Hermosa, Manhattan, Big Bear, San Clemente & RV trips.

Quite the summer adventure and it continues.. We packed up our apartment in Boulder end of May, we had a great winter and spring there, loved our place on Mapleton Ave (even with the 2 month roof construction project), we loved being in our own space, we loved our roomates Daniel and Scott, we had lots of kids over and stayed home and played games a ton.. the highlights of Boulder were Magic Tournaments ( 2 nights a week and Luc got to play legos with Tris and mommy got time alone, of course i went to yoga... ), Kids Night Out at the Longmont Rec Center (and of course time with our best buds Ryan, Connor, Kaia and Noah), Sleep Overs with Tim, Joey and Miranda.. oh how I miss them, 3 of the most beautiful and amazing kids I know, rock climbing and hiking at Mt Senitas, Clay Class with Mira at her awesome house up Boulder Canyon, Improv Class at Rocky Mntn Theater for kids, hanging with our friends Eya, Oliver, Levi, Jaylin, Tony & Hattie, Will and Nickie, our unschoolers park day, visiting the Planetarium, dancing at Rhythm Sanctuary on Thurs nights and the kids who showed up to play legos!!

But Daddy was in California and had only seen kids for a few days at a time on visits so we had to come out and have more daddy time and visit all the relatives in LA. We started with a week in Hermosa Beach, took a 12 day RV trip with my sis Melinda and her kids Hope and Austin up to Santa Rosa, camped in Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay on the beach, went to SF (melinda had not been there before), visited the Exploratorium (the most fun Science Museum in SF), saw the Redwoods, swam in the Russian River and went to the Harmony Festival (great music, shopping, eco green village, lectures, dancing, frolic, hooping). Reese was Mr Independent, he had his own phone and was off and exploring on his own most of the weekend.

We spent a very relaxing week in San Clemente at our timeshare, did very little, played at the beach, shuffleboard, ping pong, swam, chilled and played lots of games with my mom & Bryan, Mindy and kids.. my boys had a blast with Daddy playing games, they love beating him ...

We rented a studio apt in Manhattan Beach for a month and really enjoyed the beach, homeschooler park day, beach day, speech club (yes Reese made quite a showing one week when he won all 3 awards in one day, best speech, best impromptu and best evaluator!), my girlfriend Colleen who moved her brood up to Canada was in town for a month visiting and we loved seeing them!

Highlight of the summer were the 2 productions the kids got to do: Sleeping Beauty (Reese played the Prince Philip who delivers true loves kiss to awaken the princess and Luc played a goon working for the evil Malificient, he was a scream! Also got to do Annie and Reese played Rooster Hannigan the down on his luck brother of Ms Hannigan who pretends to be Annie's parent to collect the reward, Luc played a dog catcher (his big line.. seen any strange mutts around here? ), a policeman, a laundry boy and a servant of Oliver Warbucks.. he was a busy little guy. The boys were both amazing, they spent 40-50 hours in rehearsal time on each show in just 10 days each! They made great friends, showed great maturity dealing with all the down time as they rehearsed multiple casts and of course memorized every song and everyone's lines in both shows! Mommy got a few hours to herself and enjoyed lots of Bikrim Yoga, runs on the beach and time with friends! Nothing quite like the joy of watching my kids work really hard, be really passionate about something and perform so beautifully on stage!

singing the songs..

One of the best parts of spending the summer in Hermosa Beach is the family theater group we've participated in the last 3 summers. Thanks to Alexis the boys got to do High School Musical 2 summers ago and fell in love with musical theater! Reese will be playing Rooster in Annie next Saturday and he is thrilled to always be cast in lead roles. We listen to the songs non stop, they practice for 5 hours a day for 2 weeks straight and then the performance. Luc will be playing multiple roles as a cop, laundry man, dog catcher and radio station worker.

Last night Luc and I lay in bed and he was singing one of the songs in Annie that has a line "I'm richer than Midas", Daddy Worbucks sings the song after his heart has opened finally as Annie enters into his life and he realizes how lonely and unhappy he was (despite his wealth and success) when he had no one to truly love.
"Who's Midas?' Luc asks and we have a whole discussion about King Midas and how love makes you rich not possessions. But money is useful for getting stuff you want, luc commented.. but we are rich in love, that's for sure.. then he started asking about President Roosevelt (who is in the Annie play). "We're white right mom? yes, "was President Roosevelt white?" yes, but Obama is not right? right, "who is the second black president mom?" well there is no second, Obama is still in office and he is the first.. "there is a lot of brown people in the world huh?', yeah.. then he sings 3 lines from "Tomorrow, tomorrow I love ya tomorrow, you're always a day away".. and sings himself to sleep..

radical neglect is all i can say..

In May of 2009, we left Boulder mid month headed to Nevada, picked up our RV and drove it to Portland for the Life is Good
Unschooling Conference. We ended up spending 2 full weeks hanging with the unschoolers in Portland, who by the way have an unschoolers park day every day of the week in some area of Portland.. wow..

The parks in Portland are amazing, huge, the most beautiful trees I've ever seen.. we went to a different park everyday, exploring many areas of the vast city of Portland and really enjoyed our time connecting with many we met from the conference. I also had several nice visits with my great aunt Louise, my Grandma Dorothy's only living sibling.. they are the 2 youngest of 5 kids and it's just them still here..

We left Portland and headed south to the coast to visit my friend Lily who lives at the beach, got craving seeing our friends and family in LA and dropped our RV off and headed for Southern California

loving this traveling..

Hermosa Beach, Ventura, Carlsbad, Arcadia, Boulder.. I am loving this .. after 7 weeks in LA, so much fun with friends at the parks and beaches, several visits with Grandma Dorothy, helping her get packed to move to her beautiful new 2 bedroom mobile home in Thousand Oaks, moving away from LA has made me REALLY appreciate the wealth I have here! We headed back to Colorado and busied ourselves with a fun history class one of the homeschool moms is teaching, Reese played in his first GO tournament, we attended Homeschool Day at the Denver Botanical Gardens, fun afternoons with our homeschool tween group, and a field trip to an Alpaca farm (that also had a camel and several Llamas -who act as guard dogs for the Alpacas). We got to watch the babies nurse!
We squeezed in some sleepovers and played in beautiful sunshine as well as several snow days and then mommy drove to Santa Fe for a long weekend of satsang with Neelam to renew and rejuvenate and come back centered, present and smiling!!

Then I got an email invitation to go camping with 20 or so homeschool families in Joshua Tree and I quickly ditched my ideas of home the RV had spoiled me on tent camping.. and off we went for some outdoor adventure.
All of our camping gear was packed away in a garage in Hermosa Beach, so we bought a $20 tent from Walmart and a $20 air mattress, borrowed a few sleeping bags and were just fine thank you very much! Tons of rock climbing, awesome community meals and relaxation and hiking and the highlight was one of the dads organized a Magic cards tournament (got decks for all the kids) and Reese has a new passion..

Legoland rocks!!

Thanks to the awesome Homeschooler Discount we got to spend a day playing at Legoland which was Luc's greatest wish after missing out on the Reese and daddy day at Disneyland on his bday. It cost us $50 and the normal cost was about $150, so already I was in a good mood. Being almost 6 Luc got to drive a car in the big kid driving school, that was fun to watch. It was empty so we rode every ride several times without even getting off to get back in line, you just can't beat that. We are so spoiled always going to amusement parks mid week off season, that waiting in a 5 minute line seems like forever!
One of the real treats was waiting for us in miniland, they had a lego creation of the Obama Inauguration at the Capital Building, Reese loved seeing that. We watched the event just a few days prior at Judy and Sierra's house and the kids were really impressed with all of the emotion with seeing Obama sworn in. We saw a very cool 4D Lego movie and of course stayed until the park closed and we were all worn out.

Reese turns 9!!!

Before we headed back to Colorado, we spent a few days visiting Grandma Dorothy helping her pack to move to her beautiful new mobile home and also visiting Judy, Sierra & Canyon in Ventura. The downtown area of Ventura is so cute and we had a great time playing at the beach there watching the surfers and building forts out of giant sticks. Sierra invited Reese to attend her homeschoolers art class and he came home with some beautiful watercolors. When we arrived Sierra had made a cake for Reese to celebrate his 9th birthday, such a warm welcome and we can't wait to visit again. Our big adventure was a day trip to Ojai and a relaxing soak in the woodsy hotsprings.
My big score was picking as many tangerines as I could carry on one of our walks and I ate them for the next 2 weeks.
OH I miss picking fruit off a tree in the middle of winter.

One big party here..

The 6 week trip we had in Hermosa Beach was one endless celebration! My sister Keyanna turned 18 in December! Then Christmas of course, we had Christmas eve with mom's family and Christmas day with my stepmom Lynne and a huge dinner for 30 that she prepared on Christmas night, oh and we also celebrated Hanukkah since my other sister Myev had converted to Judaism (she cooked Ladkas and said all the prayers and we lit candles every night), Then in January... Myev's birthday, Lynne's birthday, Reese's birthday and on the same day my 17yr AA birthday! We had 3 different parties for Reese's birthday, two with family and one with friends and then he played lazer tag and also went to DisneyLand on his actual birthday.. for free of course! How cool is that. All of this occurred in just one month, I am exhausted just writing about it.
We also planned a memorial for my Grandpa Bill who died the day after Christmas, it was moving and lovely and it was very good to gather with my Grandma, her sister and all their kids and the kids kids, my sister Myev sang Amazing Grace, I read a poem that I wrote, we told stories and ate of course. My grandpa was ready and I was glad that he was able to move on to the next big adventure, whatever that is.