The desert in bloom

This weekend we went camping in the desert. I'm learning that people who live in paradise (LA, San Diego etc) go to the desert when they want to get away. We didn't really want to get away (and I think it's silly to "get away" to the desert when you live at the beach but oh well. Who am I to judge?) but several of our friends were going camping for their spring break and we knew that we wanted to spend time with them. We drove for a couple of hours and unpacked our tent.

I'm one of those people who always thinks that camping is going to be fun but often, in the middle of the experience I change my mind. Crawling into our tent at 9 pm in freezing temperatures with gusting wind that actually broke the poles of another family's tent I swore that I would never go camping again. Things didn't improve during the night when Claire woke repeatedly. We shared a sleeping bag and she was plenty warm but it's hard to sleep when your tummy if full of rocks and dirt.

Waking up in the morning though, I changed my mind.



Playing with lots of other families and darling kids helped. (We did have one of those moments that looked like a cartoon as it was happening but but looking back on it sort of makes my heart race--We had put Claire down for a nap in the tent and left the door partially open so she could have ventilation. She cried for a minute but then stopped so we walked away and were working on cleaning up camp. Five minutes later I looked over and there was my little baby crawling across the dirt parking headed to play with the other kids. I should have stopped to take a picture because it was really funny seeing this little baby crawling across the sand in the middle of nowhere but I was too panicked. Scary to think about what could have happened, but funny)



And our hike in the hundreds of blooming desert flowers didn't hurt either.






Though it might be a stretch to call it a hike. We were with 6 children under the age of 5. Fun, absolutely. A hike, questionable.




*It's my birthday. It has been a lovely day. I made my favorite Princepesa Torte (Marzipan, whipping cream, spongecake and blackberry filling. Amazing). Claire decided that in order to spend more time with me on this day she would forego her morning nap. I went out to frozen yogurt with some ladies and all of our kids. After dinner we had one of those magical family play times on the floor. Now the hubbs is doing the dishes while I putz around the internet and watch movies on netflix. A pretty great day. And because it's my birthday I can post unflattering pictures of myself and not have to worry.