The Burgess Baby Blog: 2009 Summer Vacation

We're BAaaack!!!!

I'm pleased to announce that we made it back home in safe and sound, and now only have a few short hours until we get back into the daily grind of working for a living! I must say that we really came to appreciate how great it is to live close to a beach, and have written it down (in ink) that we want to live in a beach city for our next house.

Since there is so much to cover, and SOOOO many pictures to post, I thought it best to break this up into a 3-part post. This post will cover the first leg of our vacation, Pismo Beach. The next post will cover our trip to San Diego, and then we'll end it with our trip to Laguna Beach. So now that you know what's in store...on with the show!

We left Sacramento at roughly 3am on Saturday July 4th. The trip down to Pismo Beach was

completely uneventful, with Landon sleeping for the vast majority of it (exactly as we planned). Upon arrival at my Aunt Robin and Uncle Gordon's house, we learned that my cousin Brandon, and Grandpa and Grandma Burgess were in town and were staying there as well...so it was definitely a full house for the holiday weekend. This was our first visit to Robin and Gordon's house in Pismo, and I must say that it is spectacular! It was probably one of the nicest houses I've ever been in, was roomy enough where the 8 of us didn't feel cramped, and did I mention it has an ocean view? So yeah, that house rocks!

One funny side note, is that their house has a large tile staircase which is the only way to get upstairs (where most of the action is). As we've pointed out in our blog in the past, Landon is obsessed with stairs! Needless to say, nothing has changed yet....and I would say that we spent the vast majority of our stay at their house chasing Landon away from the staircase. We tried blocking it off with chairs and other objects, but he usually found ways around them. He was also very fascinated with their cat CoCo, who ended up hiding out downstairs to avoid him....and since the cat was downstairs, guess where Landon wanted to go? So it was a bit of a battle, but he still had a ton of fun.

As for the Fourth of July, we ended up spending most of the holiday hanging out and catching up with everyone. Then followed that up with a great barbecue, and finished the day by watching fireworks over the Ocean on their patio. This was a phenomenal fireworks show that literally just kept going...several times we thought it was over, but they just kept firing them off. And since Pismo is sort of a "free" beach

where you can drive your car right up onto the sand, there were plenty of people firing off illegal fireworks that night...it was a ton of fun!

Sunday morning we headed over to my Aunt Cindie and Uncle Terry's house for a nice breakfast, and got to appreciate their beautiful house (literally on a beautiful golf course, as shown in this picture to the left). After breakfast we all headed down to the beach to experience their great little beach community and take a walk on the VERY long pier that they have there. Landon's eyes just popped out of his

head when he laid eyes on the ocean for the first time. We took him down to the sand to play for a few minutes, and he had fun chasing the water as it swept back and forth on the beach.

When we were done with the beach, my Uncle Gordon and cousin Brandon took Michaela and I wine tasting for the very first time while my Aunt Robin hung out with Landon. It was a really great experience for us, as we learned a ton about wine, and alot about the local wine scene (the Edna Valley has hundreds of wineries within a short drive of their house). It's really amazing how much my Uncle Gordon knows about wine, and he was a great person to take us on our first

tasting. We ended up tasting at three different vineyards (Talley, Domain Alfredo, and Salisbury). A cool fact about Salisbury Vineyards is that my Uncle Terry is a partner there and not only did he guide us through our tasting, but he also created his own label of wine (which is wonderful) and hooked us up with some great wine! All in all, it was a fabulous day and we are looking forward to visiting them again sometime this fall for another round with the vineyards!

Sunday night we had another nice meal and just enjoyed each other's company. Before we knew it, Monday morning was upon us....my Uncle Gordon blessed us by making his famous silver dollar pancakes which we happily filled up on, and then it was time to say farewell and hit the road once again down to San Diego...which is where I'll leave it for today.

Since there are just so many pictures that we want to post, I'm going to end the posts with some of our favorites...here they are, in no particular order...

Landon with "Uncle" Brandon...