second time, “follow me!” It was so person of a message that Mark and I knew once again that this was JUST for us. We felt renewed and convicted…it was JUST what we needed to hear JUST at the time we needed to hear it! After church we ALL laid down for a nice little nap!! We then went to our much loved Me’N Ed’s Pizzeria for a special its Labor Day weekend and we have NO family to be with Dinner!! This too was a time of family chatting and chewing…we LOVED it! Then because we are original we went home and watch Night at the Museum cuddling on the couch.
I really think all this movie watching is something my kids will never forget! I get SO tired of movies…but when the sun starts to go down ALL they want to do is grab their jammies and cuddle with mom and dad on the couch to a movie…even one we’ve seen a million times!
No comments:
Post a Comment