Mexico, Sayulita and Puerto Vallerta

In order to capture your interest, and make this more interesting for me, I'm going to review our trip in sections. With that said, here is what the trip looked like.

Day 1-Puerto Vallerta
Day 2-3 - Sayulita
Day 4-5 - San Pancho
Day 6- Travel to/San Blas
Day 7 - San Blas
Day 8 - Travel to/Puerto Vallerta
Day 9 -Puerto Vallerta
Day 10-11 - Sayulita

Our hotel the first night, in Puerto Vallerta, was an art-gallery as well. We woke up to a flooded tile floor from an overflowing air conditioner. The first room-flood of three for the trip

Cooling off in Puerto Vallerta- it was hot and humid!

Villa de Amor, our villa, with a private plunge pool and amazing view...



Our living area and kitchen. This area was flooded by a huge storm our first night here (room flood number 2). The lightning and thunder knocked out the power and some water in the town, and was deafening and scary. We felt lucky to witness such a powerfull tropical storm!

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Breakfast at Villa de Amor. While in Sayulita, we had some amazing Mexican food, including some mole (a Mexican cocao based sauce) that was amazing!

The sunset view from our balcony..

Our balcony overlooking the ocean...notice the amazing swell coming in...

The villa that we stayed in in Sayulita was by far the nicest place we have ever stayed in! The view was spectacular, overlooking the ocean with jungle flowers and plants everwhere. Marble and tile floors, air conditioned and open-air, yes, they pulled that off. It was HOT! The humidity is around 90 percent and it rains almost every night. We happened to be there for an amazing swell, and we got some great waves. This break doesn't get this good that often, so we really lucked out and had head-overhead high surf the whole time we were there, surfing till we were too exhausted or sunburned. Oh yea, the water was about 80 degrees... much better than the central coast!

We stayed in Villa de Amor at the end of the trip and enjoyed Sayulita again the last day. Stay tuned for the rest of our trip! (PS If R. sounds annoyed it's because he really wanted to document the amazing surf.;)

Summer "09

Me and Christine on a Big Sur girls-surf-camp trip

Christine rejoicing when the AAA tow truck finally made it up to the Plaskett Creek campground to open the car. I locked the keys inside. Ahhh, wouldn't be a Hayes adventure without something like that!


Summer 2009 Begins
Camille= on summer break
Ryan= working but has furlough days

We have been enjoying the company of our good friends and family, and I have been enjoying the surf almost daily (yea summer break)! What are the highlights so far?

Well, here goes

• Growing tomatoes, carrots, squash, hot peppers, cucumbers, string beans, cantaloupe, strawberries, sweet peas, sunflowers... (to varying degrees of success) in our garden
• Homemade Strawberry jam, Marionberry jam, peach pie, cobbler, and ice cream (fruit's in season)
  
• Ryan's building a walnut and poplar coffee table for us
  
• Seeing our friends have beautiful babies and spending time with them, Rj and Ana, Katie and Avery, Shelly n Matt, Holly n Garth
  
• Chickens bullying the cats
  
• good surf
• Big Sur trips

One thing we learned, showing up in Big Sur with no reservations in July, is not a great idea, but do-able. Christine and I went on Monday and found a spot with no problem. I really wanted Ryan to be able to go up too, so I packed the car and his stuff, and we took off after work with Lyndal, on Thursday. Of course, there were no sites available, so we decided to treck into the hills and find a spot. After we almost rolled off a cliff in our truck trying to find a campsite above the cloudline, we decided to go back down and just stay in the "overflow" spot (Hayes-adventures continued). Early the next morning, Ryan and I made an aggressive prowl and we found one spot where the family had to go home sick, and reserved it for the second night. Barely got the spot. It was worth it. Sunny all day, decent surf and good company. That was the second or third big sur trip for the summer.

Next adventure on the calendar:

• Mainland Mexico, July 22 - Aug 1st, 2009
  

The Crib is Finished!

Finally, after sporadic weekend work over the last six months, I finished the crib I had promised for RJ and Anna and delivered it this last weekend. (With a month to spare) As usual, there are definitely some things I would do differently next time in order to speed up the process. I guess you're always learning...


Here is a picture of one of the joints. The four sides of the crib and the bottom can be taken apart and moved separately.



The inside of the crib where it attaches to the legs. There are three different settings for the bottom height of the crib.



Here she is. All oak, with the exception of the pegs, which are mahogany. This finish is a mixture of walnut oil and beeswax. And there are no screws, nails or glue holding it all together. Probably wouldn't build it that way again, but it was a great learning experience.

The Big Chop

Spur of the moment haircut and and Vanessa's sleepover/birthday party, crazy times in the Hayes household.

My hair has never been this short, well, except for when I was 2, as Dr. Walker reminded me. Chopped it all off.

Playing with fire at the birthday party.

Terra transformed the girls into superheros, here is Spiderwoman...!

Adventures in SLO

Big Sur, triathalon, fly fishing trips to the cabin, hanging out with Nathan and Vanessa, Mom and Dad Hayes came down with Grandma Lois, hanging out with Lyndal, Aunty Julie's birthday, visiting Camille's grandpa, gardening, working in the woodshop, surfing, teaching, engineering... always an adventure here in San Luis.

Today's Report: Trouble had just barely adjusted to her new outside life (since we realized that she really is "trouble"in the house) when the Walkers got two new kittens. Add the little lab puppy they brought home today, and we really have a yard full of life! Here's the count, 7 chickens, Maggie (old, loving, german shepard mix), Deuce (the Walker's "special"dog), Pearl and Pig (the two cats), Trouble (our cat-kitten), now add the two new kittens and the new puppy, that makes 15 animals runnin around in the yard at one time! You can imagine the shows they put on.

Past Report: Well, a lot has been happening around here, so in addition to that brief summary, here are a few pics to fill in some of the gaps!

The Animal Farm

Just a few of us here...




The newest addition, 6 week old lab puppy...

Meet the kittens (black) Olive and (orange) Sampson. Trouble is getting used to them slowly...



Halloween

To prevent any rumors from being spread, Camille is a pirate, and Ryan is a 70's tennis player, and yes, I assure you, this was for Halloween.



Visiting Grandpa with the Cousins

Grandpa Freitas just had hip surgery here, but now he is home and doing well.



Hanging out with Nathan and Vanessa

Vanessa's cheerleader performance!

Out on the farm...

Camping trip in Big Sur with Tim and Debra.

The surf was horrible, but good friends and a rousing game of croquette on a hill can cure anything!

Kristin and Nick got married!!

Jessica, Megan, Mr. Spivey, and Camille - We love him!

Kristin's wedding and bachlorette party!! Just getting started...

Here's "Trouble"

We've officially adopted a kitten from the Humane Society, and named her Trouble. Adopting is quite a process, we had no idea. Camille was ready to bring her home, but Ryan had to come to the shelter and "meet" her before we could do the adoption papers, you know, Society protocol.
She's a cuddler, but quite vicious as well. Hopefully she'll be a great hunter.

Like a little lion, look at her face, it's intense!





Trouble, in full cuddle mode- although she's on Camille's lap, we think she prefers Ryan. She consistently chooses him over Camille.

Backpacking Mineral King/Whitney

June 27-July 4, 2008
Leaving from Mineral King, we did a beautiful 7 day hike through Sequoia Kings Canyon and Inyo National Park. We traversed through the high sierras down to the Kern River, trout fishing, hot tubbing and summited Mt. Whitney. We did 107 miles, with 32,000 feet of elevation change. Needless to say, Camille was hurting the first three days. However, day four was our "rest day" and we didn't have to carry our packs (although we did hike Whitney that day), so from then on Camille felt much better, and Ryan, as usual, was full of energy the entire trip.

Lunch Break

First day, Franklin Lakes

First night, Forester Lake

Amazing personal hot tub right on the Kern River. Ryan caught some big trout and we had a few great dinners!!

River Crossing, there was a lot of water on the entire trip, we had some shoeless crossings, balancing on logs to cross, and rock-hop crossings, but managed to avoid any serious spills.

The top of Mt. Whitney, 14,492 feet, day 4 (halfway through the trip)

Yep, those are mosquitos. Some places were worse than others, and a few nights they were like clouds in the air...hungry little buggers.