We are back settling into our normal lives after a wonderful trip to SoCal. We spent 2 full days in San Diego, en route to Palm Springs. We enjoyed the hospitality of Jon's cousin Dee in San Diego and also visited with his friend from college, Katie, in Ocean Beach. Henry's favorite part of cousin Dee's was the view of a beautiful golf course and she helped him make his own make-shift golf course on her back patio. Leo got his first trip to the beach, since he was 10 days old, and enjoyed his first bites of sand. He didn't really like it. Henry was unstoppable on the beach, running, digging, chasing birds and jumping the waves.
From San Diego, we enjoyed an easy nap time drive after the morning at the beach, over the Santa Rosa mountains into Palm Desert, where we met up with my mom, dad and Aunt Jenny, who was visiting from LA. My mom bought the most important present of all, water wings, which Henry loved and was so thrilled, shouting, "I'm swimming! I'm swimming!" as he paddled around in the pool. My sweet Aunt Jenny prepared and organized a little Easter egg hunt around the back patio and pool at the house my parents rented. This was the first year we'd really done an Easter egg hunt for Henry and he had a blast, he especially loved all the candy inside the eggs.
My sister and her family spent the first weekend in LA taking her kids to Disneyland and then joined on Sunday evening. And we headed over to the time share we reserved through Jon's family, just down the road in Indio. We spent most days between the two places. It was nice to mellower time at my parent's place with a well heated salt water pool and hot tub and then over at the time share with two big pools, splash pad and a lazy river. We celebrated Henry's actual birthday down there and enjoyed a wonderful day playing in the water, In 'n Out Burger, naptime, followed by burritos and brownie bites for dinner.
We took a couple excursions down there too. We spent on morning at the Living Desert Museum, where Henry got to ride on a camel. We also took he Aerial Tram up to the top of a mountain from the desert, like 8,500ft (Timberline Lodge is 5,900ft to give some perspective). But mostly we just tried to soak up all the desert sunshine to last us until summer finally comes to the PNW, sometime around July 4th.
On our way out we headed to San Diego by way of LA to see some of Jon's old friends from high school. In hindsight, this wasn't the best idea because the difference between 2.5 hours and 5 hours in the car with two small children, is HUGE. But none the less, it was fun to squeeze in on last thing on our way out of town.
Vacation is always such a nice reminder of enjoying the simpler things in life. Life can move at a dizzying pace, especially in our "culture of busy" that is perpetuated. And knowing there are limited years when playing with your parents is fun or cool, it was lovely to embrace how much our boys truly need and want to be with us. And in a marriage where adult conversations are usually limited to our 15 minute drive to work together 3x a week on a regular basis, it was nice to have some time to reconnect and get grounded again. Though it is difficult to transition back to life after a vacation, I have nothing but gratitude to have the privilege to travel and soak up time with family, who I love so much.
And here are the photo highlights:
No comments:
Post a Comment