Back to California

Hubby had carefully reserved the week of the girls' spring break to be playing with us, or at least working from the house, but something happened and it ends up he's going to be in San Jose for three days that week.
He spends so much time away, it doesn't make sense for us to sit home doing nothing while he's in San Jose.  So we decided to join him.  The problem is there's not much in San Jose.   We saw that Santa Cruz is the nearest beach community.  The guys he'll be working with told him it's about a 45 minute to Santa Cruz, maybe an hour in traffic.
He offered to commute from Santa Cruz.  We'd find a rental on the beach.  For the three days of the week he'd be working, we'll be hanging out and playing in the sand.  The other days he'd be with us.
The girls are not happy about spending Easter morning somewhere other than our house.  This will be the 2nd year in a row we've done that.  But I don't see any other way around it.  The Rabbit will find us, he's a smart little rodent.  Thing 1 has already started pondering her letter to the Easter Bunny, and I know she'll be expecting a return letter.  She's already seen how happy Santa and the Leprechauns are to write back to her.  Just how literate is the Easter Bunny, anyway?  What kind of correspondent?  A full chatty letter, or just an inky paw print?  Hmmmmm....
It took me about three days of looking, but I just found a place that was available and seems to fit the bill, and only cost one arm and leg.  It's hard to tell exactly what we're getting from the cryptic photos and the real estatey blurbs (Cozy = Tiny... Quaint = Decorated in the 60s.... Close to beach = 5 blocks away... etc) but we can bring the dog and when I google mapped it it is about 3 houses away from the beach.  Also it was a couple hundred dollars  cheaper than some of the other places we were looking at, and has a roof top patio to watch the sunset from.

This is the rooftop with accompanying view.  

This is the back deck.  It faces West so the sunset view should be nice.

This is the beach access three houses away.  
The only thing missing is a private hot tub.  The girls would have liked that.  But the trade off is they get to bring the dog.  Now we just have to figure out how to put him, and everything else, in the car for the 13 hour drive.  Holy Dorrito, did hubby and I just commit to driving 13 hours with two kids and a dog?  Hmmm... that will be the hard part.  We'll take two days to drive over, but we may have to pull a heinous all day trip back.


The dog is not overly fond of the car and I don't know how he'll do.  He still can't get into the car without the ramp.  Yes, Kelso is such a wuss that he can't jump into the car.  He has tried, but his front half ends up in the car while his back end is still on the ground, which he seems to find embarrassing.  It is quite a ways up there, and he is only 7 months old.  He can jump out, but hasn't mastered the in part. 

This is a picture of the same ramp we have, though those are not our dogs...  The ramp folds in half, weighs about 20 pounds, is about 3.5 feet long and 6 inches thick when folded in half.   Waaaaayy too big to take on this trip.


I heard that a bit of Dramamine will knock out a dog for a while.  I think I'll be talking to the vet about that and some sunscreen for his nose.  I hear collies are susceptible to nose sunburn with that big ol schnoz sticking out there.