Aunt Juliette and Cousin Susannah from Colorado visited for a few days and the girls were so excited to hang out with their cousin! Juliette and Susannah hung out at the beach and toured around while the girls were in school and over the weekend, Susannah stayed with us while Juliette was at a “Sister’s Retreat” in Newport Beach with some of Jake’s sisters.
Susannah has seven brothers!! With two sets of little twin brothers!! I can’t even imagine. So our very girl-centric family must have been a shock to her, but she seemed to love it and was so helpful and fun with the kids. She’s also great with hair and did a nice job curling their hair and putting it up. All the girls loved hanging out with Susannah, but Meredith grew particularly attached and wouldn’t let me help her with anything while Susannah was around.
“I want Susannah to help me go to the potty!”
“I want Susannah to read me a story”
“I was Susannah to get me dressed!”
I had to tell Meredith to leave Susannah alone so that she wouldn’t feel smothered and would want to come back!
We went to Aliso Creek Beach for the afternoon and had a beach bonfire. It was nice, but chilly for us, and we laughed that Susannah was constantly walking around in tee shirts and shorts, since this felt like hot weather compared to the snow she was used to.
Eleanor loved having an extra cuddler around.
Glasses and beach waves twins.
Lucero, Kennedy and Sebastian joined us for the beach bonfire. The kids hardly played in the sand at all because they were so occupied finding sticks to build a “nest.”
We were sitting down closer to the water, when I looked up and saw about 100 seagulls going crazy over something by our bonfire pit. Thinking I better go check it it, I ran over to our stuff, only to find that the evil gulls had somehow reached into our bag and pulled out a sealed, unopened Costco-size bag of hot dog buns and were fighting over it, ripping it to shreds! We’ve had seagulls steal sandwiches and other food that was just lying around before, but never have I experience that cunning of a seagull at the beach. Our hot dogs were bunless that night.
S’mores times.
When we got home from the beach last night, I asked where Sammy’s glasses were and we decided they must be in the car and that we’d find them in the morning. When our search in the morning did not turn up her glasses, I started getting a sinking feeling. I was not paying $800 for new glasses again! I remembered that Samantha had been lying on the sand, and Meredith had kicked sand in her face, at which point, Sammy had taken off her glasses and put them down so that we could get the sand out of her eyes. After interrogating her, we surmised she never put them back on, so they were still at the beach! I told her if we couldn’t find them, she would be doing a lot of chores to help pay for her new glasses, and she was pretty upset.
After they left on their rescue mission to the beach, I was already online picking out new glasses options. There was NO way they would be able to find them! Either they were lost in the sand, or someone took them.
Much to my shock, Sammy returned home, triumphantly, with her glasses! Jake had asked Sammy to say a little prayer in the car, asking Heavenly Father to please help them find the lost glasses. When they got out, everyone went to the bonfire pit we had been at the night before and searched. Amelia and Susannah saw something catch the light right below the fire pit and Amelia pulled out Sammy’s glasses, which were half-buried in the sand. A miracle! Samantha was SO happy to find them, and I couldn’t believe it!
Riding the ferris wheel at the Spectrum with Susannah.
It had rained so much that we went to see some of the waterfalls on local hikes.
Don’t know what Sammy’s deal is!
Susannah accompanied us to the park several times, and Meredith basically ignored me, preferring to play in the sand with Susannah and begging her to swing her.
Every parent has to put in four hours of volunteer duty at the snack bar for the season, and lucky for us, Susannah was there the weekend it was Jake’s turn (the league cut us some slack since we have two on the team and just made us have one parent put in the volunteer hours instead of both parents). Susannah helped with the kids during the game, while Jake was on snack bar duty.
Post-softball game park fun.
Susannah figured out a way to bribe Eleanor to crawl in a certain direction– she loves that Roomba!
Lots of love,
