Monterey Beach House

What a success! What was I worried about? After waiting for weeks on how this 3-day weekend with 21 people was going to be like, I’m happy to report that it was the best big-family weekend vacation we’ve had so far.

We stayed in a 5-bedroom 4-bath beach house near Monterey in an area called Pajaro Dunes. Our place was right on the beach with fantastic views. The weather was also phenomenal – clear sunny skies with very little wind and temperatures in the mid 70s to 80s.

This was our second big family vacation. Last year we went to Lake Tahoe and stayed in a condo for 3days also. This however was twice the size which initially worried me since the place according to the website could sleep only 10 people. HOwever with air-mattresses and a 3200+ sq ft of living space, you can get very creative. Everybody slept well except for those roomed with the Harley Davidson snorers… we’ll have to fix that for next year.

With 5 families, we had each family prepare their “special” dish for brunch and dinner for each morning and evening. This gave us Friday dinner by the Lacson Srs and Fernandez family; Saturday brunch by the Labucay Jrs; Saturday dinner by the Labucay Srs; and Sunday brunch by us – the Lacson Jrs.

Each meal was absolutely delicious.

• Friday dinner we had beef steak, BBQ chicken thighs, BBQ tilapia, chicken roast, BBQ/steamed sweet corn, BBQ eggplant, salad, leche-flan, and rice. (sorry no picture.. just use your imagination!)
• Saturday brunch we had bananna nut pancakes with canadian maple leaf syrup, bacon, omlette, bananna bread
  

• Saturday dinner we had Korean BBQ spare ribs, mixed vegetable soup, pelaguin (Guamanian Dish), BBQ sweet corn, salad, water melon, and rice.
  

• Sunday brunch we had fried rice, fried milk fish (bangus), fried tilapia, hot dogs, salty egg with tomato, langonisa with tomato, sour mangos with bago-ong, and rice.
  

With Lisa and I preparing the last dish, there was a lot of pressure on us! However sticking to classics like Lagonisa, Fried rice, Bangus kept everybody happy.

Enough about food.. the beach was absolutely fantastic. This has got to be the cleanest beach I ever seen in Northern California. The beach itself was also not very crowded.

There was also plenty of small crabs that the grandpas had fun digging up along with the kids.

These crabs
also became our dinner

So the vacation had a little bit of “Fear Factor” mixed in with it but it was all good.. just don’t ask me if I ate them.

I also got a chance to play some tennis with Chet (my bro-in-law) and Jeannette (my sis-in-law). I think I’ve caught the tennis bug as of late, thanks to my friend Henry.

Overall the weekend was a blast with great food, great house, and a wonderful family. We definitely plan on coming back next year!

For more pictures go to: Lacson Gallery