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Spring Break Day 5: The Flower Fields!
Sometimes I wonder if I live to blog or if I blog to live. Sometimes I go places because I know they will be a great blog post. The Carlsbad Flower Fields are definitely one of those places. During Ranuncula season you can’t go wrong visiting the Flower Fields. it doesn’t matter where you point your camera, you’re bound to come back with beautiful pictures that could be postcards to put up on your fridge.
What I didn’t know was that there were so many fun things for kids to do at the Flower Fields. Armstrong Gardens definitely goes out of their way to make the whole experience kid friendly. This is a very good thing for me considering when I told Rapunzel we were going to the flower fields she said, “How Boooor-ring!”
I’m so glad she was wrong. I was kind of worried since the Getty didn’t win her over as much as I’d hoped. I would even wager that the flower fields were probably Rapunzel’s favorite thing that we did during her spring break. That says a lot considering that she’d be happy as a clam if we just went to the beach every day.
As you can see from the pictures, Whoorl came with us. That was fun. We had buggaboo races down the dusty dirt paths and guess what…. Rapunzel got Whoorl to stay and have lunch with us and eat a CHEESEBURGER!!! I know! What can I say, Rapunzel is a charmer.
After Whoorl went home, we went back to the fields and Rapunzel ran all over the grounds getting her “passport” stamped with different destination stamps (IE: lookout point, the rose garden, the sweet pea maze—which was really fun by the way, etc etc…). When you fill up your passport with eight stamps, you get a coupon for a dollar off (the regular price of $2) to mine gems at their little mining company.
Even though the mining is completely fake and they plant the polished gem stones in your bucket of sand, it was a real hoot for Rapunzel. She couldn’t believe her luck when she sifted the sand in the water and ten pretty polished rocks showed up in the grate. When we got home she counted and recounted her gemstones over and over telling me carefully who she was going to give the green one to and the pink one to and which ones were her favorite favorite. It was totally worth the dollar we paid.
The whole trip was worth it. I would definitely recommend it.
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Spring Break Day Four: Grey Bay Day
Due to some heavy surf advisory we had to change our plans from “beach day” to “bay day”. We took a walk in the morning to go look at the beach and it was scary. Huge waves and lots of brown back wash. Not somewhere two little castle making kids want to go. But have no fear, there is always some other place near. We headed over to the peninsula and played in the bay water instead.
The whole concept of a “bay” or a harbor boggled Rapunzel. “Is this a lake?” she asked, looking puzzled at the water that barely lapped onto the sandy shore. “Where are the waves!!?”
“No,” I explained. “It’s part of the ocean. It’s just blocked by a big strip of land. It’s sort of like the ocean slipped into the land.” Then later I heard her repeat my exact words, down to the “slipped” part, to a local boy who probably plays in the bay water every day. Kids are so funny that way. You really have to think about what you tell them because they listen!
The bay was fun. There was a playground there and Rapunzel really liked playing with all the neighborhood kids. She’d been sort of giving me small guilt trips whenever we went on walks and she saw neighborhood kids riding by us on their bikes. She wanted to go play with kids her age but I wouldn’t let her just go out and make new friends all by herself. Even though we live in a super safe neighborhood, it’s still a little too much big city for a kid from the sticks to roam wherever they please.
Of course Baby Bug liked the bay too. What’s not to like? Other kids to watch, sand to eat and water to just walk right out into and give your mom a heart attack over. That kid has no fear. If I let her, I think she would just walk right out into the middle of the harbor and drown herself. I hate this because drowning is probably my greatest fear. It happens silently. You could look away for a moment and the next thing you know, your kid is floating face down in the water. I have nightmares about this all the time. I really wanted to let Baby Bug play freely with the other kids but I couldn’t. My heart was in my throat the whole time.
I just know Baby Bug is going to grow up and be one of those surf rats who goes tumbling around in the surf like it’s second nature and I’m going to be one of those mothers who bites her nails down to the quick and goes gray worrying about her. I will never get over my fear of the surf, even though I love the ocean and would never want to live anywhere else. The ocean is just too big and awesome, it could snuff out a life in an instant.
Enough doom and gloom! You probably want to hear about how I wrecked my car instead! That would be interesting, right? I didn’t really wreck it but it feels like it. I love my car. It’s new(ish) and red and shiny and fast and sporty and way too small and cool for an old haggard mom like me. I didn’t want it ever to get a nick or a ding or a scrape or a whack. It’s my special car.
Well…I was having a rough day. Rapunzel was rattling on a mile a minute like she always does and begging me to play the same old dumb song on my cd player over and over and over again until my head pounded and my eyes hurt and I just wanted to pull over and bang my head against the steering wheel until the world stopped and let me rest for a minute. Baby Bug was crying and carrying on. Snot has been running down her nose (she has a cold) and her rash is so red and inflamed it’s just making me sick over it. All she wants is her pacifier that I keep trying to take away from her because it’s just making all the redness worse. I need to go buy some new pacifiers with bigger breathing holes but I haven’t had a chance with all of our spring break activities. I could go on and on… excuses, excuses…just another day in the life of a mother, right?
With all this in my head, I’m driving down my alley to park in my regular parking spot. There is an old man in a black car coming down the other way towards me. As usual it’s a game of wills to see who will back up and let the other pass since the alley is narrow and there is not enough room to fit two. However, the old man has two choices. He could turn left and go down alley and come around the block to get where he wants to go or he could go the way I am blocking.
Of course the old man wants me to back up. Being the polite citizen I am, I back up. But that’s not good enough. He wants me to back up further and he starts shaking his fist at me. This flusters me and like an idiot I back up further without looking. Crunch! I back right into a cement pillar behind me. The man whizzes by me and the kids yammer and cry like nothing ever happened. I just want cry.
I want to say it was just one of those days. But that wouldn’t be right. It was a beautiful fun day at the bay and this is just one of those things that happens. When I got upstairs (and after I grounded Rapunzel to the couch because no, she could not have some more ice cream for the fifty-ninth time) I pulled out my calendar and counted the days. Yep. One, two, three…. twenty three, twenty-four and I’m right smack dab in the middle of P.M.S! I should have known. I don’t handle stress very well on these sorts of days. Poor Rapunzel, I was just about to have her pack up and ship her back home. Thankfully after counting the days and a brief cool down, I realized a lot of this tensions and stress was my own doing. I shouldn’t punish a precocious and very normal eight-year-old just because I can’t keep my cool. I took a moment to explain why “Auntie is so grumpy” and she said it was okay. I love that about her. She always forgives me.
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In other news, we had the best day today (Spring Break Day 5). We went to the flower fields in Carlsbad. I’d post a post but I have too many pictures to show you. It would just kill my server’s bandwidth to put them all up along with today’s post. I know, nobody reads over the weekend but if you do go online, click over here. It’s going to be worth it. I promise!
