Sunny CA

Okay, so JD and I went to Santa Barbara, California to visit his cousin, Dustin last week. It was a lot of fun and here are some pictures: This was when we first got to Santa Barbara ...

I just couldn't resist snapping some pics of the palm trees

I'm not sure why, but in a lot of these pictures my husband is man-handling me. What is UP with that? :) I think he was trying to push me off of this cliff...just behind us in the water, we spotted a grey whale! How cool is that?

Wine tasting in the valley...

This picture was taken right after JD asked if he could ask, "a stupid question". The entire place went silent and all eyes were on JD when he asked the attendant if he had any extra corks because his grandma is making a bath mat out of corks!!!! lol. Poor Dustin probably shouldn't have taken us out in public :)

JD and Dustin...doing I'm-not-sure-what.

No clue what this town was called but it was Dutch-ish.

We rented surf boards and wet suits to bit the beach ... here's JD and Dustin carrying the boards.

They are stinkin' 9 feet long!

JD and Dust on their maiden voyage...

JD and myself... you might have to click on the picture to make it bigger in order to see us :)

Surfing was a blast. I was gung-ho (?) on it from the beginning. I'm all over trying something new and JD/Dustin weren't really into it as much as I was. But after we rented the boards and such, they got all excited and I started thinking that maybe I would drown or that a big ol shark would come and bite my leg off. I seriously considered not going once we hit the beach. The waves in these pictures look pretty tiny but when they're coming at you and you have to pretty much dive bomb them, it's a whole different story. Plus, I expected it to be a lot easier. First of all, the boards are very tippy- like a canoe so it was hard to just lay on it at first. Combine that with diving directly into the waves, and it was tough. Then, I'm SUPER out of shape so paddling 43796802456 yards was not an easy task. I got out there in what felt like the middle of the ocean, and told JD that if I tried to surf now I would surely drown because my arms were too tired to swim if I fell off the board. So we're out there just 'sitting' hanging out and I ask JD "What do we do now?". He just tells me that we sit and wait for a wave and whatever I do, don't turn my back to the ocean. Okay. So we're facing these huge oil rigs and all of the sudden, he screams "oh sh**...oh sh**...this is it...friggin' turn around and start paddling lees!!!" At about this time, I start remembering what he was telling me while we were still on the beach, "Whatever you do don't panic when a wave comes crashing down on you...it'll pin you to the bottom of the ocean...but don't freak out....just wait a few seconds and you'll come to the surface...". So that's in my head. I start paddling like a mad woman....trying to save my own life while thinking any minute I'll die and JD is too far away from me to save me. I turn to look over my shoulder and this wave is literally CURLING over me....so I just close my eyes and start screaming. Then all of the sudden, like a dolphin picking me up out of the water, I start...flying. It feels like flying. It took me a minute to realize that what I was doing was SURFING and so I jumped up onto my knees and started giving the rock-on sign with my hands. I tried to stand up but it just didn't work out....so I spent the rest of the time trying to chase that 'I-just-surfed' feeling. I can totally see how people get addicted to it :).It was fun but it would have been a lot funner if I was in shape...