Our Weekend Adventures


Hi friends, happy Monday! We had the most amazing weekend, which we desperately needed after a very emotional week. Last Sunday we found a sick stray cat and attempted to save her life. (We did a whole post on it here if you're interested in reading it.) Unfortunately she did not make it and we just found ourselves grieving way more than I expected. After the emotional rollercoaster of a week, we decided to fill our weekend with fun activities that would make our hearts happy. It was so refreshing and a great way to shake off the negativity of last week and give ourselves a fresh start for the week. 


Side note- as we had mentioned in a previous post, we were supposed to go to Sequoia National Park this weekend but we cancelled our trip. My in-laws mentioned they thought we should wait since our Covid numbers are still really high here in California. We decided they were probably right and cancelled our cabin reservations. We hope to go maybe later this year. Buttt that meant we had a long weekend off at home together, which is still good! 

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Friday 

We had some amazing weather this weekend, and decided to go to the beach mid-morning on Friday. We packed up some of our beach essentials and headed out. I love when Michael and I are both off all weekend long together.


Ella can stay very content at the beach as long as she has a nice little spot with all of her sand toys. Rubber ducks, shovels and bowls are some of her faves.


We can never get a good picture together, I swear. Her eyes are closed and my glasses are slipping off my face. Sigh, we did our best- haha! 



Ella is still a little afraid of the water, but loves when her Dadda holds her. She asked him to take her to the water a few different times. 



Ella and her absolute refusal to look anywhere near the camera kills me. 


I finally got to wear my new bathing suit and I absolutely love it! It's still a bikini (which I prefer) but not too revealing. I love the high waisted bottoms as it keeps everything contained- hahaha. The price was great and I have already washed and dried it once and it totally held up fine. There's lots of cute prints


 

 We had lots of fun at the beach! There were more people there than we typically see during the week, so we made sure we set ourselves far enough back from everyone else. I like having nobody around us, even if it means we are really far from the shore.

We stayed at the beach for a while- finding shells, playing in the sand and occasionally going into the water.



We always end a trip to the beach with a big bubble bath to wash the sand off... with #allthetoys. We got Ella some tablets to add to the bath water to make it colorful and she loved it. She loves the color blue and was so excited to have blue water! (We grabbed them from The Dollar Tree!) While we got washed up and dressed into our pajamas a little early, Michael was off getting our dinner from a restaurant near my work. They have really good teriyaki and french fries! 



Michael got a teriyaki chicken and I got this delicious veggie stir fry. We got a couple orders of their french fries too. Ella had some of my rice and veggies, a few bites of the chicken teriyaki, some prune puree and a few french fries too. Full tummies and cuddles are the perfect way to end a Friday night.



Saturday

The weather was even warmer on Saturday but we knew we wanted to do something outdoors. We headed to Brea to enjoy Carbon Canyon Park again. Ella loved it the first time when she got to see live horses on the trails, so I told her 'maybe we'll get to see some horses there.' Unfortunately I got her hopes wayyyyy up and she was completely let down.

 

The weather was sooo hot, I made Ella wear her hat and her sunglasses. Luckily she didn't fight it! 



We stopped at the pond where Ella saw ducks, fish and got a litttttle too close to the edge for Momma's comfort.


We got her seated in her carrier and headed on the trails. Her carrier is so great! She sits in there very comfortably, there's tons of storage and it even comes with a canopy that protects her from UV rays. She munched on a snack while we walked the trails to the redwood trees.


There were signs all over warning us of rattlesnakes, luckily we didn't see any on the path.


Ella was happy once we got to the mini redwood trees and had some shade. 

  

Ella was on high alert for any horses, but unfortunately none came. We did see lots of bikers, people walking their dogs and other families though. We even saw a wedding party! (All at a far distance of course!) 



It was so beautiful but way too hot to stick around. Ella was sad we didn't see any horses, but I told her maybe we could see some later. (I figured we could always show her live horses on Youtube.)


A little family selfie on the walk back. I was dying of the heat and as you can see my face was cherry-tomato red.


We stopped by the picnic tables on our way back to the car where Ella enjoyed a little snack. Some yogurt, strawberries, cucumber and goldfish. This girl snacks hard! 




Love this sweet girl so much! 

After Ella took a nice two hour nap, we went to Michael's parents for dinner, did some laundry and relaxed the rest of the night.


Sunday

We all slept in until around 7 which was so glorious! We had a slow morning, playing with Ella and enjoying our coffees. Once we were all wide awake and ready for the day, we headed south to Laguna Beach.


We parked on the street near Heisler Park and just planned to walk around, enjoy the view and maybe grab a snack in town. We're still social distancing and avoiding any and all people to the best of our ability. We also wore masks but I took them off for most pictures. Luckily we went early, which always means there's less people around. 


This is the only semi-good picture we got together and I am so upset that the back of my shirt is unbuttoned... #fail. Michael doesn't notice these little things, haha. 


Ella loved Heisler Park! She enjoyed walking around and seeing the ocean from a different perspective. We took her there before when she was reallllly little.

 

Sweet girl slept through the entire trip and didn't get to enjoy any of the view! 


We took her down to the beach area, which she had mixed feelings about. She didn't want us to let go of her and insisted that we hold her, yet when we tried to leave the beachy area she acted like she didn't want to go. Toddlers can't make up their minds.


Of course the only pics we have together on the beach and she is not looking. I am totally not surprised, haha.



 

Enjoying the sand in her toes!


Is she starting to look like me? Sometimes I think so, but in this pic she's 100% Daddy! 




Pretty views everywhere you look! 

 

And maybe the highlight of her whole day was this whale sculpture. She has a thing for animals, but realllllly likes whales right now. 


After our walk through Heisler Park we found ourselves back on the beach (just a different part.) Ella really loved the water sprinkler meant for rinsing off after the beach. She would run toward it and then run away flapping her arms, haha.

Before we headed home we wanted to stop and grab something light to fill our tummies. We found this little smoothie shop in town called Tippy's and decided to stop and grab a drink. It was so cute inside I had to take a few pics.




So cute, right? Ella decided to start throwing a fit while I was waiting for our drinks inside, so Michael and I traded spots. He waited inside for the smoothies and I waited outside with Ella.

 

She was all smiles once I came outside.

 

We ordered two of the Rainbow Reef smoothies which were made of mango, strawberry and peach. Yum!



Ella was a big fan!



We walked back to the car and headed home just in time to eat a quick lunch and put Ella down for her nap.

We spent the rest of our Sunday afternoon working on our usual weekend chores- laundry, grocery shopping, meal preparation etc. Sundays are always my day to get ready for the week ahead. We both have full work schedules, so I'm sure this week will fly by (or so I hope!) 


Thanks for reading about our weekend. We hope you all have a safe and happy week!

-Ashley & Ella
xoxo

11 comments

  1. Looks like a great weekend!! Laguna is so beautiful!

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  2. What a lovely weekend! The Laguna are is just beautiful.

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    1. It is so gorgeous! I wish I could have gotten better pictures but I was avoiding any areas with other people. I think we'll go again soon as it was just so gorgeous!

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  3. Such a beautiful family filled weekend! Itty bitty baby Ella is so cute from her last visit to Heisler park :)

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    1. Thank you :) I just wish she still fit into that cheetah print outfit, haha!

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  4. Looks like a fun weekend. I get better pictures with my kids when I am taking a selfie or using the countdown on my phone compared to someone taking a picture for us.

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