Family Reunion and Southern California Adventures (Part I)

Over President's Day weekend, my whole family came to town for a vacation. The weather was unseasonably amazing, which was great, but mostly it was just really fun to be with everyone.

The first people to roll into town were Grandma and Poppy. We enjoyed showing them around our neck of the woods. Laura & Bret came the next day and we all took a trip down to our favorite beach.

Poppy and Norah. Classic.

Nathan is so strong he can hold Norah up just by his fingertips. I didn't write this, apparently.

One interesting tidbit from our beach visit is that a movie crew had just wrapped up a shoot. The set was for a film coming out this summer called 'Knight and Day,' with this beach scene to be set in Chile. So if you decide to see it, just be sure to imagine Norah inserted into that scene somewhere.

Poppy and Grandma applauding Norah's acting.

"I'll be in my trailer."

The next day the rest of the family arrived and we met up at one of our favorite spots in Orange County.

I must comment that the weather was indeed perfect. In February.


Once again, Amy refused to cooperate for family photos. So typical.

Norah was fired up to hang out with cousins.

There was digging.

And excavating.

And a lot of fun getting our feet wet.

It still kind of blows my mind that this is where we live, and that doing stuff like this is the norm for a weekend. That said, having family around takes the experience from awesome to 11.

(more trip highlights to come)

Visitors!

Last month we were lucky to have some great visits from family. A couple of weeks ago my sister Laura came to town to spend a few days with us while her husband was in Brazil for work. For those of you that also read Laura's blog these photos will be awfully familiar (seeing as I blatantly poached them from her), but she is the one with the photo-taking skills, so we let her do the documenting while she was here.


While much of the time was spent just hanging around, taking naps, and doing the day to day stuff, we did manage a few fun outings— including a couple trips to the beach...










(as well as more than one trip to Tito's Tacos, and more than one trip to Crumbs Bakery :)


...and a gorgeous sunny day in Santa Monica.




Thanks for coming sister! We loved having you and are already missing you big time.


Laura's visit was also sandwiched between two great weekends with Nathan's parents– one down in Orange County, and one here with us. Turns out California is a much bigger draw in January for visitors than New York was :).