San Diego

The week of Halloween, we took a family vacation to San Diego. We’d been before, but wanted to get away to somwhere with warmer weather, sun, relatively cheap flights, and the same time zone. We looked at a few different cities and ended up in San Diego when we found the perfect rental for our needs. We’ve found that condo or house rentals work really well for us and usually are the same price as a family-friendly room(s) or chepaer. Having Dom sleep in our hotel room isn’t an option — we moved him to his crib at three weeks. :-) This was also the first time we bought Dom an airplane seat (yay Alaska Airlines $99 companion fare!) and that was simply amazing.

We aren’t big beach people, and Dom isn’t an all-day-of-anything type of person, so we stayed in a house on the bay in Mission Beach. We’re also on a one nap schedule, so we wanted to be close to things without having to drive all over the city. We were within walking distance of Belmont Park, the beach, and a few restaurants (with bars!) so our days generally consisted of a “San Diego” activity in the morning and then walking somewhere in the afternoon. Dom’s pretty easy to entertain at this age, so he loved nearly everything we did – the zoo, the park, time on the beach, walks, museums, tattoo parlor… whatever.

The beauty of a one nap schedule is you’re limited in what you can do, assuming you want to respect the nap (and we very much do). This is good for us because we are the type of travelers that try to see and do as much as possible. Having a mid-day nap forces us to slow down, relax, and actually take a vacation; not “travel.” The result is I take four naps in a week. I don’t think I’d taken more than that many since Dom has been born. I’m just plain bad at it… except when I’m on vacation, apparently. We also got some grown up time, which was great.

Oh, and we were delayed coming home for a few hours because it was snowing it Seattle. Ha.

Camping at Grayland Beach (III)

Well, we did it. We continued our annual tradition of camping with the Kizers by spending our third year at Grayland Beach – now with 50% more humans! This time around, we opted to stay somewhere with an actual roof and room for baby sleeping arrangements. After some research late last year, we landed on renting two yurts at Grayland Beach Campground. This place ticked all the boxes – it was under three hours from home, had roof/walls in case of rain, electricity, fire pits, and a proper bathroom including showers. It doesn’t necessarily meet my criteria for proper camping, but it was a great compromise given we had two infants with us.

The campsite was actually pretty great – quiet, a short walk to the beach, and everything you could really ask for when rolling the dice like we did. On the whole, Dom did pretty well. We didn’t do a whole lot, other than explore the immediate area and spend time away from life with friends. He didn’t sleep particularly well in his pack-n-play and we ended up getting somewhat creative about sleeping arrangements. We came back way more tired than we left, but I’m glad we made the effort. Things will be a lot easier when Dom’s sleeping in something that better resembles a bed. I think we have a bit more time before we’re all tent camping together and even then, maybe we put the boys in their own tent so the parents can get some personal space. :-)

We’re just a few months away from planning next year. There is talk of RVs…

Napa

Three months ago*, we took our first family trip/vacation to Napa. We wanted to get Dom on a plane early and we like to travel, so we picked a place that was the same time zone and only a few hours away to minimize the chance of making a horrible mistake. The good news is Dom did about as well as we could have hoped; we also learned that he’s entirely too big to be a lap infant.

Napa itself was a nice break from a pretty crappy spring in Seattle. It was in the 70s and 80s over the course of our stay and we got to soak up the sunshine to recharge our batteries. I think it’s a nice place to visit, but I’m not sure it’s somewhere I’d have to go again. I don’t know if we’d have a different opinion if we didn’t have an infant with us, although I will say we did get time away from him thanks to our fantastic nanny riding along for a few days. We even managed to treat ourselves to a private winery tour sans Dom, which made the most of a few hours of grown up time. The rest of the week, we relaxed in our apartment and at various locations around the valley. There’s really only so much you can do when you’re limited to three hours between naps. Mostly it was just a way for us to spend time together as a family. In that sense, we were very successful. We learned about traveling with a kid, we got to spend an uninterrupted week together, and we have these pictures where Dom already looks so young compared to how he looks today.

I’m not sure Dom will remember any of it, but we will. Oh, we went to Morimoto’s restaurant – it was awesome.

*It took us a year to do Vietnam, so we’re improving… right?