Quick Trip to SD

Bean was only home for a day before we had to get her down to San Diego for the spring semester which had already started the week before. She and I drove down Sunday, and hit pretty terrible weather on the Grapevine.

It snowed!

But we made it down to Bean's new house for the semester--a house about 1/2 a mile down the hill from campus where she has her own room and lives with 3 other water polo friends. We got her sort of unpacked and went grocery shopping so she would be ready for the class the next day.

Monday morning, I met up with a friend at Torrey Pines State Park for a hike.

And once again, we hit crazy weather, with wind and rain, in a place that is usually so nice.

And right after we finished the 3 mile hike, the sun came out and the beach was lovely.

As I drove back down the coast, I stopped at La Jolla Shores.

I wanted to check out the tidepools.

Found a few snails.

And then made a quick stop at The Bahia to visit the seals.

And found this California Aglaja (a predatory sea slug) on the sand.

I helped him back into the water and then I had to run a few errands for Bean and join a virtual meeting before I met up with her to see her for a bit before she had to head to water polo practice.

And the next morning, I said goodbye to this girl as she headed out to her second day of classes. We walked to campus together where I could take the trolley/shuttle combo to the airport for my flight home, and she could try to get back into US college life.

January Hikes & Nature Adventures

We jumped right back into our usual activities after the holidays. Peanut went to Jr. Rangers the first Monday back, and while he was there,

I went for a little mushroom hunt.

And then, once Nature Group started back up, we were hitting the trails together.

First hike of the year had a great turnout.

We went to Mt. Wanda, near John Muir's home, and talked about the different ecosystems around the Bay Area.

I really love my job.

Science class this semester is also all about ecosystems and we investigated different spots around our backyard--even the pavement had living things.

Daddy-o and I got went for a little date hike at Del Valle.

And then I got to participate in Mushroom Madness at Sycamore Grove.

It wasn't as wet of a year as some, but there were still a lot of fascinating fungi,

and I love having experts on hand to answer questions about what we find.

Another Nature Group at Martin Canyon Creek.

These kids are a lot of fun.

And we snuck in a little family hike at Pescadero on our way to the airport to pick up our Bean on her way home from Switzerland.

Still some good ones, even on an only okay year.

As fun as all our travels were this past fall, it is so good to get back to exploring all of our local favorites.

Welcome to 2025!

Here we are, another year. I have so much I want to record here from the last 2.5 months, but I'm jumping in and will work on catching up over the next couple of months.

New Year's Day was spent as a family at the beach with friends. We let the kids sleep in so we got a late start, but it was nice. It was a perfect winter beach day--sunshine, warmish weather, lots of shorebirds. We even saw a dolphin right before we left.

Bug and his friend surfed, while the rest of us enjoyed from the shore.

We played lots of Mollky and football, went for a walk. It was such an enjoyable day.

And then we came home for dinner and some hygge time by the fire with our books.

It's been so nice having the college kids home for the holidays and all being together again. We had a lot of fun this fall, all on our various adventures, but there really is nothing quite like family and home.

More Holiday Fun

The week between Christmas and New Years was busy. Thanks to typical California weather, we were able to get outsie a lot.

We went up to Springtown for some bird watching and found the night heron.

And it's baby!

And cinnamon teals, along with lots of mallards and coots.

Found some cool lichen, too. I love the little cup shaped ones.

We had lots of movie time, too. I think Peanut liked having siblings around.

We made a trip up to Grandma and Grandpa's house, too.

I think Daddy-o really wants a cat. He always loves on their cats any time we're up there.

These boys were fans of this one, too.

We got to have a late Christmas together.

My high school friends came over another afternoon to hang out. 

Quite the group this year!

Thanks to this group. So fun to be together 30 years after we graduated!

I never get enough pictures when we do these things, but it was really fun having a couple more friends and their families than we normally have. And fun that one of them made the pictures happen.

Any time we can get someone from out of town up, it's a good excuse to get the local group together. We don't see each other often enough.

But it's really fun seeing all of our offspring together :)

And finally, we tried to go to Deacon Dave's.

We kept meaning to get over here, but by the time we got back into town, it was the Christmas rush and we were hoping the lines would be shorter after.

But this was as close as we got. The wait was longer than we wanted, so we just looked at it from out front.

It's hard to see the line, but this is down a couple of houses and going around the corner.

We finished the year with two New Year's parties, and so many games. A lively round of NERTS was going on,

while a few of us played Wingspan.

And then, the second party was with a family who has connections to El Salvador, where they have a tradition of burning “El Año Viejo”.

They create an effigy to represent the old year and burned it before midnight with scraps of paper where we had written down things we wanted to change from the old year.

It was funny that both New Year's parties that we were invited to this year expected to end before midnight. The first one was way before because they had to take their kids to a dance an hour away, but the second one, we kind of just stayed, playing games and talking, until it was close enough that it seemed silly to leave early, and their kids were pushing for it. I guess they don't usually stay up, haha. We're just crazy party animals who don't go to bed--now that the kids are older, it doesn't seem too hard to do once in awhile (and the kids do it all the time.)