Leaving Santa Barbara: The Why, The How and my Blog Intentions

Where it Begins

This day marks the very first post for this blog. I'm starting with the intention to keep both friends and family in the loop about our 3 month stay in Europe, for tourism and (unofficially) work. I'm hoping this can turn into a small "pet project" of mine, updating more posts as time goes on and more family trips made. I'm basically trying this out for 1 year. Lastly, please bear with me as I'm very new to this!

Leaving Santa Barbara

For those who don't know, my husband and I have lived the past 3.5 years in Santa Barbara, CA. We loved it there, and got to explore the entire County! We did hiking, ate fantastic foods, lived just 2 miles away from the ocean, had good jobs, and greeted our beautiful baby girl into the world; from whence I fully embraced motherhood and became a stay at home mother (SAHM)! After the long consideration and encouragement from hubby's job, we decided to end our lease, store our belongings, and leave our Chaparral Mediterranean home. Our time in Santa Barbara had come to end (cue in our wallets giving a huge sigh of relief) and embarked on our next big family adventure to Paris (cue in our wallets internal screaming)!

(The Empty Bowl at Public Square Market)

I can hear my family asking, "but why Paris and how are you able to do this, Mija?", allow me to explain Familia! This was made possible through hubby's work situation. Without going into the gritty details, he works for a company that develops and manufactures audio products, and has offices all over the world. He was assigned to a team that's based in Paris, France and has been working remotely from California ever since. Alas, California being what it is (so freaking expensive that only the near-rich and above can live there), we bought our tickets and packed our bags, giving hubby the in-person facetime with colleagues he so rightly deserves... at the same time fulfilling the European family trip we've always dreamed about!

Exciting, no?

One Last Hurrah! Ending Where it Began

We decided to leave off where it started, at the Seacrest Hotel in Pismo, CA. The very place hubby asked me to marry him! Ding Ding Here's the Wedding Ring!

(Taken just outside our balcony window)

We stayed only for one night, as we needed as much time as possible to pack the house up and store everything (Shout out to the grandparents that visited us and help make this move happen!), but it was more than enough. Hubby took our daughter out for a walk and swim, while I (after realizing I didn't have my swimsuit), putzed around the area and researched dinner options.

We decided to eat at Ventana Grill, only a 0.5 mile walk from our hotel and apparently so popular that the dinner wait time was 1.5 hours (no thank you)! Not wanting to risk a Baby G meltdown, we decided to order our food to go and walk around the string of hotels nearby. The thing we noticed? The BEAUTIFUL boardwalk and garden just right behind the restaurant... oh and pelicans. LOTS AND LOTS of pelicans!

(Left) Huge pelican bigger than my daughter (Center) Hubby and Baby in the Garden (Right) Coastal cliff with TONS of pelicans

Baby G loved it so much, she couldn't stop running around the park while daddy chased her, only to scream at the pelicans in excitement. They were seriously so incredibly close, you could reach over and touch one (not that I would, and I highly doubt any wild bird would ever agree to this). Being so used to passersby however, the pelicans were largely uninterested and unphased by this bundle of energy pointing at them, and just stared on into the void that only a pelican's brain could understand.

After reaching our hotel, we ate our delicious dinner, and made it a point to go to bed soon after. Our flight left at 1:30pm on August 28th and the taxi driver said he'd pick us up at 10am that morning. We knew the flight would be long, and we'd be severely jetlagged with a most certainly cranky toddler, so getting a good night's sleep with a healthy breakfast in the morning was imperative to buffer the exhaustion (and excitement!) that was to come.