A great way to spend Halloween!!!!

My sister Brianne and her Husband Brandon finally got a chance to come up North and visit us!! We were able to get a beach house in Monterey Bay for Halloween weekend, due to some trade work John did with Chiropractic! After a long week of school and work we were so excited for this weekend, we left around 10 p.m and arrived around 12. Bri and Brandon got in about 2:30 and of course I was to excited to sleep I waited up for them!!!

Since we only had 48 hours before we had to get back in the car and drive home, we packed in as much as we possibly could. Friday afternoon we went to a little deli for lunch and then walked around these beautiful gardens.
Look at these AMAZING flowers. They are called passion flowers and grow on a passion fruit vine. We could not believe they were real because we had never seen anything like it before.
The gardens were so fragrant and the architecture of the buildings around it were so neat. Perfect place for a photo shoot.
We went to the beach because the waves were at least 15 feet and watched some professional surfers in action.

Later that night we went for a LONG bike ride. Half of it was literally on the beach (which didn't work out so well) the other half was on a bike trail surrounded by eucalyptus trees.
Since not all the bikes were in working condition, Brandon had to ride a bike like a scooter because it had no chain! I guess it was better than the alternative above.
After really working up an appetite we looked up a highly rated pizza joint and had some really yummy dinner. This restaurant was in a large out door mall that you would never know was in Monterey because it is completely hidden from the road by huge trees. It took us a little while to find it but the scavenger hunt was half the fun.

Saturday morning we woke up and went to the most beautiful state park. We hiked for over 2 hours and saw some of the most gorgeous landscape ever.
It was the PERFECT hiking weather.

This might be one of the only places you can be hiking through the forest and along the coast.

Look at this chubby little seal. Of course Brandon threw something at the entire family before we could get a picture of all of them. This guy was too slow so I caught him before he hid in the water.

3 WORDS: gorgeous, amazing, beautiful!Same 3 words as above.

Nothing like a "PHAT BURGER" after a long hike. I know this picture turned out awful but the food tasted so yummy.

After our hike and lunch we got cleaned up and went to CARMEL. This is such a quaint little town with lots of shops and places to eat. This is a historic building but I thought this was the most beautiful RED FALL tree.

Carmel again had so many cool places you could do a photo shoot at. All the streets and building had so much character, it looked a lot like Europe.

This is a very well known FANCY restaurant called Casanova. It came highly recommended!

Next we went to the Monterey Pier and walked around the Wharf. They had it all lit up at night and it was so awesome. We didn't get any picture of the Wharf because we left Bri's camera in the car. We did take a lot of mental pictures so we could remember how fun it was!

We went home after and made some sugar cookies and watched the second half of Sherlock Holmes since we didn't finish it Friday night.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Before we said our goodbyes we had a yummy breakfast of muffins, eggs, yogurt and fruit. This weekend FLEW by, it wasn't nearly long enough but we loved EVERY minute of it. We were so glad that Bri & Brandon could come up and spend Halloween with us, we had so much fun we never wanted it to end!! We love and miss you guys so much and we can't wait to get together again!!!