Kaniz & Abbas +2

Can you believe it's taken me three posts to get through our CA trip? So where was I...?  Yes, so after Hearst Castle, the plan was to spend the next night in Santa Barbara. After a relatively uneventful drive (except for lunch at a dumpy dive where we had a run-in with a crazy lady), we got to SB and checked into our hotel late afternoon. Santa Barbara seemed to be very much a college town, or at least that was the impression I got from walking the main shopping strip.  The next day, we continued our drive down Route 1, which had now turned into the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). The drive here wasn't as scenic as it was earlier in the trip - either that, or you just get spoiled looking at the ocean so much. We stopped for lunch in Malibu and then continued on to Santa Monica. Our plan was to have dinner in Santa Monica with a couple of dear friends, Preeti and Siva, who've recently made the move from NYC to LA. So, naturally, we went to another Mexican restaurant.. dinner w...

Kaniz and I have done the SF to LA roadtrip a few times, but we've always taken the inland route and never tried driving all the way down the coast.. so we figured it was about time. We decided to take our time driving down to LA, with an overnight stop in Cambria (a town near Hearst Castle ) and a night in Santa Barbara. We left Fremont a little later than we were hoping, and by the time we stopped for lunch in a little town called Pacific Grove (near Monterey/Carmel), it was already 2:30pm. The drive down the coast was postcard-perfect, but unfortunately it got dark midway and driving down a very dark, very curvy, very foggy, cliff-hugging road wasn't as much fun as I'd imagined. Mental note for next time - get on the road early! Hearst Castle the next day was great - most of the pictures from this set are from our tour of the castle grounds. Having learnt our lesson from the day before, we got on the road right away (pictures to follow)... in the meantime, here are the p...

I know I've got some more pictures from our California trip left to post, but I thought I'd share some exciting news with you... Samarah decided to wait till we got back from our trip to hit a few exciting milestones.. drum roll please! Watch where you put those fingers! Samarah sprouted two teeth overnight! Where'd mommy and daddy go? Samarah's starting to develop a little bit of separation anxiety, and even though it's hard to admit, she is showing a preference for her mommy. The other day she almost jumped from my arms to Kaniz's! I can't help but feel a little sad about this, although I'm told that I'll get over this quickly. Get me a GPS! Our little girl is on the move! She's figured out how to crawl (backwards).. plus she's rolling over and even somersaulting (kind of).. all this basically means that we can no longer leave Samarah unattended on our bed (or anywhere for that matter). We managed to capture the first few crawling attemp...

Can you believe it? Kaniz and I both had our reservations about the possibility of an Obama victory, but Samarah knew it all along (even when she was just a +1 back in February!). Let's just hope that Barack is able to deliver on his message of change and hope - America (and the world) needs it. Congrats to everyone who voted!

Did we ever mention how much we enjoy visiting California? Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, so Kaniz, Samarah and I are headed back to Toronto on an early flight tomorrow morning. As expected, Samarah did really well the entire trip. She was perfect on the plane, perfect in the car on our drive down the coast and adjusted to the time difference right away. We landed at SFO last Saturday and after a 90-minute wait at the car rental place, we headed down to Fremont, where my cousin Ambreen had graciously offered up her place for us to stay. The next day, we went over to San Jose to visit my friend John Nack, his wife Margot and their adorable son Finn (who's two weeks older than Samarah). Even though we've been keeping up to date with Finn's antics through his blog , it was so much fun to meet him in person. John & Margot have a fabulous home (which Kaniz is still talking about), fully appointed with every toy Samarah would want, and to top it off, Marg...