Cali day

We got up early (not early enough) and headed to the airport. Jackson was not pleased with the timeline we created for ourselves and became a grouch. Never deterred, I stood in line at Starbucks while he boarded our flight. I was kind and got him breakfast and ordered a drink large enough for us to share before boarding. I never waited in line to board. It was amazing. I had overhead space to store my bag and then plopped down next to Jack. He was not pleased with me. Whoops. Good thing I got him a muffin! ;) The flight was long and loud. There were kids EVERYWHERE. Thank goodness I had my Bose "noise cancelling" headphones. Jackson doesn't have a pair and won't let me spend the money to get them so he suffered through over 4 hours of screaming kids kicking his seat. Yep. He was a ton of fun by the time we landed. ;)

We got to LAX and grabbed the shuttle to our rental car place. Don't ever rent from Dollar at LAX. Whoa. It took us about 75 minutes to get our car. Ouch. Finally, we were on the road! We hit the 405 and I got the iPod blaring songs with a California theme and all of our troubles were behind us. We wanted to take the Pacific Coast Highway down to San Marcos where we were staying for the night so we got off the 405 in Seal Beach and got to the seaside drive. It was lovely. We decided to stop in Huntington Beach for lunch.

We ate at a local "gem" called the Sugar Shack. The food was just OK but really getting to eat outside on December 22nd made it amazing. Jackson kept up with the Colts game from our table so he was a happy camper.
After lunch we headed down to the pier and watched people playing beach volleyball. I wanted to play so badly!
Then we watched surfers. I love watching surfers! I didn't spot a single shark. Darn.

After spending time walking around the beach we headed down to San Marcos to get cleaned up for dinner. We had dinner at my high school friend Joe Walker's house. It was awesome. I seriously hadn't seen him in like 12 years. His wife made a delicious dinner and made vegetables so good that I ate Brussels sprouts. Yep. First time ever.


Jackson insisted that I try out Joe's motorcycle so I sat on it in the garage. I'm not brave enough to ride. Ever.
We went to the park with their two daughters (Rosalie and Ivy) and two dogs. We played on the swings, ran around and just had fun. It was so nice to see Joe as a family man. He makes my heart proud. We LOVED his daughters, too. They were so much fun.

Since we'd been up for what seemed like years we went to bed kind of early that evening in an effort to get on California time. Jackson was sleeping so well that he rolled over and elbowed me at full force in the mouth. I kid you not. I woke up to severe pain thinking my teeth were going to fall out. Thankfully they did not. I do have a sweet fat lip, though. My husband beats me in his sleep!!!