aliso creek beach

Grandma Celeste Visits

March 16, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

In March, Grandma Celeste flew out from Utah to come visit for a week. Grandma Celeste always has the most fascinating stories about growing up in a log cabin in the wilderness of Alaska, and entertained the girls with tales of her adventures as a young girl– making friends with Eskimos, encountering bears, exploring the woods, you name it! She’s written a few fiction and non-fiction books about her life and that of her parents, so she had lots of material to draw from for her story-telling! I don’t know how many times I can downstairs to find the girls sitting at the table listening to a Grandma Celeste story!

We had a very warm week while she was here and made it to the beach a few times.

Floating on logs in the creek… don’t want to know what’s in there.

Cooling off in the pool.

Enjoying a soak in the hot tub after a long day of running around.

The girls thought it would be funny to dogpile on grandma and wake her up. Welcome to our world.

Grandma Celeste accompanied us to the twins’ softball game on Saturday morning. Meredith occupied herself with trying to catch Eleanor and apply sunscreen to her entire body.

Grandma Celeste loves to paint, especially in watercolors, and brought some of her supplies along. She set up her canvas and painted on the beach and spent hours painting with the girls at home. She painted them some still lifes of some pretty lilies we had in our house:

She helped the girls paint some water colors of their own and they had a blast since they LOVE art.

After hearing all of the Alaska stories from Grandma, Amelia and Samantha chose Alaska for their state research project at school.

And since the girls all love flowers so much, we took a day trip to see the millions of ranunculus flowers at the Carlsbad Flower Fields.

After taking a wagon ride through the flowers and playing on the fairy playground, the girls did a scavenger hunt.

Thanks for coming, Grandma Celeste!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alaska, aliso creek beach, carlsbad flower fields, Grandma Celeste, March 2019, painting, watercolors

Cousin Susannah Visits

February 20, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

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,

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: aliso creek beach, beach bonfire, cousins, ferris wheel, juliette, kennedy, lost glasses, sebastian, susannah, the smiths, waterfall hike

Meredith’s 3rd Birthday Continued: Beach Fun

January 29, 2019 by Rebecca Whitehead

Meredith’s third birthday celebration continued at the beach!

Young, wild and three!

She was so excited to practice holding up three fingers for anyone who asked her if it was her birthday.

Such a fun girl!

Eleanor loved watching the waves, seagulls and three crazy girls running around.

I am three…

Hear me roar!

Sensory issues… not loving the sand!

Daddy cheered her up.

DO NOT PUT ME DIRECTLY ON SAND.

During the off-season, everyone brings their dogs to the beach, even though it’s technically not a dog beach. Bandit was so thrilled!

Jake took a video of Samantha running in the waves, but did it in slow motion for some reason.

Playing hide and seek in the rocks.

Getting hard to squeeze everyone in for a selfie.

Poor Meredith was just getting over a cold on her birthday and while attempting to run away from waves, fell in the ocean and was so cold and wet, even though we dried her off and wrapped her up as quick as we could. She was sick and missed preschool for another week, poor girl!

Lots of love,

Filed Under: Milestones Tagged With: aliso creek beach, meredith turns three, Meredith's third birthday

Mother’s Day 2017

May 26, 2017 by Rebecca Whitehead

It was a special treat this Mother’s Day to join Samantha and Amelia for a “Mother’s Day Tea” at their preschool. They were very excited to show off the gifts they had been working on (and even more excited to eat donuts and lemonade)!

Amelia couldn’t wait to show me “Mommy’s new purse” complete with jewels.

One day a few months ago for her share item, Amelia brought in a solar lantern we had bought at a craft fair from our friend, Melissa, who makes these themed jars for boutiques. Miss Becky loved it so much, she asked me if I could get the information on how to put these together, and Melissa generously donated all the mason jars and solar lids for the kids in Amelia’s class to decorate for Mother’s Day gifts. After placing them by a window during the day, they shine the prettiest glow at night. The kids did a cute job on their beach theme.

Samantha was excited to show off her bag and the surprise inside.

I love my new bouquet of hand flowers!

It’s taken me more than a few birthdays/Mother’s Days/holidays in general to realize that Jake can’t read my mind when it comes to my ideal day, so the past few years, I’ve taken to writing a list of activity and gift ideas on a shared Google Doc a few months in advance so that Jake can pick a few and have a base to work from. Just enough time to forget what I had put down so that’s it a semi-surprise, but enough structure that Jake isn’t left totally clueless and decides to make a 5-course meal with the girls at 5 p.m. with no prep done and everyone screaming and hangry (I took over and just ordered a pizza that year!)

Saturday, our favorite twin babysitters, Charlotte and Claire, watched the girls, while we had brunch at Las Brisas (although, we had just barely missed the Saturday brunch cut-off by ten minutes and sadly had to order from the lunch menu… seafood does not sound very appealing at 11:30 a.m.!) Still, we had relaxing time by the ocean and took a stroll afterwards. Jake took the girls for the rest of the afternoon and I worked on some photo projects at the library and read for hours! The library is a totally different experience without the girls in tow… divine!

Sunday, the girls and Jake made a very nice breakfast of apple pecan overnight french toast (gluten free, no less) with eggs and a homemade orange julius smoothie. I was impressed!

To Jake’s chagrin, the girls had already spilled the beans on the heart plates they painted a few weeks ago. They were very proud and still ask me to eat every meal off of them. Meredith was like a bull in a china shop during their painting outing, so well done, Jake, for the attempt!

We all spent the day as a family and after church and naps, headed to the beach. Normally, outings = just more work for me, but after handing off my packing list, Jake took over and I sat in the car with a book while he and the girls gathered and packed all our beach gear, prepared a picnic dinner, and got everyone in the car. The beach was actually a pleasant experience when I could forgo the packing, loading, unloading, taking everyone to the disgusting bathrooms and sanitizing everyone afterwards, brushing sand off everyone, unpacking the cars, throwing wet towels and suits into the laundry and hosing down everyone afterwards.

The only thing I ever really want for Mother’s Day is a good picture with the girls, and since no one really cooperated for a sit-down picture (surprise of the century), our candid ones will have to do this year.

We played several rounds of ring around the rosie and duck duck goose.

On our last Mother’s Day at the beach a few years ago, the girls were so CUTE and cooperative! I guess the fact that two out of three are twice as stubborn as two years ago, plus adding one more into the mix do not make very good odds for getting nice pictures!

Sammy was smiley, Meredith was distracted and Amelia was decidedly NOT interested.

Cute big sister.

Meredith does not enjoy too much love and goes crazy when the girls make a hug sandwich out of her, especially first thing in the morning when I grab her out of her crib. GET OUT OF MY BUBBLE!

Maybe Meredith would cooperate? Nope.

Of course, the girls happily complied for photos with Jake.

Lots of silliness happening.

Sammy was singing at the top of her lungs and Amelia was trying to break free and boogie.

Amelia was ready for a hoe-down.

When you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Rock climbing, shell hunting, seagull chasing and sand angel making.

Jake and the girls only forgot one thing… Jake’s dinner. They didn’t mind sharing.

Speaking of food, I don’t know if Jake has been secretly coaching them behind the scenes, but an unexpected Mother’s Day gift was that for the past few weeks, the girls have been randomly telling me “thank you for the delicious food!” at most dinners. This has never happened in the past without someone prodding them, so I’ve been very pleasantly surprised (and slightly suspicious).