San O: A Tale of Six Summers

During the summer of 2002, when Finney was about a month old, John and I took him to Old Man's at San Onofre State Beach for his very first beach day. Here's a rough scan of his baby scrapbook, marking that momentous rite of passage as a Southern Californian.

A year later, that little baby somehow became a toddler, and it was at San Onofre where he practiced taking his first steps.

Then, when that little toddler turned two, we held his birthday party at San Onofre, under the Dogpatch palapa. Here's a scan of his baby book page commemorating that day.

The next year we welcomed a little sister for Finn, and promptly initiated sweet Shea into the San Onofre lifestyle.

And, just like her brother, that small babe turned into a toddler, stumbling across the sand, growing more confident with each wobbly step. Again, we visited San Onofre.



And yet again.



And then we moved to Hawaii, which has countless gorgeous beaches, but no San Onofre. So we were delighted to visit our old summer playground -- "San O" -- for an evening barbecue and campfire with Cari and her family during our mainland vacation.

What It Do, Logie Boo?

Remember these adorable three-year-old preschoolers, winding their way through a pumpkin patch hay maze back in 2005?


Well they're six years old now and in the first grade, but would like you to know that they're still very much pals and friends and best boogie boarder buddies and all that good stuff. And can you just step a little to the left, please, so we can play with this video game?

One of our first matters of pressing business while in California was to log some serious play time with Finney's buddy Logan and his family. Here the kids are at the local park, eating Kultured Kitchen frozen yogurt, playing chase with the bigger kids, and being generally puppy-dog adorable.

Part of our grand vacation plan included scheduled kid-free Mommy time for Gina and me, so we made sure to get it inked in long before our plane's wheels even touched the ground at LAX. Here we are with Cari outside the restaurant where the three of us had a lovely dinner, and later at one of San Clemente's best old dive bars, The Red Fox Lounge (which, sadly, due to a slow, city-wide gentrification over the last decade or so, isn't red, foxy, or even all that loungey anymore. We had a good time anyway).

Before our vacation was over, we were even able to get the Dads involved for some quality barbecue, corn on the cob, homemade macaroni and cheese -- and surf talk. Jerry, you see, is a real-life master surfboard shaper by trade and -- how cool is this?!? -- made John a custom surfboard during our visit to match his height, weight and even paddling-distance tendencies. Now that we're home in Hawaii again and the new board has cured, John's like a kid on Christmas morning every weekend riding his very own new, shiny tricycle. In the water.

Once again, good times all around.

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.