Kumquats and such

On Tuesday, the 1st grade classes from Santa Margarita Elementary School took a field trip to the pumpkin patch at Bates Nut Farm...and I got to be a chaperone! Reagan's class had 19 children participating, with their teacher, assistant teacher and 5 parents to help wrangle. Reagan and Addy were partners and stuck together throughout the day. We started with a lesson from the farm's staff about the life cycle of a pumpkin. This was followed by a fun hayride around one of the many pumpkin patches. Then I took charge of 5 kiddos and we went in search of 8 mailboxes inside a maze! It was mass chaos, but it was a blast! After that, we sat down at some picnic tables for lunch and enjoyed a nice breeze. The weather was supposed to be in the high 90s, but we lucked out with some serious cloud coverage! Once all the kids finished their lunch, we did our best to get a group shot before each one selected a pumpkin to bring home. I think Reagan's favorite part was the bus ride to and...

On Saturday, we ventured out to Oceanside Harbor for Harbor Days! It's a 2-day celebration with mermaids, pirates, food trucks and all the tent vendors you can imagine! We arrived just in time for the costume contest to be over, but the girls each got a small prize anyway...which was good, because I think there would have been a meltdown!  There was a pirate village on the beach featuring several tents with mermaids, digging for treasure, and story telling. The girls loved it! They even got to try on their own mermaid tails at one of the tents! The police and fire departments were out in full force. They even put on a K-9 demo which we all enjoyed! They had some other fun stuff for the kids, so we got a couple tickets and the girls selected the inflatable shark slide. Reagan loved it! Savannah went down once, climbed back up, and then promptly refused to come back down:) Jason was trying to coax Savannah into coming down...it di...

On Friday, Jason came home from his trip to the Philippines!!! He was nearly unpacked by the time I got the girls home from school, and we enjoyed some nice family time and a delicious dinner (Trader Joe's black bean soup with Chimichurri Rice & Veggies & pulled pork...YUM!) before the jet lag hit! Knowing this would probably happen, I wanted to make sure we gave him some time to recover and had registered the girls and I for a fun event at Living Tea Brewing Co., a local kombucha store! On our way to the shop, we swung by the beach to check out the sunset! It was gorgeous! We got there around 6:45 and the music was just starting. The girls ordered a Strawberry Apple Kombucha and I had Coconut Kombucha with Sake! I'm usually not a coconut fan, but this stuff was pretty tasty:) They had a variety of artists with the main event featuring Lee Koch, a former contestant on The Voice! He was amazing! We met some new friends, danced and enjoyed a beautiful...