The fruit is always allowed to vine ripen, and they were picked the very day that we purchased them. There has to be something about living in a place with such wonderful produce!

The next leg of our trip took us a little further south within California. We visited my Brother and his family. M and L absolutely loved playing with their cousins, in fact, they have taken to calling each other "cousin" because it is more fun to play with cousins than sisters... Interesting. Anyway, we spent a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but my camera didn't charge the day before... Therefore, the pictures will not be posted here. We borrowed my Brother's camera, but I have not had the chance to have them sent on to me yet. I will post a few when we get them.

My parents are serving a mission for our church. They are living up on a very huge ranch, and providing a way for the youth to go up and experience a real pioneer trek. For those readers who don't know what I am talking about, there is a long history of our church and handcart pioneers who traveled to Utah. There is way more history and experiences there than I could share, but there is a fantastic book for any who are interested called "Fire of the covenant" by Gerald Lund, if you are so inclined to learn a bit more... To make a long story short, we went up to the ranch, and went on a little mini trek with our girls. They loved the experience and our guides (my parents) told beautiful and poignant stories of the crossing of the pioneers. It was a fantastic experience, one that I hope to repeat again. I wanted to post a couple of pictures from the trek, but blogger doesn't seem to want to let me do it... Perhaps a post for another day.

Driving along for that many hours in a row, would have felt tedious if it were not for a few wonderful ideas we had. We purchased a portable DVD player that had two screens to attach to the backs of the two front seats. Both girls watched movies on their own screen. No fighting, no complaining about not being able to see, just happy girls. We also read a book. Sultry Husband would drive along as I read out loud to him. We didn't quite finish it, but we plan to in the next week or so. The miles seemed to just melt away before us.

It was a fantastic journey. The ease and happiness we felt along the way has brought us closer together as a family, and has definitely hit us with the travel bug. I wouldn't be surprised to see us packing up the car again in the near future... what will our next destination be? Unknown at the moment, but I will tell you this, Sultry Husband needs to acrue some more vacation days before we can hit the road... till then, we shall continue to enjoy fond memories of this road trip.