Week of Fun

In light of Jay finishing tax season, we dedicated a week to having fun in low key ways.
The most fun thing we did started the week off:
We stayed overnight in Carmel, CA, which is about 3 hours drive from us. It is right next to Monterey, CA and has beautiful beaches and a nice little city. It had class.

Photo Attribution

We brought Little Foot and he really enjoyed first getting out of the car and us running along the beach. You could tell it was even harder for him to run in the deep sand than for us. He also climbed on the rocks (which we later saw a sign telling us not to do...) and tried to drink ocean water.
When we got back to the car, we watered him and changed into swimming suits and got our beach stuff.
Jay had brought a kite, which was good for the wind. The kite wasn't that good, but we actually had a lot of fun trying to keep it in the sky. Easy kites can be a bit boring.
It was windy, so I only got my legs wet in the water because the water was so cold, but it was a lot of fun going to a pretty beach.
I'm afraid the camera had a bit too much fun in the water. I can't seem to even get the pictures off it that we took, but it was so pretty.
Also, unlike southern CA beaches, there weren't a million people there. We had stretches of the beach to ourselves.
Little Foot really didn't like the water!
That night I called around to see if we could take our dog to a restaurant. Surprisingly, one of the first places I called told me this: We usually do patio seating if you have dogs, but since we're not at all busy, we'd be happy to have you inside.

We walked the half mile (?) there. The restaurant was divided into 2 sides. Everyone else was seated on one side, and they gave us the side closer to the kitchen with no one else. We had our own private room, basically :) It was very quiet and had gourmet food. Jay had a spicy pasta in a roasted red pepper sauce and I had spinach inside of gnocchi. For dessert we had creme brulee. The dog, who has never been inside a restaurant before, was surprisingly well behaved. He laid on our jackets on the floor and was quiet the entire time. This was a relief since I'm sure he would have misbehaved if we left him at the hotel--barking, disturbing others, or making messes, etc. We love our dog, but he's not always easy to accomodate.

The next day we spent some more time at another nearby beach, then headed on home.
I don't know that we've ever been on a vacation together that was solely for the purpose of vacationing together at a getaway spot. Even our honeymoon was just staying overnight in Flagstaff on our way from Provo to our wedding reception to Tucson, so we had stress involved.
While Jay's job is stressful, they do give him quite a bit of PTO, which does have its benefits.

Another thing we did was watch the 80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and we made meat turtles.

Photo Credit

They are turkey burgers with hot dog legs and a head and wrapped in criss cross bacon. Jay was so excited to watch and eat turtles.
They were pretty delicious, you know, the half on one I ate.
I'm not a huge meat eater. I like to eat some of it often, rather than a lot of it at any one time. But it was still fun.

Our zoo day got rained out, but we can do that another time. I hear the Sacramento Zoo isn't huge or anything anyway.

We also went orienteering on Little Foot's birthday (April 26). He is nine... and he is old. Jay predicted he wouldn't go with him. Sometimes Jay tries to walk Little Foot and the dog will get outside, see that I'm not going too, and dig in his heels and refuse. Jay says he likes me better.
Although he lets me walk him, as we were running/walking the course together, he started to dig in his heels. I think either he was worried we were leaving Jay--since we had driven far away before going--or he was just mad that everything was still all wet and he was stepping in puddles. Anyway, right around that time, Jay passed us, going on a different course. Little Foot ran after him. We followed until it was clear Jay was going in a completely different direction as us. Little Foot fought so hard, I eventually ended up carrying him.
These courses are timed and here I was carrying a dog... Ha. It's a good thing I'm not competitive--I haven't orienteered in years and I really have only done it 3 times total, so I was just doing it for fun.
Jay did orienteering in HS and so he's the one who is good at it.
At this point, running with my dog in my arms, my phone rang. I decided to get it, since I saw it was the owner of my duplex and I knew we were getting our water line fixed. Luckily it was just good news that things were going well.
Luckily when we got home, sweaty and tired, we found the crew who was digging up pipes in our back yard and replacing the entire intake line (a huge job), were on lunch. The had turned our water on for us and so we were able to shower. Yeah!

We watched Harry Potter movies, read books, and spent time together doing things that would be boring to put on a blog, but were relaxing.

The start of our fun activities actually occurred on April 15 when Jay was finally done: we got massages together.