Exploring around Lompoc, CA

At the beginning of the month we went on our first vacation in over a year. Of course we traveled back home and to Spain for my brother's wedding in May, but traveling 5,000 miles while 8 months pregnant is not exactly my idea of a relaxing vacation. So, instead, we thought we would take three kids 3 and under on a long weekend to explore California. #weareprobablycrazy It was totally relaxing.

In all seriousness, we had a really good time. My brother Dan moved to California a little over a year ago, and we've been trying to go visit him and scope out his new stomping grounds since then. But you know, we've been busy with moving cross country and buying a house and having a baby and finding time to sleep. :)



So - we purchased four tickets through Spirit Airlines for the first weekend in October. Lover worked a half day on Friday and then we caught a direct flight from Denver to LAX. The kids all did great on the flight - it really helped that everyone (minus Declan) had their own seat, plus we brought Peanut's carseat on the plane. That really helped to cut down on her squirminess. She wasn't thrilled about being contained, but the flight was only about two hours so it was fine. By far the most challenging part of the trip was the time between deplaning and picking up our rental. It involved finding all our luggage (which of course included our two bags, backpacks, three carseats and our stroller), tracking down the shuttle and loading everyone into our rental car. I would have taken a picture, but we had no hands free. :)

We drove up the Pacific Coast Highway from LAX to Lompoc. (Just south of Santa Maria) The drive was really pretty, but we got stuck in some traffic and Declan was HUNGRY, so that made the first 45 min of our trip a little sticky. At one point Declan was screaming his head off, we were stuck in traffic so we couldn't pull over, and the other two kids started crying because Declan was so loud. We looked at each other and said "wow, I am SO glad that we went on vacation!" :) But, all was not lost, we found a place to pull over, fed the baby, handed out snacks to the big kids and were back on the road in no time. Or half an hour later. Same thing.





The drive was really pretty, and we had fun speculating just how much the homes in Malibu Beach cost. A quick Google search determined that a few were available for a mere 12 million dollars, so we're thinking that will be our next real estate purchase. :)

We met up with my brother in Santa Barbara for a walk on the pier and some dinner. I wish we had more time to explore Santa Barbara, but we'll have to save that for the next trip. :)

Saturday morning we puttered around the little town of Lompoc. This was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip, walking around the town, exploring the art murals and checking out the enormous stone pines. The kids had a blast finding the enormous pine cones and I walked and took pictures while Lover and Dan talked about topics way above my pay grade. Unfortunately, I seem to have deleted those pictures off my cards - which will teach me to never delete pictures EVER AGAIN. Here's a google image so you can see what the trees look like. Super cool.



Saturday afternoon we took an awesome drive through the mountains to Jalama Beach. It's fairly secluded and although there were quite a bit of campers, it was a windy day so the beach was pretty empty.



We walked for a long time down the beach, just enjoying the sun and playing chicken with the waves. Declan slept in the carrier, Peanut hung out on Lover's shoulders and Javi discovered his new love - the ocean! He had a blast and ended up soaked by the end of our time there. And he slept like a rock that night!





Sunday morning we headed into a little town called Solvang. It's a little Dutch town that looks like it came straight out of a Hans Christian Anderson story. It was jam packed with tourists, but it was fun to snap pictures and duck into the little shops. There are lots of little courtyards and hidden alleys. Dan said there are great wine tastings in the little shops there, so someday we will have to go back without the kids and have more fun exploring.

 We really packed a lot into three days! Sunday afternoon we drive up north a bit to check out the Guadalupe Sand Dunes. This is where they filmed Cecil D. Mills' The Ten Commandments, so that was really cool. What wasn't cool was the fact that some dumb bird is in danger of extinction, so the majority of the dunes (where we entered) were fenced off and you couldn't climb on them. Still, it was a pretty walk through the dunes down to the ocean, and we saw pelicans and tons of pretty flowers and then of course checked out the ocean. Although once we got to the actual beach Declan decided he had seen enough of the ocean so I didn't stay too long. All in all it was very pretty, but I would suggest driving a little further north (we entered at Oso Flaco) to see if you can walk around more on the actual dunes up there.



Monday morning we just bummed around the hotel, did some laundry (because of all the ocean!) and basically rested up for our big tour that afternoon. Dan pulled some strings and arranged for a VIP tour for us of SpaceX, the awesome place where he works. That's right, my brother is a rocket scientist. :) The launch pad is on Vandenburg Air Force base, and there's no photography allowed, which is a shame because the base is actually really beautiful. Gorgeous views of the ocean from the hills, and there are all sorts of interesting vegetation. It killed me a little bit to follow the no photos rule. But - it was awesome to tour the facility and see where Dan works and understand more of what he does. :)



Tuesday morning we got up at oh-dark-thirty, loaded up the kids and drove back down the coast to catch our flight back to Denver. It was a fast and furious trip, but it was so much fun to see Dan, meet his coworkers, eat lots of awesome Thai food, and explore around Lompoc. We'll definitely be back - there's lots more of California to explore!

Mountains in the Bedroom

That title makes me laugh, because currently I feel like everything is a mountain. We've been dealing with water issues in our house for a couple of days, and I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that WE WILL NEVER HAVE HOT WATER AGAIN. It's astonishing how many things need water to be able to do them! Baths! Showers! Dishes! Cleaning! Filling water bottles. But wait, let me back up. Two Saturdays ago my sunshine boy came down with a nasty stomach bug. We tag teamed the bouts of vomiting, scrubbed the carpet, and survived the horribleness that is watching your 3 year old dry heave every twenty minutes for an entire night. Then, the next night, right after we put little peanut to bed, we started the whole cycle all over again. A two year old vomiting is a bit more difficult than an almost four year old, so I finally decided it was easier to just do the laundry than fight with her to aim at the bucket. Cue non stop laundry, fit in between non stop vomiting. I'm pretty sure the constant washing was what put our decrepit water heater out of commission.

Mercifully, the next night, we got to sleep. The fourth night we were only woken occasionally. Which brings us to Wednesday morning. We had already canceled Life group when the second one came down with the bug, so at least that was taken care of. We had also purchased a carpet steamer so I was maniacally steaming carpets trying to get that nasty virus out of the house. Both kids were about 90% better though, so there was lots of 2 year old drama which is basically the straw that broke the camel's back when you are operating on 10 hours of sleep spread over four days and obsessively trying to clean your house. A friend made a benign comment and I nearly lost my irrational mind.

Thursday both kids were feeling better, so I did some laundry and started packing because, oh yeah, we were leaving for vacation on Friday morning! We were long overdue to visit my brother in California, and this was the first chance we had gotten to finally get on a plane and see him. When I went down to switch over the last load of laundry, I realized that the water heater was leaking all over the place. Leaking isn't really the right word. Flowing was more accurate. Then I realized that I smelled gas too! I stood there for at least an entire minute trying to figure out what to do because we have only lived here for six months so I didn't know where the water main was, didn't know how to turn off the gas and basically was pretty sure we were all going to blow up. Thankfully, after a quick call to Lover, my brain functions returned and I located the valve to turn off the gas. He came home and shut off the water, and then we looked at each other and thought - now what?

We got a quote that night to replace the heater, while I finished up packing and wrangled the now healthy kids, and scheduled a few more quotes for Tuesday when we returned. Basically we just sucked it up and took a freezing cold shower in the morning and then got on the place. Seriously, I couldn't feel my toes for a looong time. We shut off the water and asked the neighbor to keep an eye out for any issues and flew to the coast.

We had spent the weekend hemming and hawing, trying to decide between tankless and conventional tanked heaters. Ultimately we decided on tanked simply because tankless are like three times the price and we weren't prepared to drop that kind of cash at this particular time. Someone recommended a plumber who was licensed, insured, about $600 cheaper than everyone else, and could be here first thing Wednesday morning. We toughed out a chilly house last night and he was here bright and early this morning.

Of course, to replace said heater, the water had to be shut off for most of the morning. But our plumber finished up around 11, said to give the heater an hour or so to fill, and we were good to go. We waited about an hour, and then turned everything on and... Niagara Falls people. Gushing, flooding...frustration.

Anyways. The plumber came back as soon as possible, and an hour or so later we finally have both water AND hot water. All that to say, today I am showing you a quick and fun project that the kids and I did in our room. With mountains. To remind us that the things that seem insurmountable are not really that bad!

SO. Mountains. In the kids' shared room there is one wall that the closet is on that seemed like the prime candidate for a simple mural. See? Blank slate. It's been freshly painted but that's all.



I was inspired by a few different simple mountain murals I had seen on Pinterest, and I thought that the mountains, in fun bright colors, would be perfect in the kids' room. We started by taping off the basic outlines to get an idea of where everything would go and how many mountains we wanted. The kids thought this part was hilarious because the tape kept unsticking and sliding off the wall when I stood back to deliberate. We settled on a design with four mountains, all slightly different heights.



I bought some sample color pots for this project to keep costs down and so that we didn't have a lot of left over random paint. First we painted the two outside mountains a nice bright green. The paint didn't have great coverage, so it took 2 coats plus touchups to get a really good color on the walls.





 





 

 

 

 

I used my trusty foam roller for most of the painting. The kids got to help one at a time, with a roller with very little paint on it and my eagle eyes watching the carpet below us. We did the painting spread out over a couple of days - I would paint a coat in the morning, shut the door and threaten them within an inch of their life if they went in there without me, we'd do another coat in an hour or two and it would be dry by naptime. 

We used some of the dark blue from our bedroom for the other large mountain, and it also needed several coats. The design changed a bit from day to day since the tape kept falling down and little hands kept peeling the tape off too. :) When the green was dry I just taped over the green so that the blue would be nice and crisp. Honestly I think the taping took longer than the painting did for this project.



The last mountain was a raspberry pink. For that one I had to tape off all four sides of the mountain to protect the green and blue, and form the peak up top. 

And here is the finished product! I went in one day with a paper plate with a little bit of acrylic white paint and added the clouds. Javi supervised and told me where to put them. It's super fun and happy, and I love how simple and graphic it looks. It went a long way towards making their room a fun and happy place to hang out. I'm toying with the idea of hanging a toy airplane from the ceiling, or maybe a hot air balloon too. But my kids are... let's say rambunctious, and I could see that going poorly. I'll have to think about that one. :) I could also add a bright yellow sun in there somewhere. I bought the yellow paint but for some reason I just couldn't decide where it should go. Looking at the pictures though, I think it would make it even happier to have a yellow sun. I'll let you know what I decide. So - there you go. Simple, fun, easy to do with the kids and it really packs a punch in the color department. Hurray!