Devin's and Eli's Day Out

Devin and Eli have been friends since, well, birth. Eli's family moved to San Diego the summer before Devin and Eli were born. Devin was born Sept. 14, and Eli was born exactly 3 months later on Dec. 14. They have been great little buddies all these years. We wanted to go explore a new park, so we invited Eli to go with us. It turned into quite a fun day.

We started off at Olympus Park in Encinitas. It is a tiered neighborhood park and is quite popular. We were going to ride bikes in the skate area, but there were a lot of skaters. They played on the playground, rode down the zipline, and since we didn't have any cardboard, slid down the hill on their bums.

When they finished there, we made a fun stop at Sidecar Donuts in Del Mar. I've heard raves about these donuts, but this was our first time there.  We tried out a few different flavors, and it was a fun treat.

Our next stop was the Pump Track in Carmel Valley. Jared visits here with friends often to skateboard. Devin and Eli gave a little try riding bikes on the track, but they ended up preferring to play on the playground. They had fun playing 'the ground is lava' and climbing all over the playground. 

We came back to our house and had lunch and played for a couple of hours here. It was such a fun day. It reminded me of when my kids were little, and we'd just go out adventuring. And I love that Devin and Eli have such a good friendship and so much fun together. And Jared was awesome to hang out with me on this adventure. :)

Celebrating Jesse - Birthday and Father's Day

June is our month to celebrate Jesse extra specially. His birthday is at the beginning of June. I had a meeting the night of his birthday, so we didn't get a lot of celebrating in. He went to sushi with Jared that day. I made a cake to celebrate him at the meeting. We had just come back from camping, so we didn't really plan out something to do as a family to celebrate. So his birthday was fairly mellow.

 

We spent more time celebrating closer to Father's Day. I heard of a restaurant in Little Italy that isn't Italian... it's an Asian sushi, ramen, and boa bun place. Jesse loves that kind of food. So we surprised him going to Harumama's the night before Father's Day. He loved it. He had some ramen. Jared tried a poke bowl. We ordered some sushi to share around. And then we got the most adorable boa buns we've ever seen. They had savory ones that we ordered with chicken and broccoli, BBQ beef, and pork. Then we got some sweet buns with nutella and cinnamon in them. They were so good and so fun.

For Father's Day, I made him breakfast taquitos with lime chipotle dip. We had church, like we always do on Sundays. But this was exciting because it was our first INDOOR church since November, but it was also regular 2-hour church and no masks required! Wow. 15 months since we've had mostly normal church. It felt great. It was really the first time we've met almost fully as a new ward since we were created! So wonderful.

For dinner we had fajitas and Mexican corn salad and Spanish rice. And dessert was strawberry-lime pound cake with coconut whipped cream. Jesse got a good nap. And we got to talk to our favorite missionary for Father's Day. It was a great time to celebrate Jesse, the Dad of our family. We love him so much.

Full Summer Mode

We quickly jumped into full summer mode. The public schools didn't get out for a few weeks after us, so we took advantage of time we had to bet out before the crowds.

Before COVID, Devin was too short to go on the Manta roller coaster at Sea World. But during COVID, he grew tall enough to go, but Sea World was closed. And then when it opened, roller coasters weren't open. They finally started opening them, but Manta was taking forever to open again! It finally opened, and we hurried on over for some afternoon fun and Devin's first real roller coaster ride.

It was more intense than I remembered, and I was worried that maybe he would be freaked out by it. But he said he hung on tight and had a lot of fun. 

One thing I want to do this summer is take Devin to some new places for his age level. He is growing up doing a lot of things his big brothers are doing. But I want to be sure to give him experiences just for him too. I heard about a neighborhood dirt bike park and took him over one morning. He was nervous at first and didn't think he could do it. But he got going and got the hang of it and had a great time!

Zach has been asking to go to the Safari Park for a while. We ventured out and loved being back. The Africa Tram wasn't open quite yet, but it will be soon.  So we'll be back.

After a fun time at the Safari Park, we bought some farm fresh strawberries from a stand, got some frozen yogurt, and cruised around Barnes & Noble looking at books. Such a fun day.  Loving the carefree feel of summer.

My sister and her husband brought their two oldest daughters from Vegas for a beachy San Diego weekend. Their oldest daughter graduated from high school, so they wanted to give her a little trip. She chose to come to San Diego. She and Jared are great friends, and she wanted to hang out with him. They went to the beach, had sushi, and one afternoon/evening I joined them at the beach and Roberto's taco shop for dinner and Handel's ice cream so I could visit with my sister.  It was great to see them!

Jesse got me an electric bike! He ordered it a year ago as a kickstarter, and it finally came in. I had no idea. It's called The Babymaker - not sure why! But we had a bike date to try it out. He is such an avid biker, it's hard to have biking dates because I can't keep up with him. We rode down to Del Mar and ate at Snooze AM Eatery for some breakfast and then down to the beach before heading home. The bike worked great and I got the hang of it. It's nice because I can ride it like a regular bike and get some exercise, but when I get tired or can't keep up with Jesse, I just push the button to up the electric mode and keep pedaling and it propels me forward without much effort from me. We went up one long hill on the way home, and I just put it in the electric mode and passed all the other bikers! Ha! It's pretty fun!

I've been having the kids choose meals they want to make and make dinner for us during the week. Branden was up first wanting to make quiche. He has been studying French and wanted to make a French food. He found the recipe and made it all by himself.

Zach made fettuccine alfredo one night, which was delicious. And Jared made runzas, which is like a ground beef and cabbage hot pocket. Jesse grew up in Nebraska where they have a fast food place that sells runzas. So we make them. So far so good with the cooking!

Summer also means lots of time at the beach. Including lovely sunset evenings for walks. So nice. We are loving summer!

Wrapping up our Commonwealth School Year

What a year for our commonwealth homeschool group!  We finished off with a bang. We met up and spent the morning doing a service project. The family whose home we met at almost all year had a neighbor down the street whose wife died not too long ago and he is on dialysis. He will be selling his home, but it needed a lottttt of work done. So we volunteered the time of our commonwealth to help.  We had a group inside the home cleaning bathrooms, washing windows, vacuuming, organizing.  And a group outside clearing out the yard, putting scrap, garbage, wood pieces, etc. in a huge pile, the mowing, clearing out the sheds, raking and bagging leaves, laying out wood chips, trimming hedges, and more.

We worked for about 3 hours, and it was incredible how much work got done. I was so proud of these kids for working so hard and contributing so much to someone in need. It was so great to have a service project for a large group where there was enough for everyone to keep busy the whole time. They were amazing.

Then we went back to the house for lunch and a swim party to celebrate our fabulous year. 

The following week we had our end-of-year parent meeting. This was the meeting where I would be passing the torch on to the next chairperson for this next year. I had a lot of mixed feelings going into this meeting. It has been such a crazy year to be the chair of our group. It feels like 2 years instead of 1 with how many big decisions and challenging situations we had this year.  I am tired. And I definitely am glad to pass on this responsibility to another mom.  But, it's also hard because it's been such a big part of my life and focus. I am so thankful for the wonderful people I work with and the amazing experiences we had this year. Despite all of the challenges, we had so many miracles, and so many great experiences with moms and families working hard for our community. We were so blessed. I love our homeschool group. I have loved this year. I have loved serving and working hard for this community. It has been amazing.

The parent meeting went well. It was Jesse's birthday, so I made a cake and we sang to him. I cried a little sharing my feelings about the year. And the new board was put in place.  They will be great. I'm looking forward to continuing to support the community but with less responsibility, so I can focus on some other things at home!

Camping at Bass Lake

Since we got out of school at the end of May, we decided to get in a camping trip before the summer rush. At first I looked at some of the national parks near us like the Grand Canyon or Sequoia National Park. But the camping was already booked up.  And Joshua Tree was already too hot.  Then I remembered our trip down the coast last summer. We went to Yosemite first and found this nearby lake to camp overnight before going in the park. We thought it was so beautiful, so I checked into and there was plenty of camping.

We drove up on Memorial Day, that Monday. We got up there mid-afternoon and the place was definitely busy. And it was hot, in the 90's. The campsite wasn't very crowded though, and we were right across the road from the lake. We got our camp all set up and made some dinner - dutch oven pizza. 

The best time is as the sun is setting.  The weather cools down and the views are beautiful.

Jared slept out in a hammock and the rest of us were in the tent. At about 3 am, I woke up to some noise in our campsite. I nudged Jesse awake, and he turned on a light for us to look out.  Sure enough, we had a bear cub in the campsite scrounging around. We had left some garbage out that the bear found. I sure hoped Jared didn't have any food in his hammock! Jesse grabbed the van keys and locked and unlocked the van to make some noise. The bear brambled off and that was that. 

That morning, we got up bright and early to go rent a boat for 4 hours. We went to Miller's Landing and got all set up with a ski boat and gear. It was just after 8 am and no one else was out. All the Memorial Day weekend traffic was gone. The water was still, perfect for water skiing. I was so excited to go. It has been a number of years since I've been water skiing. And I think the last time I went, I wasn't able to get up. I think it was the boat, but it did make me feel like maybe I was getting too old to do it.  I jumped in and got all ready, giving the thumbs up for Jesse to start up. He slowly started the boat up, and I took on a lot of water. I told him to just crank it up hard and pull me out of the water.  Next time around, he did just that, and I was up and skiing! I was so excited. It felt so great to be out skiing again. Loved it. And my kids were quite a bit younger the last time I skiied, so they were pretty impressed seeing me ski. So fun.

After I skiied, Jared wanted to try wake boarding. He has gone a couple of times before. It took him just a few tries to get the feel, and he was up and going. So exciting!

Then those that wanted to do some tubing had their turns. Branden and Devin went together first. Devin loved it, but definitely didn't want to go too fast or curvy. Zach and Branden were definitely more crazy loving, and Jared and Zach even more so. Zach went flying off at one point on their run. 

After a lot of fun riding, we took a break and just "parked" the boat and spent some time jumping off and swimming. I remember doing that as a kid on our ski trips. So beautiful and fun. And it was so nice how few boats were out on the lake.

I took another ski run, Jared did another wake boarding run, and there was some more tubing and then we just rode around fast in the boat for awhile enjoying the speed and the views and the fun until it was time to turn the boat back in. 

After some lunch, we spent the afternoon at a spot on the shore relaxing and swimming. We had some rafts to play on in the water. We did some reading, some talking, and had our weekly phone call with Craig, although we had a weak connection.

We went back to camp and made up some tacos and chips and salsa for dinner and peach cobbler for dessert.  We had a fun visitor, this deer, passing through our campsite.

We enjoyed another evening of a beautiful sunset. 

The next morning we packed up our campsite and headed out for some hiking. We went on the Angel Falls via Willow Creek Trail. It was hot out by the time we got out hiking, but this was a nice trail in the shade most of the time and along side water we could cool off with.

 Once we were done hiking and had some lunch, we were ready to head home.  It was a great start to our summer. We enjoyed getting away from all the busy-ness of life and just being together in nature. Definitely love Bass Lake for camping!