California Girls trip 2009

Ahhhhh...warm sun, ocean air, bike riding on the boardwalk and SAND EVERYWHERE...in EVERY CREVACE, in your TOES, in your Hair, stuck to your SCALP, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning it out of my kids' bottoms for years to come!




Every year we go to the tide pools...its beautiful, incredible, and SUCH A FREAKING HIKE TO GET DOWN TO THEM! It would be hard to truck down it yourself, but add being the pack mule that has to haul everything down to the area not to mention the HORRIFIC and TERRIFYING trip back! It is wicked steep and windy. The kids love it and you tend to forget the monster of a hill that it is, so you continue to go back every year! This is Heather with her two girls and her friend Melissa who joined us and her little two...all in all we hauled two 5-year olds, one 3-year old, three 2-yr olds, one 1-yr old, and one 8-month old...yup thats 8 kids under 5. CAOS!

Yes...that would be my 3-yr old DELIGHTFULLY skipping naked up that nasty hill and since I'm almost to the top and DYING from pushing all our crap along with my two girls in the massive and extremely heavy double stroller, I couldn't care less

...until I see all the people ready to nominate me mother of the year. Connor wasn't quite listening when I asked him to cover his stuff with the towel. And I was still trying to catch my breath so we just let it be.

My girls spent a lot of time being naked at the beach, lets be honest....its so much easier to just let them be free as a bird and get the whole beach in every crack and crevace, than prying off their sandy swimsuit and diaper while STILL having to clean out the sand from every crack and crevace.





Which because of this, I spent much of my time doing this....load 'em all in and just do the assembly line washing.


But wasn't it worth it?





This year, Heather introduced us to a whole new world of checking out what the fisherman may have caught on the pier...or as she calls them, finding "novelty items." Newport has many piers I'm sure, this one had a lot of fisherman that came for the fun and sport, others to catch what they could sell. They often times catch these novelty items but since they're not what they're after, they just set them aside. I don't know if they throw them in after or what, but these poor things just sit on the dock. One of these days, a fisherman pulled up a stingray and before Belle could get a real good look threw it back. So when he pulled up a huge Macrol (I know I'm not spelling that right, they're in the tuna family...sounds like the term 'Holy Macrol'...I know some of you know how to spell it and are laughing at me right now, thats ok....I'm over it!), which is what all the fisherman are fishing for, Belle ran over and threw that one back. She wasn't going to miss her chance....I'm sure the guy wasn't pleased to say the least. BUT thats not to say that we came back empty handed. Heather and Belle found this LIVE octopus and Connor and I found this foot-long starfish. We took pictures then put them back



We usually find the time to go to the aquarium down to long beach


And of course when you're trying to get a "mom wants a good picture with all her kids so she can blog it later" picture, all we got was Lauren

And my face after none of my kids want a "mom wants a good picture with all her kids so she can blog it later" picture and leave me hanging, looking like an idiot. Thanks Annie for capturing it

Probably one of my highlights would have to be the shoe incident. When we went to the tidepools (you know the nasty hill ones) I had taken off my shoes and forgot them since I CAN'T STAND wearing sandy flip flops and usually just put them in my bag for later. I was SOOOOO bummed. They were my favorite shoes, you know the ones that you wear SO much that they literally form to your feet? They were the best purchase I made when Jim and I went on the cruise with Scott, Misty, and Michael Johnson.. I was so so bummed when I realized it after we had gotten home and if you saw the tide come in you'd know that they were long gone, even if I wanted to drive all the way back and hike back down that ugly hill. Well when Connor and I got the big ole starfish, we figured the tide pools were the best place to set him free (Connor said thats where Patrick's-the starfish from Spongebob-lived and he missed her.) But since this was 2 days and already went to Target and bought me some good for now flip flops, I didn't expect any miracles. We get down there and on the other side of the beach by the rocks was one of them. I was thrilled and thoroughly entertained to find it, thinking that was the end of it....after we were done and were packed up to leave, Annie found the other on the opposite side of the beach floating in the lagoon! Two days and however many tides came in later!


One of our favorite pass times at the anuual girl trip is the biking. The condo we always rent is RIGHT on the beach, seperated by a bike path that runs all the way up and down Newport beach. So...its fun to load 'em all up and go for bike rides. We usually go to one of the parks and play for a bit, then ride home. Lauren has been GREAT at potty training. She's finally to where she goes when she needs to and I can't remember when she had an accident last. However...she hasn't quite learned about the things she can't do even though Connor can. Different plumbing. You can't really fault her when she pulled her pants down in the middle of the playground...front row seats for the hundreds of people going up and down the bike path and pee like Connor. Unfortunately because of the different plumbing it obviously soaked her pants below.


So do you call it a day and go home? NO! I've already lost the running for mother of the year a number of times this week, we'll just let her play naked!





And after days like that...you just need some girly masks!

All in all, a little traumatic with Lilly getting the worst croop she's had and having to get some last minute steroids at the pharmacy (she was much better after that!) and poor Ian's eardrum bursting resulting in tons of pain for him and even more puss coming out of his ear and down his face resulting in no more beach time....it was a fun trip, but its always good to be home. I can't remember a time I missed Jim so much. I felt like I was dating him again and seeing him after we'd both gone home (I was in Vegas and he was in Cedar) except I know I was never as excited as I was when I saw him step out of the garage. Theres something about coming home to your best friend, knowing thats where you were always meant to be that feels so good....feels like home.