Laguna Beach

We went to Laguna Beach to spend the night at Derik and April's house. April is Eric's step Sister and the person that set us up on a blind date 14 years ago.

Their house is amazing and has beautiful views of the ocean, but I think my kids favorite thing about their house is the golf cart. They spent hours in the evening playing on the golf cart as you can imagine in the morning they were the 1st ones on the cart ready to head to the beach.

I learned that there is a very fine line between joy and torture. Lucy loves bugs and animals and loves to touch them, it brings her joy.

She found this sand crab and carried it around even after we got back to our house. She would take it out and brush it with a little paint brush to "clean it" . I knew she thought she was being loving and taking care of it, but I felt like I could hear the little crab screaming "Save me, please someome!". She wanted to take it to church on Sunday, but I said no. Today it is no longer alive, but Lucy doesn't mind. She still thinks it's just as cool as ever.

When she was not in the water, Ruby spent her time putting sand on her head and all over her body.

After the beach we went swimming at the pool and then went home, showered and then took the trolley into town.

We had to wait for an hour to get into Pomodoro, a yummy Italian restaurant. Everyone was hungry so we took the kids across the street to get some candy as an appetizer to hold them over until dinner.
It was worth the wait. The food was delicious.

We had a great time hanging out with Derik and April and their kids. I can't even imagine living in Laguna Beach, it is so beautiful!

The 4th at Lake Arrowhead

A few highlight from the 4th of July:

Epiphany and Ruby hanging out at the dock


Lucy, Haley and Josephine rowing around the dock


Ruby and Lucy LOVED the boat rides, and especially loved uncle Tyke's driving!



Lucy fishing on the dock with Aunt Gina

Lunch at the dock.
I am not a fan of peanut better and jelly, but it was so fun eating it red, white and blue bread!

The best part is going out on the boat to watch the fireworks over the lake and hear the booms echo off the mountains. This year Eric and Richard took out all the kids (2 adults/ 10 kid) in the boat.



I watched the fireworks from the deck of the house and made brownies.
After they all got back we had hot brownie sundaes and the kids threw poppers all over the deck.

We were on vacation so ... in the morning cake for breakfast!

Not pictured:

Uncle Dan making us laugh so hard it hurt. Like when he held up a huge bottle of Vodka and yelled to Haley in Jensen's Market "Haley should we get Aunt Kim some of her "special" water?

Staying up until 1:30 in the morning talking about religion and politics (3 Catholics, 2 Mormons and Uncle Dan- the devils advocate).

Outlet shopping at the village- I got a cute pair of jeans for $7!

The green shag carpet in the upstairs bathroom that reminds me of getting up super early to water ski as a little kid.

All the great memories that I remembered just walking around the house!

The 4th of July

If I had to pick my favorite day of the year, no question it would be the 4th of July. #25 & #26 here explain why.

Growing up, my Grandma "Tutu" (a nickname because she refused to be called Grandma) had a house up at Lake Arrowhead.

( Check out the decorations that Richard put up. The flag was hung between two trees and lit up at night)

We would visit Tutu and her husband Bob often, but I really LOVED going there for the 4th of July every year. The house was full of cousins (all girls). We always woke up to the smell of bacon and headed down to the boat to be ready to water-ski at 6am when the water was like glass. The highlight was always going out on the lake on the night of the 4th to watch the fireworks over the water. The fireworks reflect off the water and the booms echo off the mountains. It really makes it hard to watch a firework show anywhere else after having watched one on Lake Arrowhead.

Long story made short, my Uncle Tyke owns the house now and we still go up every year that we can. This year it was my cousin Kim, her husband Richard, 5 of their 6 kids. Eric, I and and our 3 girls. Tyke and his new wife Bev.

We had a great time and did lots of fun stuff with the kids.

Indoor art projects

They all got to make their own pizza for dinner


But the highlight if the past few days for me was having my kids do all the same things that I loved about Arrowhead as a kid.

Watching my kids in "the Getaway" the yellow boat that I used to spend hours on and learned to waterski behind. Fyi- this boat was named after one of my Grandpa Bud's movies and was purchased the same year I was born, so we are both looking a little old.

Playing on and fishing from the docks and paddeling around in a blow up boat.

Ruby and Grace

Haley and Austin

My cousin Gina, My Sister Tiffany and me as kids.

Me playing on the dock as a kid.
Playing in the "club house". A large storage closet that gets super hot but kids still think is the coolest room in the house. I used to play barbies in here for hours.
Riding up in the old elevator that I used to think was the coolest thing in the world. Now my girls think it's the coolest thing in the world.

Watching all the Blue Jays and chipmonks out on the deck. This year we even saw a LARGE racoon one night.

Ok, so clearly they were not happy about having to pose for this photo, but overall we had a great holiday and a wonderful time bonding with cousins and getting to know our new Aunt Bev!

My Grandpa Bud and Hollywood

What an amazing day. Where to start?

My Grandfather did special effects and photographic effects for several big movies. The photo above is the bridge he blew up in The Wild Bunch. The director (Sam Peckinpah) was so happy with his work that he insisted Bud get a credit. Bud became the first from Warner Brother's special effects to get his name on a Warner Bros. film.

Several years ago The Warner Brothers museum contacted my Mom about her father and wanted to know if she would be willing to loan them some of his items for their museam. My Mother was more then happy to and has loaned them several items.

Jump forward 15 years...my Mom, sister and I are all back in Burbank for my Aunt's funeral. My Mom called the curator and asked if she could bring her grandkids by to view the exhibit. He said that they currently have all the Harry Potter costumes and props on display, but he would be happy to take us to the studio archives to see their Great Grandfather's things. First we took all the kids to see the Harry Potter exibit- oh so cool. Everything is out not under glass, so children are normally not permitted, but with the curator as our tour guide all our children we able to go. It was quite the olympic event making sure the younger ones did not touch anything. We were not allowed to take any photos, but he had someone take a polaroid of each o the kids with the sorting hat on. Then we did a group photo with the hat on my Mom. They also had a display with tons of stuff from the show Friends. Oh I loved it!







After we finished at the Museum we all drove to the archives. This was a huge unmarked building in Burbank just filled with unbelievable treasures.
Such a once in a lifetime opportunity.



There was a wall full of original schetches, he pulled out one of Scooby Doo. As the curator he was full of all kids of intresting facts. Like that when they presented the original concept for Scooby Doo it was not well liked, so they added a dog and called it Scooby Doo.



These were some items that were on a shelf next to the boxes with my Mom's name all over them. If you can zoon in on the photo, you may recognize some of the films... My Fair Lady... Casablanca, ever heard of those?



An original movie poster from one of my Grandfather's movies.



Next the highlight of the day for me. We are ohhing and aweing over all the cool stuff and he starts taking out some paper filing boxes and looking through a file, He pulled out my Grandfather's employment information. The original paper he filled out when he started with Warner Brothers, his pay information. It was so cool to see his handwriting. I was completly shocked to see that he made $675 a week in 1969! ***Edit**it was 1949. My Mom used to joke that he made $100 a day and her Mom spent $110 dollars a day. I just thought that was a figure of speech.



Here are a few props you might recognize:


One of the red scooters from Willy Wonka with the fake glue on back that they used to put up the signs. We also saw a Wonka bar and some Umpa Lumpa glasses on someone's desk. So cool!





The outfit that our Governor used to wear


A huge room with racks and racks up to the celing with clothes from TV shows (like Friends) and tons of movies.




The clothes from Willy Wonka


Ruby in front of the bat girl costume


We ended the day with dinner at the Bob's Big Boy on Riverside- one of my favorite places to eat as a kid.






I took so many photos and saw so many cool things, it was really an amazing day, I hope that my kids will remember. I'm sure my plethora of photos will help.

***EDIT- I forgot to mention that Ruby pointed to the original Wonder Woman costume on a mannequin and told the curator "That is not modest", he agreed.

My Aunt Alice

It was only about 2 weeks ago that I posted about our family reunion to show my Aunt Alice how much we all love her.



Eight days after that reunion she passed away. I don't think anyone expected her to go so quickly. Her Daughter described her death as a "beautiful death, if death can be beautiful". She was surrounded by her family and lots of love. Her Funeral was today, so again my Mom flew into town and my Sister drove down with her whole family.

It was a large very traditional Catholic church funeral mass. My kids had tons of questions about what was going on and unfortunately I could only answer a few of them. At the church my girls kept looking at me like "why are you crying?". At one point Lucy took a Kleenex out of my purse and was dabbing under her eyes. She was not crying at all but just thought that was the thing to do since I kept doing it.

At the graveside although I had drilled my girls not to stand on grave markers, Lucy did. I love this photo of her checking out this marker, it is actually where Aunt Alice's parents are laid to rest.



Afterwards they had a beautiful lunch served in the same backyard that we stood two weeks ago as Alice passed out bags of her jewelry to all the women and girls in the family. At the time it felt so sad and awkward but today as I saw all the granddaughters wearing her necklaces and pins ect. It felt just right and I know that's how Alice would have wanted it.


Again we took a photo of all the grandkids, this time without Alice. After everyone snapped a bunch of photos we told them to do whatever they wanted, this was my favorite photo of them all.

I know that we should celebrate the person's life and I know that she is happier now and this was a blessing because she was so sick, but I am still terribly sad and know (from loosing my own Father) how hard it is going to be for her daughters and her grandkids.