Gma

When one is small, one has many "grandmas" and "great-grandmas" in their life. Some of them are not even really relatives. Such was the case for my children, having all but one great grandfather, all four great grandmothers and both sets of grandparents, not to mention a Nana.
So, most of  our grandparents have their own special names. My mom's parents went with Gma (pronounced "jee-ma") and Gpa.
Gma is our only "great" left on my side of the family and when her birthday rolled around, we wanted to celebrate her in a pretty big way. My mom's family is pretty big on Mexican food. It's kind of an obsession, really. So, naturally, we had a big lunch out at one of our favorite Mexican eateries.

Isn't she cute?

Way Back When

You know that whole time when I wasn't talking to you, Blog? Like, from January until now?
Well, my family did some fun stuff in there. Here's proof: We went to the Strawberry Festival & Drew marched in the parade.

 







We went to Legoland and my nephew, who loves anything to do with vehicles, got to drive some stuff.

 




My kids got to meet their heroes.





 Just kidding. But I love the difference in Emma's face between Darth Vader and R2D2.

Rain + Ocean

Girls' Night

Emma and I had the splendid opportunity last week to join my mom at the beach for a girls' night. She was attending a conference and had a room that was big enough to share, so we decided the kindest thing to do was to help her fill up that room. We arrived and put up our things and immediately trekked to the water in order to take in every moment of the setting sun we possibly could.

Sunset and boats:

It was a much-needed, restorative getaway. I haven't taken pictures in a while and just holding my camera in my hands and working my trigger finger did my soul some serious good. We watched a movie and got stuck inside the next day because it rained and rained. That was actually a different kind of nice, even though I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to go back to the beach.