Playing in California

When we were in California last week the thing the most important thing to me besides spending time together was not stressing out about anything.  I hate vacations where you feel like you have to cram everything in and by the time you are done you need a vacation to recover.  You are going to need time to recover from being away from home anyway, so don’t make it worse by cramming everything into an calculated hourly schedule.  But that’s just me.

So while we were visiting Grandpa we hung out at his house a lot.  Had lazy mornings.  Didn’t stress out about not being somewhere by 9 am.  Lovely.  We went to a park Scott remembered from when he was young called The Dennis the Menace Park.  (Seriously.)  He was dissappointed to see that all the cool old toys have been replaced with standard run of the mill hard plastic and metal play equipment.  It used to have a big cool castle theme.  Now it’s just primary colored play equipment.  This sword in the stone was the only thing left from the old park.  Creamie loved it anyway.  We had our picnic, she ran around touching everything and we left before it got too cold for dinner and a little shopping.  A perfect day.

Creamie and Grandpa got along great.  She shared her books and fruitsnacks with him and he sat down and watched cartoons with her.  She talked his ears off I’m sure.  But it was so sweet to see them sitting together on the couch watching cartoons on Sunday morning.  It was one of those things I hope never to forget.  And I hope we can go visit again soon.  Not only is Grandpas house the perfect vacation, it is full of beautiful old things that make me smile just to look at.  Look at the treasure I saw peeking out from the top pantry shelf while I was looking for napkins!  Catherine Holm! And the wallpaper in his dining room is one of the most beautiful patterns ever.  And the little turquoise fawn in the china cabinet…. sigh.  Grandparents always have awesome stuff don’t they.  I should take pictures of every single thing I love about my loved one’s homes.  What a fun little album that would be to look through.

A big part of our trip was focused around eating.  As it should be.  We ate at all our favorite places while we were there, the doughnut shop around the corner being one of them.  This girl would do most anything for a rainbow sprinkle doughnut.  Do you remember this post?

I got to do one more REALLY fun thing before we left LA and headed down to San Diego.  I e-met Shannon more than a year ago.  And she is absolutely lovely.  Her blog, Little Luck Tree is full of pretty pictures and tutorials and very doable DIY projects.  She just moved across the country to Hollywood and is living her dream of acting.  I am so excited for her! She came and met me for lunch just before we packed up the car for the second half of our trip and I wished I could have spent another few hours talking.  And we didn’t even get to the shopping or the thrifting!  Also, my face is totally pink from our day at Seal Beach.  I forget how often to reapply sunscreen every time we are on vacation…

Shannon and I met at a cute little spot for lunch (delicious food and real plates!) and talked about life, blogs, geeked out about “famous” people, caught up on all those things in real life that just don’t transfer as well into internet conversations and generally just had a wonderful few hours sitting out in the sunshine.  And when it came time to go, we both admitted we are blogger geeks and had to take a picture.  And then we both pulled out our Instax camera’s and laughed at each other.  She found some poor unsuspecting diner to juggle gigantic oldschool cameras while we stood there like happy idiots.  Thanks diner guy.

I don’t use my camera (an Instax 210 wide) nearly as often as I should.  It was Shannon that actually encouraged me to take it out of the box months ago.  My dad gave it to me for my  birthday last year. (Shannon’s cute little white Instax is the Mini version.)

As for today? I am working on a new project that is totally for me.  I also found out I am going to teach my first class at my local quilt shop at the end of April.  Exciting!  I’ve been eating my mom’s plumberry jam on everything I can add it too, breakfast lunch and dinner.  Creamie asked for some orange juice this afternoon, and after I squeezed her some I decided to try out a green smoothie with some of the baby spinach in the fridge.  I’ll just say I’m a total fan.  It will be hard to not eat one every single day.  Though with two cups of spinach in there and a bunch of fresh fruit that might not be such a bad thing.  I’ll be back soon, I almost feel completely caught up on my life and ready to jump into some new things.