California here we come

We headed out to Santa Barbara on a Saturday afternoon and arrived very early Sunday morning. The drive went pretty well minus an incident in Las Vegas, some throwing up, and almost running out of gas somewhere around Barstow. The first day we took it easy and visited the turtles,

played at a cool park,


played in some cool trees,

and visited some very cool cousins.The next day we went up to Solvang (one of my favorite tourist stops) and hit all the highlights.

Kissing the bear,
sitting in a shoe,
buying Christmas ornaments, and eating pancakes at Paula's.
Later on in the day we went to the Santa Barbara zoo where the favorite attraction was not the otters or giraffe, but sliding down the fake grass on boxes.
We ended the day on the pier eating fish at my favorite restaurant. I just wish the family picture could have had one of us looking at the camera.