Month: September 2017

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The Summer List 2017: Final Tally

Well, summer, you’ve been a delight – as always.  It’s my New York mentality, I’m sure, that kicks in every year and makes me desperate to wring every bit of fun possible out of the season.  I know all too well that it won’t last, and dammit, I’m going to fill every second with fun so that I have some warm, sunny memories to look back on when the snow is falling.  That concern is a little less relevant here in D.C. – realistically, it’ll probably only snow once – but old habits die hard.  Here’s how I did on my summer agenda:

  • The BIG one!  Take a family vacation to C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A.  (Tickets are booked, but the rest of the planning looms.)  Done!  We flew out to California for the wedding of a very dear friend and stayed on another week for a family reunion in Santa Barbara.  It was the perfect trip – just the right combination of family and friend time, beach fun, and adventure.  Recaps will be continuing for some time yet, because I have tons of stories for you!

  • Go adventuring on the water.  I’ve got some ideas: whale-watching for one, and a kayak tour of the sea caves at Channel Islands National Park for another.  Done!  The California adventures were in the works when I originally made my summer list, but I’m pleased to report that we did them and they were epic.  Kayaking the sea caves made for a great adventure, and we had an incredible day out whale-watching in the Santa Barbara Channel with the kids and my parents – I can’t wait to tell you all about it!  Closer to home, we got the kids out in kayaks for the first time.  They took their first rides in the Adirondacks over the Fourth of July weekend, and we’ve had fun duffing in D.C., too.

  • Make a homemade tomato tart using tomatoes and herbs that I grow in my garden.  (I’ve planted eight tomato plants.  Something has got to grow.)  Done!  I was on top of my tomato harvesting all summer, in light of the need to stay ahead of the very greedy neighborhood squirrels, and in early August we got enough of a harvest to make my tomato tart dreams a reality.  Peanut and I baked it together – spending time in the kitchen with her has been such a joy this summer – and we made a Ritz cracker crust, herbed mascarpone filling, and topped the tart with homemade tomato-and-herb refrigerator jam.  It was delicious.

  • Visit my parents and get in some quality time with family friends, and spend a day at the lake.  Done!  We escaped to upstate New York and the Adirondacks over the Fourth of July weekend and packed in lots of quality time with family and friends around all the adventuring.  A dear family friend hosted a barbeque for us on Friday evening and invited my high school best friend and her family, and we saw the same family friends at the lake later that weekend – plus my grandmother, my cousin Jocelyn, and my Uncle Jim and his family.  So nice to see everyone, and so nice to spend a couple of days on the Sacandaga.  It’s my happy place.

  • Same trip: bag another Adirondack high peak (or two?).  Done!  Steve and I passed the kids off to my parents one day while we escaped up to the high peaks region for a big adventure – climbing Giant Mountain to bag our third peak.  It was a tough mountain, but we summited and loved every second on Giant.

  • Re-read Jane of Lantern Hill, which will always be a summer book for me.  Done!  It had been years since I’d visited with Jane and Dad.  I’d love to live – or even to spend a few months – in the cozy, welcoming nest Jane creates on Lantern Hill.
  • Take another trip to Little Washington and eat at the Inn, thanks to an incredibly generous gift certificate from the world’s sweetest mother-in-law.
  • Take the kids for bike rides on the Mount Vernon Trail.  (There are a few things that have to happen for me to do this – a tune-up for Blue and Steve’s bike, locating the bike rack – maybe – and helmets for the kids.)

  • Buy a GoPro.  I’ve been wanting one for ages and it’s time to take the plunge – plus we’ll need it for all these adventures.  Done!  We added to the camera arsenal this summer and it was very exciting.  We’re still figuring out everything we can do with the GoPro, learning to create and edit videos with the footage we shoot, and working out some kinks in our filming, but it’s been such a blast.  We took the GoPro sea cave kayaking at Channel Islands National Park – the whole reason we bought it – and it was a game-changer.

  • Spend a weekend on Virginia Beach with my dear friend Rebecca and her family.  Done!  We headed down to the beach in late June for the first trip of our summer, and as expected, we had a wonderful time.  There’s nothing like returning to a beach you already know well.  And it looks like we’ll have more chances to visit VB in the future, since Rebecca had an unexpected – and perfect for her – job opportunity come up in D.C. and will be moving here during the weeks, commuting to the beach on the weekends, instead of pulling up stakes for Florida as originally planned!  I am unreservedly gleeful about this.

  • Keep up the Saturday walks to the farmers’ market and do some baking with seasonal fruit.  I’m calling this one done!  We didn’t get to the farmers’ market as often as I’d hoped we would, since we spent so much time out of town this summer and on the weekends that we were in town, we usually beat the heat at the splash pad on Saturday mornings.  But we did make it to the farmers’ market a few times, and we baked with blueberries that we picked ourselves and tomatoes and herbs that we harvested from our garden.

Well, I’d say that was a VERY good summer.  The only things that didn’t happen were the bike rides on the Mount Vernon Trail (I got a helmet for Nugget, but Peanut needs one too and I ended up getting busy and unable to get back to REI) and the dinner at the Inn at Little Washington (we were just on the go so much that we couldn’t squeeze it in).  But as for the rest of the list – man, did we ever do a LOT.  Three trips (Virginia Beach, the Adirondacks, and California), kayaking adventures, new summits, gardening fun, playdates with friends – it’s been an absolute blast.  We lived it up and enjoyed every moment we got to spend together; I can’t ask for anything more than that!

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It’s Labor Day! What Are You Reading? (September 4, 2017)

Happy Labor Day, friends!  If you’re American, I hope that you’re having a great holiday weekend (if you get Monday off – I do, yay!) and for my friends around the world, I hope you’re having a wonderful start to your weeks.  Funny story about Labor Day: when I was in college, this holiday was the holiday for my major.  I majored in Industrial and Labor Relations and we got the day off when everyone else had to attend classes, but there were events all day long.  We had trade union leaders and organizers who would come to speak to us, and a big picnic where we all ate coleslaw and sang solidarity songs.  It was good times.  These days, Labor Day is more about the end of high summer, looking back on golden days of fun and gearing up for the busy back-to-school season ahead.  I usually find myself really conflicted at this time, because I love summer and fall almost equally (fall barely edges out summer into the top spot) and I’m always finding this particular seasonal change a little bittersweet.  But this year, for whatever reason, I feel like I’ve had my fill of summer fun – we really lived it up – and I’m pretty unreservedly excited about fall.  Bring on the puffy vests and pumpkin spice; I am ready!  And just in time, too, because we had a weirdly cool weekend.  I think we’ll have a few more weeks of hot temps, but at least for Saturday and Sunday, it was chilly enough for flannel shirts and cups of tea in the evening.  Of course, that didn’t last even the whole three-day weekend; by the time our Sunday-evening walk rolled around, I’d traded my flannel in for a bike race t-shirt, and today is supposed to be pretty hot and sunny.  We have a fun activity planned for the day, which I’ll tell you about soon, but for now, a look back at last week.

Reading.  Very, very little to report this week.  I’ve slowly continued making my way through Mollie Panter-Downes’ London War Notes, and it’s a really lovely read.  Ponderous and haunting, but with little bits of humor sprinkled in – like Mollie’s wry recounting of the PR machine’s effort to get the British public on board with the Soviet Union after they became unlikely allies, which was finally achieved by the newspapers noting that the USSR Ambassador’s wife is a keen gardener who avidly tends her rose garden. A rose garden is the way to the British heart.

Listening.  The parade of podcasts continues.  I really need to get back to Audible, but I’ve been making such good progress toward an empty podcatcher that I kind of can’t stop won’t stop.  The best, clearly, was the “Sorry/Not Sorry” episode of Sorta Awesome.  I laughed so hard that I was almost sobbing, and the people on the metro probably thought I was a complete loony tune.  But metro people, you just don’t understand.  Sorry, not sorry!

Watching.  Saturday night couch dates continue!  It was my turn to pick this week, and after I hemmed and hawed and gave serious consideration to Captain Ron (it’s a thing and if you haven’t watched it you just won’t get it) we watched Wonder Woman.  Finally!  I’ve been dying to see it and was really bummed I missed it in the theaters.  Also, I totally called who Ares was, and between that and knowing that the Indominus Rex was still in the cage in Jurassic World, I’m feeling pretty pleased with my movie intuition these days.

Moving.  Kind of a slow week, because early in the week I was starting a Whole 30 (never a good time to also be doing a lot of activity – all my energy goes toward managing the metro queasies) and still coming off of Pacific time.  (It’s been a slow transition.)  But at the end of the week I bit the bullet and set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. power yoga, and it was so nice to be back on the mat.  Saturday I made it to my vinyasa class, and on Sunday we hiked at Piscataway Park (pictures coming).  Looking forward to a good week of yoga and hopefully a run or two.

Loving.  My front porch!  I did a quick little makeover for fall and I’m delighted with it.  Picked up a cutesy little pumpkin sign for the front door at Michaels (yes, I am That Lady, apparently) and two little pots of mums, which I plopped right into two ceramic planters I already had.  I love the color combination of the orange mums against the blue and green pots – I tend to be drawn more toward neutral colors that can be found in nature, and greens, blues and oranges are my favorites.  I also checked a lingering porch task off and bought a shepherd’s hook for the front yard so I could move the bird feeder off the porch.  Surprising only me, the birds have been a little bit… disrespectful… of my space (while eating the food I so generously provide every day).  I was the only one who didn’t see that coming, apparently – anyway, the feeder is now over to the side of my front walk and I like the new spot much better.  I have a better view of the feeder from my favorite chair, and it’s just all-around more pleasant.  Looking forward to some long evenings sitting out on the porch watching the birds this fall.

Blogging.  Some good summer content coming your way this week – a wrap-up of my summer list on Wednesday, and another California recap on Friday, this one doubling as my August contribution to my 12 Months of Trails project.  It’s a good one, so do stop by!

Asking.  What are you reading this Labor Day weekend?

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California Dreaming 2017: Huntington Beach and Happiness

Who’s ready for some travel recaps?  (Meeeeee!)  I spend a lot of my spare time scheming and dreaming up my next travel adventure, but some years it seems that trips just happen, and this was one of those years.  Many months ago, we learned the happy news that my oldest friend in the world (seriously, our moms started putting us together in the same playpen when he was ten months old and I was six weeks) was getting married!  Adam moved out to California after college, and he and his bride, Kristin, live in Huntington Beach – outside of Los Angeles.  Obviously, we started looking for plane tickets immediately, and once we realized that we’d have to buy four tickets – since my parents and brother and sister-in-law, a.k.a. all of our potential overnight babysitters, were also attending the wedding – we decided that it only made sense to stay for an extra week after the wedding and turn it into our vacation for the year.  To Cali we go!

First things first – the plane ride.  I was very skeptical about the idea of five hours in the air with a two-year-old, as you can see from my face.  We did the old divide-and-conquer – Steve and Peanut were sitting together on one side of the aisle, and Nugget and I sat on the other side.

Steve had the easy job.  Aside from a temper tantrum for the first ten minutes of the flight (because she didn’t get a window seat) Peanut sat with her headphones on and watched downloaded Disney movies on the iPad for the entire flight.  Color me jealous.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, I was pulling every trick out of my bag.  Lollipops for takeoff and landing (to help those little ears pop), Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (lasted twenty minutes, and oh, he hates his toddler headphones), toys and books and snacks.  Nugget and I lucked out with the world’s best seatmate – a sweet and patient grandma (she had nine children of her own) who adores children.  She even let Nugget sit in her lap to look out the window, and she didn’t bat an eye when he spent 90 minutes of the flight without pants on.  (Don’t ask.)

Eventually, we landed in Los Angeles, and got down to the business of vacation!  Wednesday was devoted to traveling, taking care of logistics like rental cars and hotel check-ins, and frantically trying to get a work submission out via my phone.  But on Thursday, we headed straight for the BEACH!

Huntington Beach is a big surf destination, but early on Thursday morning we had the place almost to ourselves.  That is, until a junior lifeguard camp turned 500 baby lifeguards loose on the beach.  At one point, there were twenty of them clustered around a mermaid.  Yes, really.

First toes in West Coast sand!  The water was a bit chilly, but Peanut and Nugget came with their game faces on.  We stopped by the grocery store on the way and picked up a cheap set of sand toys that provided entertainment all week.

And it wasn’t long before – look who showed up!  My parents were staying oceanfront (lucky ducks!) and spotted us while out jogging on the boardwalk, which might be the most California thing ever.  The kids were beyond excited to see their grandparents on the beach.

Running shoes were shed, and the sand castle building began.

Beach hair don’t care.

At one point, I was meditatively making a zen garden with the rake from the kids’ sand toy set.  Peanut plopped a turtle mold down onto my nice straight lines and Nugget shouted, “Uh-oh!  There’s turtles in the zen garden!” prompting Steve to comment, “If that’s not a metaphor for the last five years, then I don’t know what is.”  Haha!

Nana changed into a swimsuit and beach coverup and returned to bury Peanut in the sand.  Nugget wanted to be buried too, but he didn’t quite get the concept, and kept popping back out again  as soon as his legs were covered.  Eventually, we had to clean up and get ready for Adam and Kristin’s rehearsal dinner.  Before the dinner, we hit the famous Huntington Beach pier for a quick walk and some sightseeing.

Very important sightseeing.

Way too gorgeous.  No pictures from the dinner, but we ate an absurd amount of tuna tartare, and I cried through the speeches (which would become a theme of the wedding).

Friday morning found us back at the beach, and we had company!  The parents of the groom (my parents’ best friends, and practically a second set of parents to me – love them so much) stopped by, and we also hung out with Adam’s aunt and cousins, and waved hello to a few other wedding guests.  The most exciting Friday morning beach companions, though, were…

Dan and Danielle!  My brother and sister-in-law flew out from Colorado.  It was so wonderful to see them – we don’t see them nearly enough!  They hadn’t seen Nugget since he was eight months old and we visited them for Thanksgiving in 2015.  It had been way too long.  They dove right into aunt and uncle funtime.

I mean, really – they dove in.  Literally.  Nugget enjoyed probably half an hour of being tossed up and down by Uncle Dan.  (Who was sore the next day and compared Nugget to a medicine ball.  We tried to warn him that Nugget only looks tiny.  The kid is dense and deceptively heavy…)

Anyway, after a few hours of fun uncle playtime, we all headed back to our respective hotel rooms to clean up for the main event – Adam and Kristin’s wedding!  The kids got to attend the ceremony (Peanut was taking mental notes as she watched the flower girl walk down the aisle; she’ll have to make that walk in September) and then Kristin generously paid for a babysitter and bought pizza for all of the little ones, so they could hang out in the hotel while their parents danced and toasted downstairs at the wedding reception.  I was a broken record, but I couldn’t stop repeating how very grateful Steve and I were that the bride not only thought of her guests’ kids, but went out of her way to craft (and finance!) the perfect childcare arrangement.  We were a little stressed about what we were going to do with the kiddos during the reception, and Kristin’s thoughtfulness completely took that stress away.  It seems like a little thing, but it was a big thing to us and it meant so much to us (and I’m sure to the other guests with kids) that Kristin considered our childcare needs.  Of course, throughout the wedding people kept emphasizing how much family means to Adam and Kristin – and the wedding childcare was a perfect example of that for me.  Adam picked a good one!

Also – hopefully he won’t mind my sharing just a couple of pictures; it was such a beautiful day.  Is that a happy groom, or what?

Such a perfect day.  We were all in tears throughout the ceremony.  Adam is such a wonderful, special person and so deserving of happiness.  I’m glad he found his perfect match in Kristin, and we all felt so honored to be invited to share in their joy.

Also, do we clean up good, or what?

My people!  I’m biased, but I think we are a pretty cute fam.

As we sipped our celebratory cocktails, my mom took me aside and pointed out the gorgeous sunset over Huntington Beach.  It was truly breathtaking, and definitely felt like a sign that the universe was also wishing Adam and Kristin much joy in their life together.

Wedding dates!  Love this guy.  And love California!

More to come…