May 25th – Irvine Regional Park with Family
You getting sick of reading about us spending time with our family yet? Truth is this last couple weeks have proved to be some of my favorite moments of my life. We are so blessed to have such amazing family from Canada to Hawaii, I wish we could just bring them all close together so we could see them all the time. As I sit here writing this post I reminisce on all the time we have gotten to spend with our family. I didn’t know this “On the road” thing would work as well as it has but, I did know all the time we got to spend with family would make it all worth it in the end.
We started the morning letting Lita and John bike around the campsite. Lita’s tire on her bike was flat since her brother wasn’t there she decided she should ride his bike. It actually fit her better then we thought it would, and made us realize that maybe her bike is too small and we should get her a larger one. Well the fun didn’t last long see Noah got this bike brand new but, the pedal fell off within a year of buying it. Kevin and Noah fixed the pedal at one point before we left on our trip although that didn’t last too long before it had happened again while Lita was biking. She was biking the pedal went flying off and she had to walk back!
That is now on the list of things we need to do! We have a pretty good setup on the camper and truck for everything but the bikes. We really need to figure out some sort of bike rack to get those bikes on the truck. These are all things we learn along the way with trial and error. I mean going from a 6 bedroom house to a 300 sq ft living space is a huge adjustment for a family of 6 people. Not only that, but we homeschool, which means we have totes of school books, the boys brought a keyboard and guitar, then all our basic daily needs. I haven’t really gone into detail about our camper setup, but I know now after feedback from readers you want to know how its done. Well it took about 3 years of planning and a lot and I mean a lot of purging!!!!
After the bike issues we headed to my Papa’s house. I got to spend some time with papa while Kevin took the kids to the park. My papa makes these really cool wine tables, which of course I forgot to take pictures of! Anyway he cuts the wood, paints them with a crackle finish and uses wine corks and epoxy for the surface, and they end up looking unreal. Next time we go to my papas house I will get some pictures for you all to see. While I was with him hanging out, he was doing the second coat of paint on his wine tables while we talked about family and life. It seems every time we get together we end up having to eat so we let papa choose and he said his favorite place was Chick Fil A and of course we couldn’t say no to that.
I was pretty excited because I hadn’t seen my cousin Dani in a long time and she was able to make time in her crazy schedule to get together with us. As many of you know my Nana passed away in November of last year and I came back to California for the funeral in January, but there wasn’t much time for visiting with everyone. My family also wasn’t with me on that trip so it was really nice for the little kids to get to know her and her kids at least. We went to the Irvine Regional Park and got to ride on the railroad through the park. After that, we took the kids to the park so they could play and we could visit. Davey (Dani’s husband) rushed over as soon as he was off work so we could all see each other it was such a great time.
After the park we went to get sushi at Kaylani’s favorite restaurant Tomikawa. I must say it was pretty amazing, but I haven’t had sushi in a really long time since I was always scared to eat it in Canada. Just being far away from the ocean makes me feel uneasy about eating raw fish. It was super sweet watching the relationship with Kaylani and Lita blossom, they were instant friends and bonded in minutes. Lita ended up riding in the car with them to the restaurant and they made plans for Kaylani to give Lita a stuffed animal that she had 2 of for Lita to take pictures with along the way. Which to be totally honest I’m trying to remember every time we go somewhere.
When supper was over we went to the parking lot and Dani’s kids, Max, Luke and Kaylani showed us these awesome swords they made with their homeschool group. It seemed like such a cool experience for them and I’m so happy for them and their family for these amazing opportunities. Homeschool can be hard and I feel my cousin has a great community behind her. One thing I can say for sure as a homeschool mom somtimes you can feel alone in the journey but, we really are all in this together and its really a blessing to see their family grow and flourish.
As we were about to leave, of course the girls couldn’t be separated, but it was way past John’s bedtime. Dani offered to take Lita back to her house for a bit and get the stuffed animals that Kaylani had picked out for her then bring her back to our campsite. They had such a good time hanging out, and Kaylani showed Lita her new bunny they got. It really was special seeing these girls connect and the instant bond. Once they got back to the campsite Dani and Kaylani got to hangout and chat for bit before bed time to a long day.
