Spencer! Lucas! - San Diego 2012

Early July marked time for us to head down to San Diego for our annual visit to the Westbrook family. Despite their sibling-like squabbles, Smunch and Mam never seem to get enough of their cousins. It's nice to see because I'm never really done spending time with my sister (Aunt Karen!) either.

This year's theme? Water. Then again, given the opportunity. I think my kids would have a water theme every single day of the year. This time, they had to settle for every day of the trip instead. So Monday...

we went to the swimming pool shortly after arriving. Smunch and Mam showed off their comfort in the water.

Although, frankly, they can't compete with Spencer! for pure fearlessness. This kid is only six.

They stayed in the pool so long that Aunt Karen had to take Lucas! home for a nap.

Then there was this, at Santee Lakes:

More of the same at 4S Ranch, where I took no pictures. And this on our last day:

I don't know why the beach always seems to get saved 'til our last day. It's kind of a production to get out there, but I think the kids would be happy to be there all day every day. Somewhere in there, we also visited the Flying Leathernecks Aviation Museum at Miramar. Smunch said he didn't want to go, but wanted to stay the longest. Of course. Mam enjoyed it too, to my surprise.

I don't know why I find it so amusing to be corrected by my 10-year-old. "Do you want to go take a look at the tanks?" I asked. "Mom, those are tactical vehicles," he replied in exasperation. (shrug) Look like tanks to me, but what do I know?

Of course, July 4th was thrown in there too. We opted for a short trip to Poway during the day to check out their Independence Day activities. It was a quaint and fun way to spend a few hours after an awesome pancake breakfast at Aunt Karen's house. The park has an old-timey steam train that was up and running. Every other train ride included a mock gun-fight.

And every hour, they set off a canon, just for fun. There was live music, there were snow cones and watermelon and barbeque. The boys all took a ride on the train with Aunt Karen.

It was a long wait for the train and Mam wasn't up for that, so I took her for some watermelon and a long wait to have her face painted instead.

The trip was a great success. Everyone went back happy with their day, especially after some snow cones.

I'd hoped to get some tickets to watch San Diego's "Big Bay Boom" firework show from the deck of the USS Midway, but by the time we arrived in San Diego, the tickets were sold out. Just as well. San Diego's fireworks show was probably the biggest fiasco it'd ever been. It made national news, it was so catastrophic. At least no one was hurt.

Instead, we took the mellower route of watching fireworks local to Aunt Karen from a nearby elementary school. The kids played with (er, ehm) sparklers:

and played catch while they were waiting. There was plenty of room.

Maybe the show wasn't quite as spectacular as what folks should have seen from the deck of the Midway, but I suspect it was a lot more fun that what they actually saw.

And that made our holiday a success.

Many thanks to Uncle David for taking all four kids for an evening and letting Aunt Karen and me go out for a terrific dinner. We got to enjoy a rare, great conversation and for a change, almost got to feel like grownups!

Boom!

You would think that Christmas was on the 4th of July if you saw my children on the morning of Independence Day. This is really one of their very favorite holidays. I'm not sure they really care about the nation's birthday or our independence from British rule. It's all about the fireworks. It seems so unfair that they have to wait until dark, but then, it makes for a grand finale to the day.

This year was a little bit different because my cousin was visiting from Texas. After a nice breakfast of bagels, muffins and varieties of Starbucks, followed by a significant amount of lolling around my parents' house, we finally packed up some food and headed to a local winery for a picnic.Unfortunately, Daddy was feeling particularly ill, so I drove him home before we left on our adventures.The rest of us had a lovely, if slightly too warm, time at the winery. My cousin's husband treated us to a bottle of rosé and we took a short walk to "the pond". Mam was sporting her Independence Day best. And Smunch (pictured here with my cousin) was looking pretty festive too. At this time of year, the pond is little more than a few large puddles among the reeds. It turns out that the reeds were alive with tiny little frogs, each about the size of a thumbnail. I loved watching them jump around. They were fast and hard to photograph, so this is the best I did.And, like all good ponds, there were a couple of mother ducks overseeing a group of teenager-y ducklings. They looked so picturesque among the reeds and the pond weeds that were blooming with pink flowers.We also spotted this cool, red dragonfly.We walked back to the car and parted ways to get ready for the neighborhood block party on our street. Our block party is a really fun, yearly event where we all set up tables in the middle of the street, barbeque, make ice cream and supply potluck dishes to share. Both my parents and my cousins joined us for a mellow evening of food and company. I didn't bring my camera. Just as well. I could barely roll my own bloated body home, much less anything additional.

My cousin and her husband decided to forgo the fireworks, instead watching them on TV while the rest of the family headed to our oldest fireworks-viewing haunt to wait for the pyrotechnics to start.

Turns out, as the kids get older, this whole thing gets much easier and more tolerable. They happily played several hands of Uno with us, begging for another one as soon as the last one was done.As has been the case for the last couple of years, there were glowsticks, but we didn't use so many this year with all that card playing.I don't remember exactly what was going on when I took this picture. I just liked the backlighting on Mam's hair. It cracks me up though.Finally, the show started. I'd forgotten how rewarding it is to drag the kids out to the park. They have such a great time watching fireworks, commenting, squealing, exclaiming over their favorites. I annoyed people by trying to capture their reaction. This isn't a great photo, but I think it captured them rather well.We all had a really nice time, well worth the crabby Smunch we had this morning. I don't think I'll tell them they'll get to see plenty of fireworks at Disney World this summer. I can't wait to see the look on their faces when they just start exploding overhead.

The magic of glow bracelets

I admit I find glow sticks a little disturbing. I mean, stuff isn't supposed to glow. It doesn't stop me from getting the kids the occasional glow stick though...because the look of bliss on their little neon-lit faces is just so darned cute. They rarely get to stay up late enough that it's dark enough for anything to really glow. And it's always a long wait for the fireworks to begin on the 4th of July, so I didn't mind at all that my mom had gone out and bought a 50-count tube of glow bracelets for the kids to play with. Of course, it turned out that all of us were the kids and we all had a great time. It made for some fun photos too...
This particular package also came with connectors, so Grandpa made this cool little toy, which also made for cool photos.Twirling your chain of bracelets is also fun...although not really quite as fun as the main event.For anyone who just must have their own package of glow sticks (we're taking some camping), these tubes were on sale at Diddams for $3.99 (regularly $9.99). Worth every penny and more!

Our 4th of July

It's only been since we moved to our current house that I've felt like we're really living the American Dream. And nothing illustrates that like our neighborhood on Independence Day. It's kind of surreal to have our own little slice of Americana, right here on our own street. Each year, our little cul-de-sac has a block party. We all bring our own meat to barbeque...although a lot of sharing goes on...and we bring something to share. This year, I brought fresh squeezed lemonade and a rather patriotic spinach, strawberry, and blueberry salad with feta cheese.

Our neighbor, Bob, introduced the kids to making ice cream the old-fashioned way...in a hand-cranked ice cream freezer. As you can see, they were enthralled! Since it's a pretty laid back affair, I also invited Kirsten, my friend since kindergarten and maid of honor in our wedding. The kids had a great time hanging out with her too!

We left the block party a little early for our annual pilgrammage to Cupertino for their fireworks display. We arrived just before dark and had about an hour to wait. The kids passed the time by running around like maniacs in their pajamas. Smunch waits for this night for the entire year. Sometimes I'm not sure that even Christmas compares to fireworks in his mind.


Smunch and Mam were both absolutely thrilled with the show. They both spent the entire time with wide eyes, exclaiming about the size and colors and noises. Interestingly, Smunch was completely fluent the entire time. We've noticed that's usually the case when he's excited and speaking almost accidentally.

It was a fun night and after all the food, racing around and excitement of fireworks, neither of the kids made it home awake. It was the easiest bedtime we've had in ages!