Thanksgiving in Idyllwild

We left Wednesday night unfortunately with a sick Bella (3rd day of 103 temp!) to Idyllwild.  We weren't able to get on the road until 5 PM and hit traffic, but fortunately Idyllwild is only 1.5 hrs away so twice that still isn't that terrible. 

We rented a cabin home with full kitchen, deck, BBQ, craft table and dining room table.  We all loved it, with a 1 mile downhill walk into town.  Jeff made a wonderful turkey salad, mashed potatoes and green bean dinner on Thanksgiving.  Friday and Saturday we got in a couple great hikes!  We were very impressed with Morgan's 6.6 mile hike up to Suicide Rock gaining 1700 ft without any complaining.  Bella on the other hand who got carried up and down, said she was tired!  Considering she was recovering from the flu she was a trooper. 

Idyllwild is a cute town.  We had BBQ one day and listened to a live band; the girls danced which meant I had to 'Mom Dance' with them.  Of course Jeff snapped a bunch of photos!  We also went to a pottery art place and the girls and Jeff painted.  Saturday night we saw the huge tree lighting; it was amazing how busy the town was with daytrippers from SoCal visiting.  The weather turned out to be perfect, though exactly opposite what we had planned for as it was 80 in the day and in the  60's at night.  We were hoping to find snow and really need to use the wood burning stove to stay warm, but who can complain with perfect weather in November?!  

It was a wonderful weekend.  We played board games, did a few craft projects at home and had a lot of quality family time.  And Elf on a Shelf showed up in our cabin our last morning.  Morgan has been wishing for a real elf and we got a girl!  Amazingly she moved around the cabin a little, packed herself in a box and now is sitting above our fireplace - the girls are most impressed and excited! Here are some photos of our trip.  Love to you all.  JeLiMoBe

PS - you will notice a lot more photos of Morgan who enjoys having her photo taken!  Bella usually is better about taking a few but being sick she wasn't into the photo shoots by trees. 

 

 

 

Transporting 4-days of trash out of our cabin

 

 

North and South Swm Meet

Morgan swam 5 events in the North and South, A,B and C-level swim meet with swim teams from Oceanside to Chula Vista competing.  There were at least 12 teams and hundreds of swimmers with lots of heats.  Ribbons provided to the first 8 swimmers in each event.  After a troubling DQ in her first event, the 100 IM (one hand breastroke turn), Morgan turned it around and swam as fierce and fast as she could taking ribbons in each of the remaining 4 events (4th in 25M breastroke, 6th in back, 5th in fly and 7th in free).  Wahoo!!!  It's really adorable to hear Bella cheer for her sister too! 

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween Parade and Trick-or-Treat

Grandma, Grandpa and I went to Morgan's school parade on Friday.  She wore a beautiful princess dress and thought she was Elsa which is very popular; however girls in the actual 'Elsa' costume questioned who she was.  I felt sort of bad for her when I left as she felt like the popular princess but knew her outfit wasn't the same, and when I picked her up after school she was very excited to tell me someone told her who she was, the beautiful and only Swan Princess in the entire school.  That evening she made sure to tell people she was the Swan Princess and Bella went as Cinderella.  Grandma and Grandpa passed candy out at house. 

It was a successful night!  Jeff taught the girls how to get tons of candy - skipping cul-de-sacs and just zigging and sagging.  The last house before back tracking home, Jeff announced in front of the owners, 'this is the last house' to which they filled both girls buckets.  Bella kept saying 'too much candy' because she didn't like to carry it!  Funny.  Morgan saw a lot of school mates out.