SNOW! (The Best Day)

I can't think of any time in my life when I would have declared New Year's Eve as the best day of the year.

But maybe, very possibly, this time it was.  The best for last.

In the very early morning hours of December 31, it started to snow here in Temecula.  Slowly, lightly, but snow it was. I woke the kids, per their requests.  (My Facebook feed was lit up all the previous day with locals talking about the forecast of predicted snow & wondering &  hoping & betting if it would actually happen.)

For context: this is Southern California.  About five miles north of the San Diego county line, our little valley sits at about 1,200 feet elevation. The temperature stayed in the 90s into early November, and the last time it snowed here was 2004. (And it sure didn't snow like this.) 

New Year's Eve was the best day. The longest day. We were up and outside around 1:30am, back inside for hot cocoa when it turned back to rain an hour later, asleep briefly and then up for good around 5:30am, when it started snowing in earnest. And of course, the kids still insisted on staying up until midnight, to ring in 2015. (We made it, barely. Also, I'm incapable of napping.)

The best day, the longest day.  Other words: Magical. Awesome. Amazing. Unbelievable. Magical, again. Narnia. The last day of the year! What a way to go, 2014.  We'll be talking about it...forever.

A Hike for the New Year

 On the first day of the new year, I roused my family from our holiday stupor (we didn't go out on New Year's, but we did stay up past midnight) and got us all out of the house for a hike.

This is the same way we entered in the new year last January, too. You can see pics from that hike here.

This year, we headed a bit north to the Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Preserve. It's only about 20 minutes north from us, plus a few minutes to climb west and into the foothills.

It was obvious that a whole lot of other people had my same idea, as it was busy, even in the mid-afternoon. 

I was so glad to be out in the open air, taking in the vistas and just feeling a part of the larger world.  Here are some photos of our day out, all taken with  my sucky camera phone.

The building you see is an old adobe, supposedly the oldest structure built in Riverside County, back when this area was settled by ranchers and cowboys.  The tree is  a big old oak that needed a hug. At least, that's what my Tucker said, and then he ran up and hugged it. 

I'm not sure what it is about the light, the sky, the long shadows, but these photos feel very quintessentially "Southern California winter" to me.  It's been a very mild and dry winter, a statement that probably makes you want to smack me upside the head if you live anywhere east of Arizona.  Sorry, Polar Vortex survivors.

But I do wish for some gray skies and a good dose or two of rain before the winter is done.

And this time, I AM speaking purely metaphorically.

Back soon.

Hello Monday {Solstice in Old Town}

Hola! 

It's Monday and I'm all worn out from a marathon, 14-hour day at the Disney parks yesterday. More on that later this week.

Today, I'm sharing some camera-photos from our Friday evening in our Old Town district. It was the summer solstice, and we ate on the patio of one of our favorite casual Mexican joints, Rosa's Cantina.

Then we strolled up the street toward the City Hall plaza, where the Street Art Festival that took place this past weekend was just getting started. By Saturday afternoon, the street is filled with chalk art drawn by local artists. I think anyone can enter in advance -- there were lots of young people in their late teens, alongside more serious artists.

The city also sets up two great big grid areas for children (or anyone, actually) to add their own art squares. The kids are given plastic gloves and a box of artist pastels and invited to get creative.  Of course my own kids were thrilled to jump in:

 After that, we got them cleaned up and strolled around town for a while... It was nearing sunset on the longest day of the year, and the streets were filled with a fairly even mix of both local families and tourists.

 And of course, it wouldn't be right to welcome in summer without stopping for ice cream. (Cotton candy flavored, for him.)

Hello to another week of summer vacation...the kids are in soccer camp this week, and it starts at 9am.  That's a welcome change, to be dressed and out the door early in the day.  We've been pretty laid-back around here. (Although we were out of the house before 7 to hit Disney yesterday.)

Hello to the last week of June...is it me, or has this been a realllly long month? Not in a bad way, but the first of June, back when the kids were still in school, already feels like ages ago.

Hello, Leon Day.  Do you celebrate? My husband is crazy about the holidays, and Leon Day (Noel, spelled backwards) marks 6 months until Christmas Day. I'll wake up tomorrow to carols and "Jingle Bell Rock" at my house. The kids are all excited about it. I like to think I'm the lone sane person here, rolling my eyes at the whole thing.

Hello to sweaty soccer clothes and pool time and probably some more ice cream thrown in there, too.

Hello to Tucker's Love Robot. You have to look hard, but it's got a great big red heart in its center (just like my sensitive, sweet boy).

Wishing you all a great first official week of summer.


Linking up with Lisa Leonard for Hello, Mondays.

Suburban Summer

 I know things have been slow around here.  And I mean that as acknowledgement, not apology. 

It's summer, after all.  I don't want to spend my mornings here before the monitor.  Plus, my little office nook at the top of the stairs gets mighty stuffy as the temps go up inside my house. 

What's been shaking?  Two trips to L.A. county within the week -- one for business, one to visit family.  ("Business" sounds so serious, when really I just needed an official copy of my birth certificate.)

A trip to our local sports park on the 4th to watch the fireworks, which capped off a long lazy day indoors, watching the Twilight Zone marathon.  (And really, what's more American than watching your 10-year-old really tune in and appreciate the creepiness of Talking Tina, or the one where the kids disappear into the alternate, happy reality at the bottom of their swimming pool?)

Also, a late afternoon picnic at a man-made lake here in town, in the middle of a housing development.  I walked behind while the kids scooted around the lake, stopping often to admire the swarms of small fish along the banks, the baby ducks, the turtle we spied swimming along.  

It was a perfect day.  The weather was in the low '80s, and breezy.  I bought ice creams off the truck that rolled by.  The patriotic bunting flags waved on the front porches of the faux Cape Cod bungalows that front the lake. It's like a set at Disneyland: the house fronts are charming and feature deep porches, and the sides are all stucco and sheetrock. The houses are crammed close on narrow lots.  Still.  It's cute.

Scattered along the path are fake animal tracks embedded in the concrete.  Every visit, I stop and explain to the kids that they're fake, and that a rabbit or duck wasn't just happening by on the wet cement.

Not that they care.  It's all part of the carefully created charm of the place.

Summer in the suburbs.  This is where I live. The ideal temps of last week have given way, and this week is gonna be a scorcher (but at least it's a dry heat.) 

Popsicles, board games, trying to vacuum and clean the house with house-bound kids. Maybe a drive out to the Sonic for an iced-slushie drink.  A walk down to our community pool, after a serious coating in SPF. 

Giving up and realizing there is no "clean house" with house-bound kids, and that the kitchen counter is going to always be a little sticky. 

It's not too charming around here, but it's about as real as it gets, and the sweet birdsong I wake to each morning isn't piped in by the Directors of Reality.  At least as far as I can tell. 

Love Where You Live: Weekend at Home

This is my second post in the Love Where You Live link up series, hosted by Design Mom. You can see my first post explaining where I live, here.
 

This was a wonderful weekend.  My husband might not agree, as he was taken down by the same head cold that I had the previous weekend. It's a sneaky little germ...you never feel all that awful, but you sure don't feel very swell, either. 

But sniffles and sore throat aside, I loved this weekend.  We didn't do all that much, but what we did felt just right.  Two soccer games on Saturday morning/afternoon, and both games were tied, which was just fine, too. No winners, no losers, just two hard fought games.

During Lily's soccer game, my cell rang: it was the mom of one of her two best friends, and they were trying to track Lily down to invite her to our neighborhood pool later in the day.  It was a hot day, over 90 degrees, and despite some initial grumbling and crankiness on my part while I did a quick mental inventory of our pool/sun supplies and ramped up my brain to get organized, it was a great afternoon.

The pool is in walking distance of our house (it's one of the amenities of our monthly HOA fees), and it seemed like half of the kids from school were already there, screaming and splashing around.  It felt like the unofficial Opening Day of Summer Fun. I'm glad we didn't miss it. 

Confession: this photo is from a previous summer. I wasn't organized enough to bring my camera.

I know this all sounds terribly pedestrian and suburban and even a little boring.  But the fact that I was happy to be home, not feeling restless and anxious to escape, sure feels notable to me.  Watching my son's excitement to play with his new friend at our park, walking to check on him and seeing him riding his bike with a small posse of other seven-year-old boys, made me understand, in a deep and fundamental way, that this is where I'm supposed to be right now:

This tract house, that may need a fresh coat of paint and some serious landscape help, but is within easy walking distance of the pool, the school, and next to a park.  This neighborhood, that can feel suffocatingly close and insular at times, but is full of other families who care about their kids, the school, and each other.  And this town, Temecula, which may not be where I dreamed of landing, but on this weekend of Saturday heat and Sunday breezes, felt and looked awfully idyllic.

On this Sunday, at least, I was at peace with being home, and with my own small backyard.  I was at peace with being here, this specific spot on the planet. I could say that I loved where I live.

Tomorrow, Wednesday I'll be back to my usual restless and roaming self, and will have a report on our quickie Spring Break escape up to San Francisco & Sacramento.

Elsinore Cruise

 Scenes from a Sunday drive.  We drove north on surface streets, avoiding the interstate, up to the town of Lake Elsinore.  Lake Elsinore gets a bad rap.  Maybe it's not unjustified, I don't know.  Even before I moved here to Temecula, which is about 20 minutes south on the freeway, I knew about it's white-trash reputation.

I know people who call it "Lake Smell-somemore." (The lake itself doesn't smell.)  I think the town is sort of charming in a rough and rowdy kind of way. There are a couple of seedy "casinos" near the lake, a few budget motels.  The old downtown district has a few good antique shops, a few bars and eateries, and constantly resists attempts to gentrify it and make it a destination. 

Whatever others might say, folks who live up on the hills overlooking the lake have an awfully nice view of water and trees and the mountains of the Cleveland National Forest to the northwest.  Interesting fact:  Elsinore is the largest freshwater lake in all of Southern California.  Interesting, because it's a natural lake, not man-made or a reservoir, like so many other lakes in the region.   Like most of the Inland Empire  (as this region is nicknamed), it has it's share of suburban sprawl and cookie cutter tract houses.  You can get a big house here for cheap, at least by SoCal real estate standards.  But those neighborhoods are further north and east of the lake area.  Around the lake, homes and apartments still have a lot of...character.

As we were driving through town, ZZ Top's "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers" was on the radio.  That felt pretty appropriate. Let's just say that the residents here seem a lot more laid back than us residents of prissy, uptight suburbia.  After touring Elsinore (but not around the entire lake, which is a much longer drive), we headed north again to the little farm-stand shopping area called Tom's Farms.  It was getting late. We had some mediocre Mexican food from one of it's two cafe's, then explored the Cheese & Wine shop.  Which looked just like a Cheese & Wine shop should look:

We didn't buy anything here. But the kids begged for and purchased some candy at the very well-stocked candy and nut shop across the parking lot. When we came out, the sun had slipped behind the hills, and it was getting chilly. 

 

Time to get back in our car and head down south for home,  another weekend in the can.

Hello, New Year

Hello, peeps.  I've been wanting to post here,  but after such a long absence again, there's the inevitable pressure to say something stupendous.  Like, "2011 will be the year I conquer Mt. Everest!" or, "2011 will be the year I sell my first book!"

No plans like that.  Let's just say...hmmm. Maybe 2011 will be the year I really commit to my writing schedule, which was going along okay, until HOLIDAY 2010 hit my household like a Mack truck.  Or, let's just say...maybe 2011 will be the year I commit a little better to the old blog, here.  I'm a bit chagrined that the blog, which purports to be about "nesting" (at least some of the time), hardly ever ever mentions the subject.  So I'd like to change that.

For now, here are a couple pictures that make me smile.  On New Years Eve, my family went ice skating at the temporary rink our city installs in the Old Town district.   I was taking some pictures of my daughter (who did about 110% better with her ice skating compared to last year, when she spent almost the entire hour either clinging to the rail, or landing hard on her bum).  At home, reviewing the pictures, I noticed the young couple behind her.  Ah! Young love!

Young love on ice (the blue tie-dyed girl is mine).

It's like a commercial for diamond engagement rings!

So, a belated Happy New Year to you and yours. If you're at all like me, you're just finding your footing and balance going into this brand new year, anyhow.  (Which was not supposed to be a bad ice skating metaphor, but I guess that works, too.)

Weekend Recap: Deer Park Winery & Car Museum

It occurs to me that we visit a lot of interesting places.  In the 100-mile radius or so surrounding our town here in inland Southern California, we are quite well-traveled.  We live in one of those boomtowns of new suburbia where hardly anyone is a native (we're practically old timers ourselves, closing in on our sixth year), and there's just not a helluva lot to do and see around here on weekends. Mall: check! Old Town: check! Parks with no trees: check! check! check!

(I realize that simply by signing the kids up for soccer and other sports leagues, we could easily solve this issue, and have most weekends booked up for the next 10 years. Let's  just say that we're not a very sporty tribe -- and I'll cross that bridge only if and when a kid makes a specific request.)   

ANYWAY.....My point here is that most weekends, we spend at least one day on the road to somewhere else. (Please, Lord, just somewhere, anywhere else...)  Sometimes it's to visit my mom in L.A. county. Sometimes it's just to shop at some other mall or "shoppertainment" destination besides our local one.   In any case, we do see us some sights.  I'd like to start sharing them with you, in a weekly photo feature called "Weekend Recap"  (for want of a catchier title.)   Hopefully they won't always take a full week later to show up here.   Sheesh.

Here's where we went last Sunday, January 10:  the Deer Park Winery & Car Museum. It's about 25 minutes south of us, on the northern edge of Escondido. Originally collected by Robert Knapp, it's now run by his son. The museum boasts a wide range of classic convertibles, some pre-1940, and most from the '50s & '60s.

 

 

There was also an extensive collection of old electronics and appliances. I really need this beauty in living room. 

Don't you agree? I sort of forget to broadcast it much here on the blog, but I'm quite the aficionado of things vintage, retro and just plain old.

It was quiet  and mostly empty of visitors on this beautiful and warm winter day. Here are The Monkeys and Myk out in the vineyard area between the two main buildings.
 

"Quiet and mostly empty" will not apply to this weekends outing: the Monster Jam monster truck show at Anaheim Stadium. "VRRROOOM."