The End of an 8 Year Career

We finished off our spring break trip with a couple days in San Diego for Bean's final water polo tournament. It's hard to believe that this was the last time we got to watch her play.

Bean had a couple of great games, and this beautiful goal!

At the end of the weekend, they celebrated the seniors.

Bean has loved playing with these friends. Water polo was such a great thing for her, both in high school and at SDSU.

These 5 all met in the pool and have spent a lot of time together this past year, including a week in Hawaii for Spring Break.

And she's got great roommates who were there cheering her on this weekend. We got to hang out with them at the games and went out to dinner together Saturday night.

We're so glad that we got to watch her play. It's been fun to learn a new sport through our kids. And the countdown to graduation is on!

Family Weekend

First water polo tournament of Bean's last season made a good excuse to head to San Diego for the weekend. Bean played great-- scored a goal against the UCSD A team and had some amazing defensive moves. They only won one of the three games, but they played really well.

After the games on Saturday, we went down to Sunset Cliffs, which turned out to be a very popular place for Valentine's--so many couples having picnics and we even caught a proposal.

Family Valentine's Day together!

Love the beautiful clouds, even if it did subdue the sunset.

And then we went down to Chula Vista for some Tacos El Gordo. The lines were crazy long, but waiting in that line, looking around at all the people from all over--just made me grateful for this America, with tacos and diversity and communities of people from all over the world. This is the America I choose. (And those tacos are dang good.)

Sunday morning, we were back at the pool for the best game of their tournament, even if they came up a little short. Bean skipped out on the last one so we could go to church with her and meet all of her friends. She's got such a great life down here.

We went to La Jolla Shores after church for the low tide.

I was hoping for some nudibranchs and maybe even an octopus, which we didn't find,

but there were lots of great worm holes,

and I did find my first tidepool lobster!

He cruised along this rock, and then crossed over to a spot of thicker algae and tucked himself in where he could hide.

These little family moments are always so great. I miss the days when it was easy to all be together, and we are definitely missing Bug these days, but it's also fun to see the lives that our kids are making for themselves as they go out into the world.

Start of our Week of Thanks

We really maximized our Thanksgiving travels this year--starting off with a quick overnight stop with friends! They're always so gracious offering us a place to stay as we drive down to San Diego, but it's been a few years since we were able to take them up on the offer.

And staying overnight meant we got to enjoy a slow morning together--with good breakfast, a walk around their neighborhood, and then lots of outdoor play time.

The older boys worked on their golf swings while B gardened and S and I talked on the porch. It was such a fun start to our week. There's just something special about people who have known you since before you were grown up and seen you at some of your worst, but still like you, haha. I'm grateful that I still have a few close friends from middle school and even earlier.

And then, we drove down to San Diego to catch Bean's late afternoon water polo game. Traffic was horrendous (there was an officer involved shooting that had closed the freeway down for hours earlier in the day and it was STILL a mess), so the whole thing took almost as long as the drive the day before from home to north LA. But we eneded up with a few minutes to stop for the sunset on our way down.

It was too pretty to pass up.

And then we got to watch our girlie do her thing.

It's fun that they have a tournament the weekend before Thanksgiving, so the couple of years that we've spent the week in Oceanside, we've been able to come see her play. They didn't win, but it was a good game and it's still just fun to see her in the pool after all these years.

She had two more games the next day so after church in one of the single's congregations that she attends, we went back to the pool. 

They beat UW 17-5 (which she rubbed in Bug's face when she talked to him later) and Bean scored a beautiful corner shot.

We had time to grab lunch and take a walk around UCSD before she had to warm up for game two. 

And then the rest of us went down to La Jolla Shores to catch sunset #2. Colors weren't quite as deep, but it was still so beautiful.

We hung out for awhile,

while Daddy-o got into a deep discussion with an old friend.

And then it was time to go watch one more water polo game where they lost to UCSD in overtime, but played such a good game. After her game, we said goodbye for a couple days. Bean still had classes until Tuesday afternoon, and we were finally ready to meet up with our friends in Oceanside.

Wet Day for Polo

The rain doesn't really affect the players, but for the families watching it makes for a chilly, wet day of hanging out by the pool.

But between games, we went for a walk in the neighboring park and found some fun fungi, so I'm not complaining!

There were some good sized ones!

And beautiful lichen.

Lots of patches of these guys. Someday I'll learn how to identify some of what I'm seeing, but my apps don't always do very well, especially with the typical shaped white/tan ones, so I really need to go out with an expert who can teach me what to look for.

Red! Always one of my favorites.

And these ruffly ones of the trees were so beautiful.

Also chased down this yellow-rumped warbler. I could hear it before I saw it, but then it stayed put long enough in lighting that I could actually see the yellow color.

Watching a kid do something he loves, and getting to look for birds and mushrooms makes for a pretty perfect day, even in the rain.

 

Where Polo Takes Us

Bug had a water polo tournament in San Jose this weekend--which worked great because there were two other things going on down there that I wanted to hit up. So, first we watched him play.

Well, some of us watched him play--Peanut finished another book. He gets a lot of reading done when we go to these tournaments, and at least he's outside.

Between the games, we ran to pick up a bench seat for the new van--that's the first step in our cargo van conversion and it's exciting to be starting!

Then, after the last game, we drove to Mountain View for their German Christmas Market, which was very underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. I don't know that it really captures the spirit of the European markets in the first place, but it was kind of small, and there were thousands of people croweded around all the booths and in line at every food booth. We didn't want to wait for almost an hour to eat, so tried to look at some of the stalls and then went to an Italian restaurant down the street. I really hope we can go see the real markets someday--and hope that at least some of them aren't as crowded as pretty much any event we try to attend in the Bay Area.

 

Kicking off Thanksgiving

When we realized that Bean had a water polo tournament at UC Irvine the weekend before Thanksgiving, we decided to start our vacation a little early. We didn't get to see a lot of her (and this is the only picture I actually took with her in it, haha), but we'll be picking her up from school on Tuesday, so it was just fun to come see her games.

And while we were there, we got to catch up with friends!

The R family met us at the pool and then we went to get lunch. Their little guy, B, loves trucks and our boys joined him in some truck play.

It's fun to see them together--just wish we lived closer so we could play together more often.

Bean had to head back to school Sunday afternoon with her team because SDSU still has classes on Monday and Tuesday, but the rest of us went to Laguna Beach to catch the sunset.

We walked along the beach for a little bit and then found somewhere for dinner.

The next morning was ridiculously windy. We didn't really have anywhere to be until we could check in to our condo an hour farther south that afternoon and had been tossing around a few different ideas of places to spend the morning, but the wind made anything outdoors very unappealing.

So, shopping at the South Coast Plaza Mall won out. The Christmas displays were beautiful, and the mall's size, and high end stores were impressive,

but we're not really shopping people and these boys were bored out of their minds, haha. We skipped most of the really fancy part of the mall and spent a little while in the part across the street where the normal nice stores were--Pottery Barn, William and Sonoma, Crate and Barrel. I like going to look at all the Christmasy things they have this time of year.

And then we drove to Oceanside and checked in to our home for the next few days. We've stayed in this complex once before and one of the best features is the location. We got another sunset on the beach,

and caught the golden hour. Love this picture of the boys.

So glad they have each other.

Next year is going to be so strange with only Peanut home with us.

We had to hurry after this to go to dinner at the Clarke's house (no pictures), and then stock up on groceries at Trader Joe's on the way back. The rest of our Thanksgiving group would be trickling in over the next 24 hours, so there was lots of fun coming up.