It Belongs to Big Bear

It was our 4th year doing the Big Bear cabin, and while the attendees may vary slightly, we've been a regular fixture since it's always been over AJ's birthday weekend and it's exactly what he wants to do.

This felt like the first year we got a little break in the sense that we got to let Sophie go rogue - didn't have to stress about her going down staircases (it's a five-story cabin) and she plays with others and they can entertain each other with their games and fun. Of course, we had to worry about all of that with Summer, and chase her around, and every year, more kids are added to the mix, and the bigger ones are getting bigger and crazier so it's in no way relaxing and we often remind each other "we're doing it for the kids!" To give you an example, Greg made eggs to have for the kids and adults for breakfast one more and he used 36. And we still had tons of eggs and people still ate other things. But that's the chaos we're faced with.

That being said, it was a super special year because of all the fresh snow and the face that we got to be there while it was snowing as well. Sophie was in Elsa heaven.

We drove up Thursday night which was right in the middle of the storm. It was a horrendous drive. AJ was fine, since he's lived in Canada and was a mountain regular for snowboarding, but I was having a panic attack and was very relieved that the girls were asleep.

We were the first ones up there and one of my favorite memories was within those first few hours, when we had the full cabin to ourselves, Summer was asleep, and AJ, Sophie and I sat on the couch watching Frozen with popcorn and the snow coming down outside. Not your typical California evening!

The Star Wars drive up

Sophie seeing the snow for the first
time since she slept on the drive up

Chris and AJ seasoning the meat for the weekend

Mah babays!

Snow fun in the morning

Bryce had a shovel and Sophie wanted
something and she was fine with a broom haha

Snow snacks

I made the mistake of turning the tub jets
on after having put in a lot of bubble bath
and Sophie practically drowned in the 
bubbles lol

Building their snowman

Chris was a great project manager

Making daddy's birthday cake

Happy Birthday AJ!

A calm evening lol

We are all so thankful for Dave and
his energy to play with and entertain
this growing group of kids

Summer became obsessed with pushing
the cooler around

Sophie's Elsa braid

The babysitters that came with were great with hair and did a braid for Sophie (which isn't super easy since her hair is pretty short) and she was just in love.

When we were down the mountain, her blue hair tie came out and she was beside herself upset saying "Oh no! My hair tie! It belongs to Big Bear!" and while I appreciate her honesty and integrity, it took awhile to calm her down.

The girls did great both up and down the mountain since we drove at good sleeping times, and AJ and I actually did a great job unloading and unpacking and laundering when we got back so we started the week off pretty fresh, so that's something I guess.

Glad we have another year of memories.

Kate Middleton Day Updates

Happy Kate Middleton Day to all who celebrate. My life is absolute chaos right now, and that's not even taking into account the external chaos of the US's National Day of Mourning for Jimmy Carter today and these horrible, awful, devastating wildfires happening up in LA right now. I hate seeing what's happening.

Well, I have a few minutes to work on some updates, so here you go.

Since I last updated, Sophie had a school performance in which she was just darling and also did amazing! I was expecting her to freeze up but she really was leading the pack in their dance!

We had more Christmas joy by decorating cookies for Santa with our friends...

and I didn't want to give up the tradition I started with Sophie the year before but baking a small batch of our cookies as well.

...and set them out for Santa on Christmas eve, with milk and reindeer carrots.

We had a nice Christmas enjoying our home before going out to see more family in the afternoon. It was a fun, full day.

...and that was the last day of peace that we've had. We planned to get through Christmas as normal as possible, and then after that was straight packing and planning for our move, which has become the most hellish journey I have been on in a while and is still going on. It was amazingly impossible with the girls home, and surviving moving with two young kids at home (also on break) was an amazing feat of strength (which I'm not sure I actually accomplished). But before things got too awful, the girls had a visit from Summer's Padrinos and loved playing in the boxes.

One morning at the zoo and then back to pack

Before moving had happened, I already arranged my outing with Iris to the Warner Bros studio tour to include the trip to Stars Hollow that was ABSOLUTELY. MAGICAL. The warm, cozy, lovely hug that is just watching Gilmore Girls every year was right there, in front of our faces, and we got to wander around and buy so much stuff we couldn't resist and they were playing music from the show and we really felt like we were there and it was just so lovely and calming and heartwarming! Worth every penny, worth the insane traffic we were caught in on the way home. Also, we did trivia at the Black, White and Read movie theatre and I won second place! (I won a $9 magnet that Iris had bought 10 minutes previous lol) 10/10 would recommend, want to return every year! 

We were so early, we found a place nearby
for breakfast and loved this for EVERY reason!

Selenasssssss!

The real Oscar for one of the Lord
of the Rings movies

Lorelai's house!

The mailbox, which included Rory's
acceptance letters from Harvard, Princeton
and Yale!

Lorelai's Jeep!

The gazebo!

Luke's diner!

For some perspective lol

The Independence Inn and sleigh

We were still in the throes of moving on New Year's Eve, but we committed to our new tradition of celebrating live with New York so us with kids can be in bed by midnight lol and it was so much fun! Sophie really caught up to some of these older kids and it's been nice having the older kids run around and play more.

We have spent these first few days of January still moving and settling in. It's nice that the girls are back in their routines, and while AJ and I are also back to work, we spend our evenings still working on the house and will be for awhile, although we're looking forward to the weekends to have more time for it all and make bigger strides. But honestly, we're past the worst of moving and loving this nest of ours.

Happy New Years friends, there is a lot of year left to hopefully bring some wonderful things about, including an end to the fire and working on rebuilding, we'll be looking for opportunities to help and do what we can.