Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe, August 2020

Los Alamos Girls Trip

In July my friend Amanda convinced me to take a girls trip in Los Alamos for a night. We started our adventure in Santa Barbara at a cute little taco place called La Super-Rica Taqueria. Olive still talks about how good the tacos were! Next we stopped in Los Olivos to visit my friend Ashkans winery. Finally we settled at the Skyview Los Alamos and layed by the pool all day. We had dinner at the hotel (I was completely tipsy from all day drinking) and then back to Los Angeles in the morning. It was the perfect little getaway.

5 Months into a Pandemic

 

Wow. Where to begin? 5 months into quarantine and I remember feeling like things had to get better soon! I still can't believe that we are now 1 year in and the kids aren't in school and businesses are still shut down. We've been lucky because we have a small group of friends that we see, but it's still isolating and lonely sometimes. I know it must be difficult for the kids. No school, no having lunch with friends, no freedom really. It's the little things that make me sad. Not seeing peoples faces when I'm out and about. Not being able to hear live music. Not connecting with people. Here's hoping 2021 will change that.

Newport Beach Take 2

 

Bay Island, July 2020

Newport Beach 2020

 

Ok. So I've been going out of order a little bit. I'm going to attempt to go back and fill in the blanks of 2020. It was a shit year - so I'm blaming the disorganization of the blog on that. There will be a lot more pictures from Newport since we spent a lot of our quarantine days there.

Yosemite

 

Over the summer we went to Yosemite with my family. My stepdad and I had a bet that I couldn't hike Yosemite Falls without complaining. 25,656 steps, 11.7 miles, and 134 floors later - I got a pair of high heels.  There was no way in hell that I was going to complain. It was a looooooooooong day - but I was pretty proud of myself for getting through it!

Antelope Valley Poppies

 

When I was pregnant with Buster - we planned a full day in Antelope Valley to see the poppies. I'm not sure if anyone besides me remembers.....but it was the biggest bust. There were maybe 10 poppies in total. We drove for hours trying to search for a field filled with the gorgeous orange flowers but we had no luck. Andrew and I still laugh about it. We ended up going to some "poppie" festival where Olive rode a camel or alpaca or some sort of animal. We swore we would never go back. Well....this year we decided to try again. We figured even though we were in lockdown we could socially distance and still hopefully see some poppies. Thankfully we were in luck.

If I'm being completely honest though - the flowers are much more impressive in photographs. 

Spring Break 2020

 

I realize that Spring Break is right around the corner and I should have posted last years awhile ago....but to be honest the last 11 months have been a bit of a blur.

For Spring Break 2020 I wanted to do something fun for the kids. We couldn't travel and had been housebound for a month.  I decided to make a jar filled with fun things the kids wanted to do. We all filled out little pieces of paper and the kids picked a few out each day.

There were a lot of nerf gun fights and game nights. Sometimes both ended in tears and sometimes they didn't

There were lots and lots of movies nights.

One day we planted flowers in little pots. I got the kids little gardening sets and we put a bunch of wildflowers in multicolored pots. The kids were so good about watering them every day. And then it got super hot....and a lot of the flowers died. Let's just say the pots are no longer outside.

And one of my personal favorites was making paper airplanes, decorating them, and then seeing whose flew the farthest. Newsflash - Andrew was the winner.

We also wrote letters to family and friends.

We also did science experiments and water balloon fights. I'll just say this - one of these activities lead to a meltdown by a certain person. I'm not naming any names though....

All in all it was a really fun way to celebrate Spring Break when we couldn't go anywhere. We all took part and everyone was able to write at least one thing down they wanted to do. Andrew's favorite was when the kids made us breakfast in bed.....