Double Whammy

or a twofer.

August flew by in a blur mostly because we planned two separate vacations! It sound super cool and fun which it was but that was lot of travelling & planning.

First up we have a Kauai trip that the kids & I took along with my mom. It didn't start off very smooth (travel day) but soon we all found out how to work together and really had a nice relaxing time.

Waiting for our rental car.  For the record, it was a brown VW.

Actually I did find out what kind of car we had and it was this sporty sedan. It looks nice enough but the head clearance getting into the darn thing was low. I'm 5'5" and had to tweak my head/neck every time getting in. Both Tyler and I ended up whacking our heads. Plus the car had some big blind spots but it served us well in Kauai so I can't complain too much. It was stylish and we could spot it among all the other rental cars.



We had a nice, fairly spacious room overlooking the pool and ocean. The grounds are very pretty with lots of birds & chickens running around.


I loved sitting on the balcony watching the ocean and seeing the sunrise every morning.




Lots of pools to choose from...





Kauai is very lush and tropical. Not much has changed since I visited over 15+ years ago and I definitely appreciate it more now when I needed to relax/recharge desperately.



My mom seemed to enjoy herself too.



The resort was not very crowded which was a very nice problem to have. :)

We didn't do a lot of sightseeing but we did manage to see a couple of things.

Wailua Falls

Spouting Horn

Plus a beautiful beach to walk on at low tide.

Stay tuned for our August 2nd vacation.....

Tuesday Evening

Last night the kids and I headed down to the Redondo Beach pier for some diversions. I brought along 2 cameras, a film SLR & a DSLR so the kids were wondering why I was taking twice as long. :)

My kids.

I got them dinner and ice cream so that was fine for them. It's kind of funny how Tyler "discovered" calamari so now I can order it and he will eat some also. I can't get over the fact that the boys are only 3 years apart yet the height difference is astounding to me!?! I guess what's more astounding is that Tyler's best friend, G is a year younger than Tyler and the same height as Joshua. I just have to face the fact that Tyler is in the 95th percentile just like when he was a toddler. (He was projected to be about 6'2"). Go figure.


The fish were biting last night as many families come down to fish. One man tossed his fish onto the ground for this bird. I didn't have my camera ready but the bird swooped down & held it in his beak for several seconds before gulping it down.

I've consulted my bird book and narrowed it down to a heron, possibly a juvenile. I'm going to look further into this...





The weather was mild and not at all chilly like it can be around here so that made our evening pleasant.



The clouds were so pretty and the sailboats were out en masse.



Overall, we had a nice evening with the fresh air and ocean.

Bowers Museum

We had a nice weekend. Not much planned which can be a relief sometimes. Tyler wanted to see Lucy's Legacy showing at the Bowers Museum. I've never been to this museum and we had a good time. Of course, the main attraction was Lucy and the next popular one was artwork of Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things are.

Bowers is not a super large museum but big enough to spend several hours enjoying everything. There were exhibits on early California artifacts which Josh learned about in 3rd grade, a scrimshaw exhibit and a few more.

I think Hector could spend all day reading everything while the kids and I can breeze through a museum fairly fast. :) We made our way through half of the museum and he was still in the Lucy exhibit.

I have a few photos from our day juggling both digital and film cameras. I'm saving the film rolls in batches so those will come later....

Spring Break: Instagram Style

Spring break came later than most schools but the kids school are very consistent in having their spring break the 2nd week of April.

I think I dropped the ball on telling H about the spring break dates because he wasn't able to get the time off but he said go ahead and take the kids on our annual Mammoth Lakes trip.

So off we went for 5 days to enjoy the mountains, snow and nature. :) It really is a great place to go. I made a conscious decision to leave my DSLR home and use my iPhone and my Canon A-1. It was definitely a learning experience.

I still have to finish up the roll of film in the A-1 so here are my Instagram photos to give you an idea of our trip.

Hike to Fossil Falls.

Wednesday at Mammoth Mountain.

With the later spring break, we were to able to enjoy the mountain with very little crowds. It was great. The kids are both learning snowboarding and it helps so much when they don't have to worry about people whizzing by them.

The first night/day there was some light snow so that was kind of fun. I think Tyler enjoys scraping the snow off the truck in a very limited way since it was sort of the one time thing. :) Thankfully, the new snow melted and I didn't have to deal with tire chains.

Our first morning.

Josh

Tyler

Lakes basin

The rest of the week was great. The weather was mild and sunny and the kids made some progress on their snowboarding. I'm pretty sure that Mammoth will be open until June so maybe we can squeeze another trip in there. :)