Moments in My Life

I’ve been so busy lately that I have yet to buy a Halloween costume for Brandon.  I was very pre-occupied on organizing our trip to San Francisco for the past week.  At the same time, I was very busy with my real estate work as the listing I have is in escrow. Usually the first week of escrow, there are lots of paperwork to be done and follow up with my client as well as the buyer’s agent.  I had million of things to do last week. 

But I will try to find time this week to look at some Childrens Costumes before it becomes too late. We are less than 2 weeks from Halloween. I hope I still have time. I might. I’ve just checked and if I place my online order with the online with Halloween Adventure by this Thursday, 23rd, the costume will get to me by the 30th even with their UPS standard ground shipping. This shop has 85 Halloween Costume Stores in 7 states. The one nearest to us is located at Canoga Park which is approximately 37 miles away from our home. Well, I guess is cheaper for us to pay for the shipping & handling fee than to drive there ourselves for pick up. Although the gas price has gone down, it is still pretty expensive at $3.45 per gallon.

October 17th 2008

We began our trip slightly after 9am on Friday morning.  I had some work errand to run earlier that morning thus the late in our departing time.  Or else, we would have left around 8am. 

We drove up north on 405 and then switched to 101 north.  There were some work traffic along 405 and we didn’t get to drive smoothly as we hoped for.  By the time we got to Camarillo Outlet Mall it was about 10:30am.  We didn’t stop there for shopping, but instead we had to use their restrooms.  It was about time for Brandon to go as he had his 8oz morning milk before we left.  Brandon napped a little bit during the second segment of our drive and woke up 20 minutes before we arrived at our first destination.  It was a little before noon by the time we got to Solvang.

Found a shady parking spot, and headed out to the … restroom of course!  The public restroom has a family unit which has an adult toilet as well as a children toilet.  There is even a changing station in it.  This unit is huge, and able to fit the stroller and 2 adults and 2 children.  Next we went hunting for food. We actually stopped by the visitor center and asked for recommendation and the kind lady gave us 3 selections.

We stopped at the first restaurant she recommended. It is the Belgian Cafe. They serve breakfast and lunch American style.

Alan ordered the belgium waffle and sausage while I had their tri-tip sandwich with french fries.

Brandon was patiently waiting for our order and I snapped a few pictures of him. Here is one with him and his ‘favorite’ helicopter - Chukz.

Brandon had not much of the food we had. Only some french fries and sausage with ketchup.

By the time we finished our lunch, it was close to 12:45pm. We stopped by one of the bakery but bought nothing. Went back to use the restroom again before we began our second segment of the trip which would be another 3.5 hours.

To be continue …

We spent more than $600 total for our trip including hotel stay, dining, gas and shopping. The hotel stay cost the most and yet we spent the least time there. We were only back there late in the evening, took our showers and went to sleep. The next morning we woke up, ate the continental breakfast and then headed out for our activities the whole day.   

Overall, it was a pleasant trip.  I enjoyed meeting up with friends and the shopping too.  It would be nice if we can get away to somewhere not too far once a month.  It is relaxing to have a mini vacation every month, but we may be broke if we do so and have to sort for payday loans fast to settle our credit card bills.

It is Sunday evening now.  We had just returned from a mini vacation.  My hubby did a lot of driving these past three days.  It was more than 800 miles round trip.  He did all the driving while I took care of Brandon sitting at the back of the car.  Brandon loved the hotel stay and he didn’t mind the long drive in the car.  We get to meet some friends during this trip too.  Will post more pictures on it later.