California dreamin'

Last Friday we headed out to California for a Mauldin family vacation to visit Jeff's brother, sister in law and niece. Jeff's parents and godparents met us there as well. So it was truly a family vacation. This was Charlie's first airplane ride and he did great! He even received a certificate and his own set of "wings" from the flight attendants! We arrived Friday afternoon and hung out at his brother's house and waited for everyone to arrive. We had a nice, relaxing meal and enjoyed everyone's company. Saturday we stayed in the Berkeley area and went to UC Berkeley to see the campus, got some great cheese and pastries at the Cheeseboard shop, and had a super nice dinner at a fancy restaurant in Berkeley. Sunday we went to Mt. Tam and had a picnic lunch up there and enjoyed the wonderful view of San Fransisco, saw the Golden Gate bridge (without fog, for once!) and went to a party for Kasuen (Jeff's sister in law) thrown by her graduate professor. (Clayton and Kasuen just graduated from UC Berkeley with their PhD's). Monday we toured Napa Valley which was awesome. Jeff's Uncle Carl is very big into wine, so we got some VIP tours of a few of the wineries in Napa. Tuesday we did a little shopping at the North Face outlet, had lunch at this great place called "Crepevine", and then went to Half Moon Bay to see the Pacific Ocean. So Charlie has been to the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean's within 2 weeks time! Pretty cool! The Gulf of Mexico is next on the list, which shouldn't be a problem since we live 30 miles from there. Dungeness crabs are are always on our "must do list" when we go out there, so that's what we had for dinner on Tuesday. We flew home on Wednesday. We had an excellent time and really enjoyed ourselves. Charlie did really well considering he was travelling, not on any sort of schedule/routine and was cutting two teeth during this time! Of course we have lots of pictures, so sit back and enjoy!