Calliefornia Love: monterey..

we headed to monterey a couple weeks ago to get some family pictures done on the beach, visit the aquarium, and celebrate rob and i's 5 year wedding anniversary!

we drove down and immediately headed to the beach to get the family pictures done with susanne. it was the only day forecasted without rain so we had to take advantage! i will post the family pictures in the next post :-) they turned out so great and really captured robert's sweet personality! here are some pictures though of the sunset that night at big sur beach. so gorgeous.

and, of course, little robert enjoying the beach!

the next day we were there, we headed to the monterey bay aquarium. rob and i went once before when i was about 31 weeks pregnant. it was so nice to get to have robert there with us this time. it is the most amazing aquarium.. i highly recommend it! here are some pictures from our day!

the kelp forest is unreal. robert was transfixed by this and just sat and watched for awhile. he would get so excited when the shark would swim by him!

here we are checking out the penguins.. my favorite. we got to watch a feeding, which was great!

next up were the beautiful coral reefs.. here are of my favorite shots of the fish and robert hanging out in the coral cave :-)

robert loved the touch pools. they really cater to kids and teach them all about tide pools and currents

here we are exploring some kelp, seaweed, sea grapes and starfish..

funny story.. this is me showing robert the starfish..

this is me asking if it is ok if he picks it up.. you'll notice that the poor guy is already out of the water..

we were promptly told no and to put the starfish pack in the water. we left the exhibit pretty quickly after that ;-)

i don't know what this exhibit was called.. but, basically, about every 30 seconds a large amount of water would rush over the glass ceiling. robert loved it! we spent a lot of time at this one!