Boating with the Rasbands

Yesterday we went boating with Jackie's sister Holly and family. We had a blast. The water was warm and the lake was not crowded at all. Which made for a great time. Here is Camille, Brooke, and Jacob sitting in the front of the boat.

Me and Lauren hanging out in the back just leaving the dock area.
I did a little wake boarding and had a lot of fun doing that.
Holly got out there too and did awesome at wake boarding.
Here is Holly grabbing for her nose as she falls into the lake.
We stopped for a little bit and jumped off the boat and then swam around for a bit.
Jacob, Camille, and Lauren swimming around. They loved to jump in every time we stopped the boat to switch people out in the water.
Here is Matt out knee boarding and finishing a 360.
Tubing was the long awaited activity. Here are the kids all out on the tube. They all didn't want Matt to drive crazy, but come on, it's tubing, you have to.
Here I am out there enjoying my time on the tube.
Next we got Holly out there and Matt drove like crazy and spun us around pretty good. It was a lot of fun.
Jackie out on the tube with Camille, Holly, and Lauren. They all loved just hanging out on the tube and having Matt drive really slow. It was boring watching them. Big wimps that don't like to go fast.
Matt and I having some fun on the tube.
It was a great day at the lake and very fun.

Santa Barbara and Ventura Beach

We went with Nellie and kids to one of our favorite places, the Santa Barbara Pier. We love walking around on it and shopping in the little shop.

At the end of the pier with Nellie, Grace, and Logan.
Santa Barbara is the background.
Today we went to the Ventura beach. It was overcast for most the morning and kind of cold, but by the afternoon the sun finally showed up and it was a beautiful day.
Spenny, Logan, and I looking at the cold water and thinking, no way we are getting in.
I tried to build a sand castle with Logan, but it didn't really work out.
All he wanted to do was smash them, so I joined in.
Jackie sun bathing . . . . .
I buried Tyler's nephews in the sand. They live right on the beach.

Here is our group of friends here in Ventura. We sure do miss them but it has been fun hanging out with them this week. It will be fun having Tyler and Jen a little bit closer to us in the near future.
Jackie saying good-bye to Logan and Grace. So sad.

Monterey

We made our way to Monterey on Wednesday and were able to go to the Aquarium. It didn't look that big on the map, but walking around the place took us almost three hours without kids and we hurried the last hour.

We tried watching their little show about saving energy. It was kind of funny but geared towards little kids and I got bored so we left.
A picture of the bay and the Aquarium. It was huge.
I think at this place is where they got the idea of some of the plant life in Avatar. The plant life they had there was crazy. It is amazing at how much we don't know about the ocean and what things live there.
These things were cool as well.
See if you can find the fish.
Why hello Mr Octopus. I kept wishing that he would move so we could see him all stretched out, but he didn't move from that spot on the window.
They had tons of different jelly fish.
This was probably my favorite part of the Aquarium. I guess I don't remember seeing Sea Horses before, but they were really interesting to watch. There were a couple different types of Sea Dragons that are family of the sea horses. They were amazing to look at and we wondered how there had been so many different animals created that we had no idea existed.
This one is a Sea Dragon. When you were standing away from the tank it looked like plants that were floating around. Once you got up close you could see that those little plants had faces on them.
It's amazing how they swam. They have little fins on their lower back that look like tiny fingers, almost like a comb that they used to swim. They would flutter by and you couldn't see the fins moving unless you looked closely. They have pectoral fins that are located behind the eyes that help them steer.




We made friends with the Bubba Gump Shrimp.
One of the many cool buildings on Cannery Row in Monterey.
A picture of the vineyards just north of Santa Barbara.
We finally arrived in Ventura after a long drive and first stopped off to see Spenny, Nellie, Logan and Grace. Here is Jackie with Grace.

Big Basin Redwoods

We headed down to the Big Basin Redwoods on Tuesday. We stopped off in a little town called Boulder Creek to have lunch at Round Table Pizza and then headed up to the State Park.

Here is a picture of a tree that they said was like 800 years old before Columbus discovered America. The little silver plaques are time lines in history.
Here is me on a tree that had fallen over, if you can see me at the top.
The trees are crazy that they start out as one and then split into two and some are hollowed out.
The view looking straight up at the tall trees. It is amazing the height they can reach, but with bases like they have they could go on forever! Some are over 300 feet tall.
This kind of shows you how big the trees are, I'm not even close to hugging that whole tree.
Jackie hiding in one.
The view from inside the tree on a couple of them. I am not sure how the trees got to be completely hollowed on the inside.

This tree was like 66 feet around.
This one was even bigger. 70 feet in circumference at the ground and 329 feet high.