Our California Scouting Trip

We spent all last week in CA trying to find a house, as we are leaving the day after Thanksgiving to head out there. Here are a few pictures to document our time there.

First, can I just tell you about the amazing parks out there? Merrick was quite impressed:

Flood Park in Menlo Park:

Cuesta Park in Mountain View - little man LOVES to climb, so he was in heaven. Turns out that we found our home in Mountain View and it's less than 1 mile from this park. So between the playground and the jogging path for me, it will be perfect! More on the house later.

One of the things I really like about the Peninsula is that a lot of the towns have their own downtown area. We spent Saturday in Mountain View downtown on Castro St. Our objective was finding a place to have lunch. When in St. Augustine, we've got about 2-3 choices in terms of places we like, so it's really challenging to figure out which place we're least tired of. Well here, it is just the opposite problem. There are SOOOOO many to choose from that we essentially stood on the sidewalk dumbfounded, drooling over which Zagat-recommended restaurant to choose from. Did we feel like Thai? Indian? Italian? Vietnamese? Chinese? So many choices!!

Merrick quickly brought us out of la-la land and back to earth when he proclaimed "I want chicken nuggeys and ketchup!". So suckers that we are, we spent 45 minutes trying - unsuccessfully - to find a place that served such a delicacy. It was not happening...this city is WAY too cultured for us. Digging into my bag of tricks, the 'divert and conquer' method was used. We knew he would have spaghetti. So we completely diverted him by asking him whether he wanted Spaghetti or a bowl of Toam Kha Gai. Guess what he chose:

Oh dear, sweet child of mine. We MUST begin to work on the palate.

So on the last day of the week we were there, we FINALLY sealed the deal on a house in Mountain View. Forget about the fact that it's more than twice our current mortgage payment on our house in Florida, yet smaller! Actually, we're quite happy with it. We love homes that have a bit of character to them, and this one does. The neighborhood is beautiful and walking distance to a few parks. It's also a long walk or short drive to downtown. It has a very nice front and back yard with 2 tangarine trees and a lemon tree. Here's our new humble abode - if you knew what this place would sell for, you would fall to the floor in shock (well, except for those actually in CA):

Once we actually move in we'll have to post pictures of the back yard and inside.

On the way home, we were able to convince the pilots to let Merrick get a shot at hanging out in the cockpit. He flew it pretty well for not having any experience. No major complaints from the passengers. Then they let us take it even one step further and put our 2 year old son right in the engine:

I kid, I kid! A couple shots of Merrick at the aviation museum. :)

We will officially be California residents on December 1, 2009.