Santa Barbara Weekend

As a (very) early birthday present, Andrew got me tickets to see Jim Gaffigan in Santa Barbara. If you haven't heard of Jim Gaffigan, he's a clean comedian who is hilarious and talks a lot about food. He has a few specials on Netflix which I recommend checking out.

As we started planning our weekend trip to Santa Barbara, we invited our friends Brad and Haley, not really expecting for them to be able to come, but they were totally down. Technically Brad is my sister-in-law's lifelong friend so Andrew has always known Brad and I've known him since I married into the family. He was also the sole male on our girls trip to London/Paris. He recently got married to Haley who we love. They were in California a few months back and the kids and I helped them get into the Disneyland parking garage with our annual passes. We hung out with them the next day as well at the beach and at our house. The kids love them and it was fun to hang out with them as married couple friends (finding married couple friends is hard). So inviting to them to join us in Santa Barbara seemed like a great idea.

They flew in from Seattle and then we drove to our Airbnb in Santa Barbara. The Airbnb was way nicer than we expected and had a huge backyard for the kids to play in. That first night there we walked to the nearby beach. It was quite a longer trek than I expected and the beach wasn't the best, but there was no one else on it and Taylor still had fun digging in the sand. After spending the evening at the beach, we went out to eat at a delicious Mexican restaurant.

The next day we went to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. I always love natural museums and so do the kids. You can't go wrong with lots of animals. Our admission even included a butterfly exhibit which I was not expecting.

Once we finished at the museum, we headed to downtown Santa Barbara for lunch and a little wandering.

That night was the Jim Gaffigan show. Brad and Haley were kind enough to watch the kids for us at the Airbnb so we could go. The show was hilarious and it was in a really neat outside venue. This is what we came home to:

The next day, we watched the first session of Sunday General Conference than packed up and headed home. Brad and Haley hung out with us until it was time for their flight, and honestly, it was not enough time - I wish they were able to stay with us longer. Thanks Brad and Haley for joining us on our quick, weekend trip!