Happy Friday, friends! I hope it's been a great week for you. We are just back from our sunny California trip and I'm already missing that warmer weather and beautiful scenery. We've had a pretty mild winter, for the most part, but there is something so special about visiting a warmer place and being able to escape the cold for a bit. I have some fun posts coming up about our time in Disneyland, some of my favorite things to do in San Diego, and also essentials when traveling with children. If there's anything specific you'd like me to focus on in any of them, you can send me an email or drop it in the comments. Since we took advantage of exploring several different areas in the golden state, I figured I would highlight them here.
Let's get to those favorites...
BEACH TIME:
surprise, surprise! Ahh the beach. If you're newer around here, then you will quickly learn the beach is our happy place. We have big hopeful dreams of owning a beach house and possibly even living bi-coastal one day. It's nice to dream, hope, and pray. We'll see what happens later on down the road. We had the chance to visit beaches in both Newport and San Diego and I love them both for different reasons. Let me put it this way, as long as my boys are near the water, they're happy. What I also really loved about this trip was the refreshing feeling of slowing down, relaxing, and living in the moment. After all, isn't that what vacationing is all about?
FAMILY TIME:
the focus of our trip was to spend time with family, and aside from all the other fun we had, that's exactly what we did. Eric is one of three boys, and his two brothers live in San Diego. I mean, I can't really complain because his brothers are in Cali and now two of my brothers are in Florida, so we have some pretty awesome spots to visit. One of my brother in-laws had their first baby two months ago and we were all sooooo excited to meet him! You guys, I'm now an Aunt! Oh that little squish was giving me all the baby feels. He is just so precious and it was hard leaving him. I'm the oldest of five, and my husband is one of three, so we have a larger family between the two of us, and someone, finally someone else had a baby! We are so happy for our boys to have a cousin and how cool it's another little dude. Yup, the boys run strong in our families. My boys are obsessed with their uncles and love being with them. The memories they created were so special.
JOSHUA TREE-DESERT ADVENTURE:
talk about opposites here. We had the chance to lay seaside and then drive about 2 hours (without traffic that is) and head to the desert. Joshua Tree has become a trendy and popular place to visit so of course visiting was no exception for us. The fun part about Joshua Tree is, my brother in-law has 15 acres there that he is in the works of developing a really cool structure for. We're excited to come back out and see the progress and eventually spend even more time there. We've driven through the desert from Las Vegas to Cali, but it was dark and I really didn't get a chance to take it all in. Wow, Joshua Tree was so cool and also met a lot of my stereotype ideas I had in my mind. It was certainly interesting to see the locals that live there full time, the stores that are around, and the feeling of kind if being in the mild of nowhere. There are a lot of dirt roads, cactus and joshua trees everywhere, and some of the biggest tumbleweeds I have ever seen!
If you tuned into my stories (always a huge thank you for checking out our crazy) then you might have seen A drew an adorable little map and took me on a treasure hunt, the boys found some "treasures", and even the shell of a snake egg. They found a desert chinchilla (not sure if that's really a thing but that's what they were calling it), we heard coyotes howling at dusk, saw jackrabbits darting out, and caught a beautiful sunset that pictures don't even give it justice.
DISNEYLAND:
i shared last week that we got to celebrate Valentine's Day at one of the most magical places around. We all had such a great time and got to do so many things while we were there. It felt like it was such a successful trip and we've been reminiscing about so many memories for our visit. A missed out on being able to ride the incredicoaster by two inches so he's already talking about going on it the next time we go back and all the fun things we did ride on.
LOCAL FAVORITES:
there is so much to do in southern california that it feels impossible to be board. Between our afternoons on the beach, eating at local restaurants, shopping, and exploring the parks, we took it all in. I'm happy to say there were very minimal tantrums (I can think of two, and for a 9 day trip i'd say that's a huge win) and a lot more smiles than anything else.
I hope everyone has a great weekend!
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