One part I miss about living abroad is the sense of adventure and everything being new. My challenge now is to find new adventures and experiences for our family to share closer to home, that we hopefully all can enjoy.

Today we discovered the monarch butterfly migration in Pismo Beach. The butterfly is an amazing creature that knows when to migrate and follows the sun and warmth of the fall equinox. They fly individually and all know to meet up at the monarch grove. So incredibly fascinating to me. There were about 10,000 butterflies there today and there were close to 80,000 over Christmas time. Some of the butterflies are tagged and one flew all the way from Arizona. Their migration path and distance would be like if we travelled around the world 11 times, based on our relative size. Five butterflies weigh about the weight of one single penny.

From the monarch grove, we walked along a path to the sand dunes on Pismo Beach.

We liked seeing the wind formations in the dry and wet sand and looked for whole sand dollars. We considered ATV riding or bike riding, but decided to come back maybe tomorrow as we arrived later than we had hoped.

The other new experience we shared was going to the Drive – In movie theater. The kids had never been and Jeff and I hadn’t been since we were kids. We picked up dinner at Chipotle and brought it with us to eat in the car. In the old days, you had a little box that clipped on your roll down window to hear e sound. Tonight we programmed our car radio to the FM 100.7 channel to hear the movie. We brought folding chairs and blankets and the kids lasted about 30 minutes in the cold before they piled back in the van.

The Lego Movie was entertaining for us all and had a great, positive message.

Of course, I loved it and could relate to the sweet, positive pink unikitty! You just have to see the movie! If you’re looking for a good old fashioned drive in theater, this one is located in San Luis Obispo and is called the Sunset Drive In. Adults are $8 and kids 5-11 are $3. Here is a link to a help review: Sunset Drive In – SLO town

I am thankful that we were outside together, soaking up the sunshine and moon shine too!

Hope you had a relaxing Sunday.