Back To Where I Once Belonged

This is my family.

The other half of my family, the half that made me. This is also the family with only TWO kids -- one who used to live in Hawaii and now lives in California, and one who used to live in California and now lives in Hawaii. Funny, that.

Speaking of which, here's my brother Eddie, who drove down from Northern California in a single, mind-boggling, 14-hour shot to spend a week with us during our visit. He would sit here in the back family room of our parents' San Clemente home nightly, holding court over spectacular sunsets, making his evening plans with his many pals around town.

Never one to shirk my responsibilities as a pain in the ass older sister, here I am harassing him with my camera as he tries to wrangle his feral mane of blond hair into a manageable pony tail after using gobs of this product:

And finally, a shot of our faces fewer than 24 hours after Eddie had a nasty Pacific Ocean run-in with an errant body boarder whose errant swim fin scraped errantly across my brother's entire left eye. After which Ed grumbled a few errant expletives but restrained himself from taking the young but oblivious grommet on a one-way trip to Errantland.

But back to Grandma and Opa, who were our gracious hosts for the majority of our nearly one-month visit to California. We had a chance to spend lots of time together.

Better still, Grandma and Opa enthusiastically took on a significant amount of childcare detail during our stay, so John and I had plenty of chances to spend lots of time together. Away from the kids.

I had forgotten how nice a quiet meal can be. Thanks, guys!

As for the kids, though, here's just a photo sampling of the prince and princess during their reign in the Land of Perpetual Yes, where every whim and heart's desire was indulged. Week after week.

For Shea, this meant, among other treats, homemade pancakes for breakfast every morning.

For Finney, this meant someone being available to play repeated games of SkipBo with him at a moment's notice.

And for both kids, this meant being able to bake cookies, go for walks, have ice cream in the harbor, go to the circus, spend a weekend in Big Bear, go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, or, well, you get the picture.

Or in this case, the pictures.