Author Archives: Carrie

About Carrie

I'm a Midwest transplant in SoCal...spending my time exploring, questioning, reading, writing, baking, skiing, running, and raising my family of four kids.

Spring Break Staycation in a New Home

Posted on May 2, 2024 by Carrie

In 2024, we spent Spring Break in Colorado at our brand new house! For the past two years, we flew to tropical destinations (Maui and Cabo), but this year we decided to get to know our soon-to-be new home sweet home, even though the weather in Colorado was still cold. I flew out to Colorado a week before Dan and the kids did to work on getting the new house set up a little bit. When they arrived, I took a week off from work and we spent it exploring Castle Rock and the surrounding area. Continue reading →

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Holiday Light

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Carrie

After a brief post-Christmas holiday respite, we picked back up with Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter. This year, though, our celebrations were on the lighter side of all the hoopla. Everyone still enjoyed celebrating, but I didn’t stress myself out too much planning any big events. In fact, other than one party we were invited to, we celebrated all of the holidays entirely at home this year. Continue reading →

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Cruising on Carnival Miracle

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Carrie

When we made plans to move to a land-locked state last year, I also started making plans to take our family on our first ever cruise. This cruise was not supposed to be a grand luxury vacation, just something local and relatively inexpensive to introduce us to cruising. The Long Beach port is just up the freeway from where we live, so cruising out of there would be easy and would not require coordinating flights or other hotel stays. So, in March, we went on a 5 day/4 night cruise on the Carnival Miracle to Catalina Island and Ensenada, Mexico. Continue reading →

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Farewell Mammoth Trip

Posted on February 13, 2024 by Carrie

Last weekend, we drove up to Mammoth Lakes to go on our last vacation in the area – at least, our last vacation there for a long time. After we move to Colorado, we’ll be exploring Colorado resort towns and we likely won’t fly back to Mammoth for awhile. We all love Mammoth so, so much; therefore, this trip was bittersweet. We did all of our favorite things while we were there and even squeezed in a new activity or two. Continue reading →

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RIP Snoopy 2008 – 2024

Posted on January 19, 2024 by Carrie

Dan’s dog – our dog – Snoopy – was born on the streets of Tijuana, Mexico, and made his way to San Diego, where he was adopted by Dan. He passed away, mostly from old age, on January 16, 2024. Since 2019 and at the time of his death, he lived in Livermore with Dan’s parents. Dan flew up to be there for Snoopy’s final breaths and later that night he wrote this tribute to him. Continue reading →

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Reney is THREE

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Carrie

Our baby is three. Three! I honestly can’t think too much about it or else I’ll fall to pieces. Yes, I am incredibly thankful and happy that she is so happy, healthy, safe, smart, and joyful. But seeing time march away from some of your best moments (even though you know you have more ahead of you) is hard. I’ve never had a three year old without a baby behind him or her. Irene’s toddlerhood is nearly over – she’s more of a preschooler now (even though she hasn’t yet started preschool). Sigh…I’m rambling. Mostly, what I mean to say is that Irene is three and it’s bittersweet, but seeing her sweetness and hearing her laughter every day mostly make up for time’s quick speed. Continue reading →

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Last Cali Christmas

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Carrie

We spent our last California Christmas (more on that later) decorating, attending holiday parties and events, seeing holiday-themed musicals, celebrating mass, and eagerly anticipating Santa and presents. In past years, I felt pressure to attend all the events and do all the things, but this year, I didn’t. Maybe we’ve done it all already in SoCal. Or maybe I’m just tired of all the crowds, traffic, and high expenses associated with doing it all. Either way, this holiday season seemed slightly slower, yet still just as fun. Continue reading →

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Grateful Turkey

Posted on December 3, 2023 by Carrie

This year, Thanksgiving was a mere three weeks after Halloween and it creeped up fast! It seemed like we had just started making a dent in eating bags of candy when it was time to start eating turkey and stuffing. Continue reading →

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2023 Spooky Season

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Carrie

We got back into the holiday swing of things this year with a month of Halloween celebrations. I have to say, though, we kept it all pretty chill this year. I will no longer go to pumpkin patches in SoCal on the weekends, due to crowds, so we went to a few favorites during the week and mostly celebrated with friends in our neighborhood and town. Continue reading →

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Hiking the Eastern Sierras

Posted on November 20, 2023 by Carrie

Our family loves Mammoth Lakes, but we’ve only all been up in that area in the winter months for ski vacations. We decided to add in a Fall trip this year to see sights that we can never see in the winter when every place is snowed in. We got lucky and our trip fell right at the peak of Fall leaf colors – the aspens were gorgeous! We hiked roughly 20 miles over six days, visited a historic state park, and explored a few town sites. Continue reading →

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