My little brother Matthew and his wife Brooklyn had their first little baby, Baby Juniper, just two short weeks ago and we decided to take advantage of our homeschooling schedule and take our homeschool on the road for a week to drive to California to visit them! Truth be told, my mom and dad really, really wanted to go, but David was out of town for work (in AZ) and my mom was concerned about leaving me all alone with four kids so soon after Lucy's vision diagnosis. We would have been fine, but it was way better to adventure our way to Los Angeles, CA so I'm glad that they let us tag along. Especially because we made things way bigger, louder, and more work. But my kids are really great, and we love adventures, and I cooked a lot of food for everyone - so I feel like it worked out great.
We spontaneously decided over the weekend to make the trip happen, but when my parents suggested leaving Monday morning I told them that I needed a little bit more time to prepare for our spontaneous trip, ha. We grocery shopped and packed our bags and left early Tuesday morning. Austin still talks about driving to California in the "middle of the night". (Which was about 5 am).
The kids did great in the car. Even Lucy. They are such great travelers. Lydia packed approximately 16 books for the trip and was well through the pile after our long ride there. We only stopped a handful of times for short bathroom breaks.
We made it! Holding our sweet Juniper was worth the drive, absolutely. Lucy is just barely three months, but compared to a two week old baby - she was huge! It reminded me that Lucy is no longer a newborn, not really.
We stayed in an air-bnb house rental and it was old, but charming. (Meaning that it showed it's age, and the upstairs bathroom smelled - but there were some really fun architectural things, like a skinny stairwell, a cute patio, and a room behind the staircase.
My parents took the downstairs bedroom, the kids got their own room, and Lucy and I shared a queen bed and it was great.
We tried to have a good balance of just being casual and slow-paced with doing some fun things. (Brooklyn was only two weeks postpartum and Juniper was tiny!) I think we erred on the side of doing too much, because really the only thing we cared about was seeing M, B, and J. But we did have a great time together and it was fun to have them show us around their hometown.
First up, the beach at Santa Monica Pier. This was the highlight of the trip, for sure.
We all loved the beach, the kids especially. Caleb was giddy about the water lapping up and was so incredibly fun to watch with each crashing wave. Lydia and Austin ran up and down the beach and everyone else just had fun watching them (and thank goodness we had so many adults per child because it took all of us to make sure they weren't swept out to sea.)
Caleb took a break from the water for a little while to chase pigeons through the sand, ha.
More beach pictures:
We stopped by the LA temple just to take a few pictures and to say that we'd seen it. It was a stark contrast between the peace of the temple grounds and the worldliness of the pier. The quiet was all the more peaceful and my dad bore his testimony to me and my kids about how important it is to find and keep the influence of the spirit when the world is shouting so loudly of the importance of other things. It was really special.
Back at the hotel, we had "Art Class" with Aunt Brooklyn and Lydia learned to draw dogs by looking at pictures and deciding what kinds of shapes make up each section. It was so sweet of Brooklyn to take the time to draw with Lydia. She's basically a super-star hero in our eyes and I'm glad Lydia has such a great role-model (who is so patient with our dog-loving artist).
We started day 2 with Lydia's DIBLES assessment for school. I had already registered for the online assessment with and so we just had her complete the assessment in CA. (Yay technology!) We just had to make sure we were up a little earlier because of the time difference.
We had a slow morning, then our homeschool headed to the LaBrea Tar Pits, which was SO cool.
The volunteers/employees were so helpful and had some great discussions with Lydia. It was fun being there with my Dad, and we all learned a lot. Plus we saw a mechanical Sabertooth Cat attacking a Giant Sloth (which we learned has been there for 40 years, even though they now know that Sabertooth Cat probably wouldn't have risked attacking a giant sloth). It was pretty great.
For context via Wikapedia: The La Brea Tar Pits are a group of tar pits in urban Los Angeles. Natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, pitch, or tar—brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground in this area for tens of thousands of years. The tar is often covered with dust, leaves, or water. Over many centuries, the tar preserved the bones of trapped animals. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there.
In our time there, we also went to the CA Science Museum which has an aquarium and some other really cool science exhibits. The aquarium was really neat, and I shamelessly adore some of the pictures I took there.
We saw some really, really neat things - but my favorite was just spending time at the house with these people. (And donuts, we hung out and ate donuts - yay!)
And then, we were done - and headed home. I was a little sad that David wasn't with us for our first trip to California (sad because I missed him and always want to be with him and also because our kids have never been to California and it was so fun to be with them in their excitement about California and see it all from their eyes. He was so wonderful and supportive to have us go on our own, and I absolutely loved road tripping it with my Mom and Dad.
We love you Matt and Brooklyn, and especially little Juniper! Thank you Mom and Dad for the great trip, and for being so patient and helpful with this awesome, energetic crew of mine.
