Author: Breana Tran Page 1 of 14

First road trip in the van! It was a fun-filled highlights tour taking 9 days to explore Bend, Crater Lake National Park, Redwoods National Park, Burney Falls State Park, and Lassen National Park. Breana did a two day mountain bike skills clinic from Phil’s Trailhead in Bend while Du and Cato got to explore around town. Crater Lake was beautiful and Cato got to throw some snow balls, but most of the park was still closed for the season. Redwoods was definitely a highlight with the “Trees of Mystery” experience topping the cake (canopy walks and gondolas included!). We even saw two herds of Roosevelt Elk along the road in the park! Burney Falls was every bit as beautiful as advertised, and it was quite enjoyable relaxing in the park during off season when it was nice and peacefully quiet. Unfortunately, Lassen was mostly still closed for the winter season so was a bit of a disappointment (not much to do or see, but Cato still enjoyed getting to play in a creek!). The van performed its function well, but as with all hobbies, still needs some more work to get it dialed in.

It was a little cold, wet, and muddy without any wildflowers or stars, but the clouds were beautiful and we got to use the truck awning side walls for the first time!

Suzanne and Zihla came down for the weekend to visit, so we enjoyed strolling around down town SLO (including some shopping), going out for drinks at Cielo, Sunday brunch at Novo, Sycamore Hot Springs, and Avila Valley Barn. We also tested the range on Zihlas car… there is, in fact, at least 3 miles of gas left after the car reads empty 😳

Fun 5 day visit with the grandparents, Uncle Dee, and Cousin Nolan. Daily outings included an indoor playground, Little Tykes rope course at Natural Bridge Caverns (no cave tour), Yanaguana Gardens playground, LegoLand Discovery at the mall, and the Doseum Children’s Museum. Cato was determined to enjoy the pool, but it was a little too cold to stay in for long.

For this month’s project, Cato got to make a barn planter for some tomatoes!

Mom got to help with wrangling 21 preschoolers for an Easter egg hunt at school…quite the exercise in herding cats, lol. While the bunny was hiding eggs outside, Ms. Kimberly read themed stories inside (with curtains drawn).

Lovely morning outing to Bunny Wall on Bishops Peak with Clay and Sierra. Cato climbed higher than he’s ever been, but he and Sierra were more interested in climbing the tree than rock. Du and Clay put up 3 different routes for everyone to play on.

What an amazing trip! It was definitely an action packed, family adventure with Du, Breana, Cato, Grandma & Grandpa Dixon, and Uncle Colby. If nothing else, just the air travel between SLO and Fort Lauderdale (both directions) was an epic marathon (we ran into everything from thunder storm ground stops, missing crew, mechanical, missed connections, changed airports, and tarmac under construction…we seriously weren’t sure that we’d make it to the boat in time or what day we’d even get home).

Once we got on the boat, however, everything smoothed out pretty nicely. This was our first cruise with Royal Caribbean (Oasis of the Seas) and it was an interesting change from Princess…if nothing else, it was really fun being on a family-focused boat. Soooo many different fun activities: carousel rides, pirate parades, water & ice skating shows, watching a production of CATS, FlowRider boarding, rock climbing, hunting for ducks, sliding down The Abyss, and many, many iterations of water slides and mini-golf.

Ports of call included Aruba, Curacao, and CocoCay in The Bahamas. On Aruba, Dave & Barb did a bus tour in the morning while Colby & Du did a UTV tour (Cato & Breana relaxed on the boat for the morning). Then in the afternoon, Breana & Cato joined Du & Colby at the beach for some fun in the sun and sand followed by an amazing dinner on the jetty over the water. On Curacao, Colby & Breana did a lovely 2 tank shore dive at Tug Boat Beach (Du was supposed to join, but ended up quarantined for 24hrs due to an upset stomach). At the final stop on CocoCay, everyone got to hang out on the island for one final day in the sun and sand: Cato did laps on the water slides until he crashed hard and needed to go back to the boat with Mom for nap, Du & Colby did a 1 tank shore dive, and Dave & Barbara explored and snorkeled.

Wonderful outing for our first real family bike ride with Cato on his own pedal bike! As a group, we cruised out the 2.5 miles to Avila, and then Cato got to have fun at the playground with Dad while Mom biked back to pick up the car. Cato is really cruising now on his bike, but we do still need to learn how the breaks work (the was a bit of a flying superman incident when he got going too fast downhill and then launched off his bike, thankfully into relatively soft grass).