So..I sit here ready to dreamily recount my summer as I sip on a blueberry, strawberry, pluot, soy smoothie made 
moments ago with all the beautiful fruit cascading from our kitchen!!! How could I ever take for granted the fact that we live in a place where such amazing food is grown. As many of you know, one of my favorite things in life while living in CA besides sand falling from our pockets as I do the laundry is the Farmers Markets. I try to hit them even while traveling so that we can eat fresh and local as well as support the farmers of the areas we are travelling through. We try to eat locally grown food in order to financially support all those beautiful families out there that have taken the time and energy to grow such wonderfully bright and healthy food for our tables. It is very important that no matter where we live, we support our local farmers by buying locally. It is financially helpful for them as well as good for your own health to eat from our own area. Tempting as it is to buy from places across the seas, it is better to concentrate on filling your baskets with food grown right at home. It is also a selfish pleasure for me to wander the aisles at the market touching, smelling and tasting the many fruits and veggies. I also love talking with the farmers and hearing their stories and when I am lucky, I get new ideas shared with me for ways of preparing these beautiful foods!
moments ago with all the beautiful fruit cascading from our kitchen!!! How could I ever take for granted the fact that we live in a place where such amazing food is grown. As many of you know, one of my favorite things in life while living in CA besides sand falling from our pockets as I do the laundry is the Farmers Markets. I try to hit them even while traveling so that we can eat fresh and local as well as support the farmers of the areas we are travelling through. We try to eat locally grown food in order to financially support all those beautiful families out there that have taken the time and energy to grow such wonderfully bright and healthy food for our tables. It is very important that no matter where we live, we support our local farmers by buying locally. It is financially helpful for them as well as good for your own health to eat from our own area. Tempting as it is to buy from places across the seas, it is better to concentrate on filling your baskets with food grown right at home. It is also a selfish pleasure for me to wander the aisles at the market touching, smelling and tasting the many fruits and veggies. I also love talking with the farmers and hearing their stories and when I am lucky, I get new ideas shared with me for ways of preparing these beautiful foods!So as I sip my smoothie, I realize there are less than two weeks before I start back at work! How can this be? It seems just yesterday. I was finishing up last minute things in the office so I could head home, pack and hit the road to Monterey with Wayne and the kids! Bryant had just spent the last several weeks sleeping and recovering from his first year at UC Berkeley. What a change for a young man who homeschooled in a small town of 900 in rural IL to then move on to CA and campus life and project deadlines at CAL!!! He deserved a few weeks of continual sleep. Brit was deserving her own down time and sleep as she had just finished her Junior year at a HS of 3000 plus students having taken hard courses and walking away with amazing grades as well as awesome scores on all her school and college testing and on her ACT and SAT tests!!! It was time these two had a rest and what better place than at the ocean. If you have followed us through this blog over the last several years, you will have found that our place to energize and prepare ourselves for the world is the ocean. It is a place the four of us can just not get enough of! So, off we went to spend some time together in Monterey before summer life began and with it the craziness of travel, friends, etc.
As we were driving, Wayno suggested that one thing we do while in Monterey was join in on a whale watching expedition! How cool could that be? We all decided this must be part of our adventure but what if we saw nothing? Well, it would be cool anyway just to be out on the ocean, right?! We arrived early in the evening and wandered a bit before deciding to catch a bite to eat at a sushi place on the water. What fun we had sitting together as a family at the ocean talking and laughing over a wonderful meal of sushi which the four of us can never get enough of!!! The children ended this meal with a new dessert for them...tempura ice cream...Brit liked it but Bry devoured it!!!
Back to our room to sleep and prepare for our next day and our first time ever to board a whale watching boat. We rose the next morning and dressed in several layers...not quite enough and so I had to purchase yet another layer on the way to the boat and am I glad I did!!! Can we say freezing! Who would have known it could be that cold out at sea!!!
We were excited and a bit nervous as we boarded. We were prepped by our own marine biologist that would talk us through the whole three hours as we searched for whale. How do you spot them? What do they eat? Why are the here? You name it...we learned it during this trip. We were also warned that it is possible that we would not see any. So we waited and we shivered and we made friends with others hoping to get a peek of possibly just a burst of spray coming from a blow hole of in the distance...would they ever show themselves to us?
OK...so nobody prepares you for what happens if they show up, the whales that is!!! They showed up and then more showed up and even more showed up!!! I cannot tell you how exciting it was. You know if you are lucky enough when you are young to have a chance to go to Sea World or a place where you get to see Shamu or another whale just as cool, you are amazed and in awe because they are so cool! OK...so I would say this was like that and then times it by probably a million!!! I have told others there are no words for what I and I believe the rest of my family experienced that day. Church in a boat might be a good description but only if it was one of those really cool services that gave you goosebumps, tears, and that humbling sensation all wrapped into one! Nah...even that cannot come close to the God I experienced that day on a whale watching boat eight miles out to sea. They just don't prepare you for this when they give you directions on dock and really... how could they? Our marine biologist could not stopping telling us that we were fortunate enough to be on one of the best expeditions she had been on in the seven years that she had been doing this.
So, let me begin...the first several whales we saw were cool, and I mean heart racing cool. Look, you are in a boat in the ocean and these 40 ton whales are surfacing near you and you can't speak. How could we be so lucky! Little did we know just how lucky we were about to be...two whale, one about 40 tons and the other approximately 60 tons surfaced close by. They stayed up and played for a while and then gave us that fun tail slap and headed back down for a deep dive and then usually this is where the others would head off and we would see them in the distance again. Not so this time!!!
These two became attached to our boat in that they did not want to leave. They would surface and play and then dive back down and then surface again, right by us. It came to be that they would dive under the boat and come back up on the other side...close and personal! This continued on for at least 20-30 minutes and there is just no way to explain in words what it felt like to be that close to these huge, beautiful creatures. Yes, whale breath is not quite pleasant that close up. Also, a group at the back of the boat had the unpleasant experience, or was it a really cool experience, to be covered in whale snot! At one moment the children and I were standing at the rail and the next moment I screamed as the blowhole of one of the whale was maybe 1-2 feet from my hand. Tears, goosebumps, etc. engulf you at this point and you know the universe really is huge and we are quite small in the whole scheme of things! Our marine biologist could not believe this experience! She at one point during these 20-30 minutes explained to us that these two whales had not just attached to the boat. Because of their behavior, she wanted us to understand that it was somebody on this boat that the whales were making contact with. They could feel or sense somebody on the boat that they liked and wanted to make contact with! Really! How much more amazing can life be at a moment like this? She was thrilled, we were all amazed and speechless other than the screams of pure shock and joy every few moments! How could we leave and go back to land after this? But all good things must come to an end and as wonderfully as they entered our lives, they lifted their tails one last time and slid back into the water and out to sea. And with them went many blessings from those of us that were graced by their energy.
These two became attached to our boat in that they did not want to leave. They would surface and play and then dive back down and then surface again, right by us. It came to be that they would dive under the boat and come back up on the other side...close and personal! This continued on for at least 20-30 minutes and there is just no way to explain in words what it felt like to be that close to these huge, beautiful creatures. Yes, whale breath is not quite pleasant that close up. Also, a group at the back of the boat had the unpleasant experience, or was it a really cool experience, to be covered in whale snot! At one moment the children and I were standing at the rail and the next moment I screamed as the blowhole of one of the whale was maybe 1-2 feet from my hand. Tears, goosebumps, etc. engulf you at this point and you know the universe really is huge and we are quite small in the whole scheme of things! Our marine biologist could not believe this experience! She at one point during these 20-30 minutes explained to us that these two whales had not just attached to the boat. Because of their behavior, she wanted us to understand that it was somebody on this boat that the whales were making contact with. They could feel or sense somebody on the boat that they liked and wanted to make contact with! Really! How much more amazing can life be at a moment like this? She was thrilled, we were all amazed and speechless other than the screams of pure shock and joy every few moments! How could we leave and go back to land after this? But all good things must come to an end and as wonderfully as they entered our lives, they lifted their tails one last time and slid back into the water and out to sea. And with them went many blessings from those of us that were graced by their energy.
We spent the rest of our trip listening to great music while eating wonderful foods in the park at a Blues Festival and seeing amazing sights at the aquarium.
We of course walked the beach forever because well...that's just what our family does when we are at the ocean!
We of course walked the beach forever because well...that's just what our family does when we are at the ocean! 
Needless to say, this was an amazing start to our summer! 
An amazing way to spend some time together as a family before we all started what was to be a very fun yet very busy summer.
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