Pacific Grove, California

Pacific Grove is basically part of Monterey, California. We rented a little house (I'm talking little) which was amazing in it's details and features. It was built in 1900 and was, I thought, incredible. We even found a newspaper from 1926 in a drawer. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, went shopping, and enjoyed this little shops of this quaint seaside town:

At dinner the first night, at a place called Max's grill. Delicious!

Emily, the marine biologist, and Kate


Mom & Alex (Brooke's adorable, sweet, and constantly happy 7 month old) Years from now he'll realize how lucky he was to be the only child to ever come on a girls' trip!

Presenting.. some tide pools! Emily gave us the scoop on marine life, and even found a starfish to point out to us

We all took turns hiking around with Alex- he was a real trooper!

The view- within a 5 minute walk of our house.

In front of our rental

Kate, modeling the vintage bathtub!
And Kate presenting the vintage oven! Way cool, by the way. We even baked cookies in it. Yes, we were afraid we'd blow ourselves up, but thankfully, it really did work!

In front of our rental. A lot of the homes were painted victorian colors to bring out there historical-ness. It made for one beautiful and unique neighborhood.

Goats!! Not in Pacific Grove, but down the hill from my parent's house. Those crazy Californians, instead of wasting millions of dollars fighting brush fires every season (not to mention millions of gallons of water), now they employ goats to eat the weeds and brush to prevent fires and for weed control. And man, these goats chow down- we couldn't believe how much they had cleaned out in a short time. I thought it was a way cool and earth-friendly way to take care of a potentially devasting problem. When I was a kid, I remember a grass fire on this same street, but the other side. We lived in a house on the street at the time, and I remember my dad spraying the fire from the backyard with a hose, and the firefighters going in and out of our home. Actually, very cool to a 10-year old.