New Year's Day or Why I Never Want To Leave San Diego

Believe it or not I have never experienced Southern California snow. I'd always heard and seen photos of friends who had gone to Mt. Laguna to sled in the snow but had never ventured there myself. It's only about an hour away from our house here so on New Year's day we decided to check it out!

We slowly realized how ill equipped we are for any kind of cold weather or snow when we were scouring the house for jackets and hats and gloves. In fact, the kids didn't have hats or gloves or even heavy jackets so we layered them up and hoped for the best! All I had was a sweater and a scarf and some holey mittens. This New England girl sure did feel lame!! Gone are my days of waddling around in puffy snow pants and itchy wool hats. Anyway... I digress...

We didn't have a sled either so we figured we'd go totally SoCal on this and use a cardboard box. In theory I think it would have worked great if 1. our kids weren't so wussy and 2. there was more snow. But, the kids actually had fun and toughed it out as long as they could before their little hands turned into ice cubes (so about 20 minutes or so).

The sledding place was actually pretty crowded! And we were for sure the least prepared for cold. Oh well! There was definitely a snowball fight started by Max! He was loving it!

Inevitably someone had to go potty so we drove up a little bit farther and had a pit stop. There isn't much else up there as far as I know but it was still pretty and cold and fun.

After the snow we were starving so we drove back down the mountain and headed to Mama Liangs for some noodle soup and beef rolls. SO delicious!!

And then, I realized that I could actually cross something off my bucket list by going to the beach on the same day we played in the snow in the mountains! I've always wanted to do this while we were here in San Diego and it was perfect!! The kids had a blast playing in the sand and the waves and we caught the most gorgeous sunset!! Totally worth it!! (The edits on these are a little wonky -- I was playing with my new camera on different settings and different editing techniques so there isn't as much cohesion in the edits -- sorry!!)