Happy Anniversary to us!

Yesterday was our 7th wedding anniversary, but due to a number of factors we had decided to postpone any romantic outings in favor of some quality family time. On a whim we decided to go to Santa Cruz for the day. It was nice not to have any set plans and to just spend some time in one of our favorite places. There was a lot of traffic so we arrived very hungry and decided to hit up our favorite pizza place outside of Oregon, Woodstock Pizza. They even had a gluten free pizza crust, which was delicious!

After that we stopped by a few surf shops because J really (really, really) wants to surf and he's been using a borrowed board that doesn't seem to be a very good fit for him. We were lucky with the first shop we visited, Santa Cruz Surf and Skate; the manager there was very helpful. So armed with the knowledge of what J needed, we stopped by a couple other shops to see if we could find one...but no such luck. Now that we have something specific to look for we hope to find a good used board soon.

The manager at SC Surf and Skate had grown up in the area so he directed us to some beaches south of "Santa Cruz proper" where he said it would be less busy and more friendly. It still seemed pretty busy to us, but it was very cool to see some of Capitola, which was completely new to us. The downtown is adorable (although we only drove through) and we will definitely make a trip back that way again and stay a weekend (although we say that every time we day trip down there).

We got hot cocoas on the way home and made, what we thought was a genius decision to drive up HWY 1 to avoid all the traffic going back to the burbs. Unfortunately there was some road work being done along the way and we were stopped for awhile, but we played a rousing game of "I Spy" with the kids which was actually really fun because its the first time we could all play for reals.