Tag Archives: kids

Nothing Stays the Same

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This is a photo of the main street in a beach town called Carpinteria from a couple years ago. It’s 10 miles from Santa Barbara. It’s where our friends live who my husband met when in training a million years ago at Merrill Lynch’s corporate headquarters. He told me he met a nice guy and they invited us to go sailing with them in Santa Barbara. Since then, way before kids, we’ve been fast long-time friends.

The past few years, we’ve noticed changes to their quaint, quiet little town. It was a sleeper and the buildings and mom and pop businesses seemed to be living straight out of the 1950s. But nothing ever stays the same.

Welcome to major freeway and infrastructure changes. A few large tech companies moved in, and our favorite businesses and entire blocks were torn down.

This was a hotel in 1912. We knew it as a family friendly restaurant that was affordable. It featured grills in the middle of the restaurant where you cooked your own steak, halibut or chicken. Dinner came with sides of rolls, salad or soup, baked beans and a few other things. When my son and his girlfriend (now DIL) were at UCSB, we took them to dinner there and they could eat their fill. No limit to the amount of food served.

It’s now closed and it sold. No telling what the next owner will do to it.

Our favorite restaurant in the world closed. Called Sly’s after the chef James Sly, it was our go to special occasion restaurant. Sly was friends with our Carpinteria friends, and he’d often comp us a seafood tower or his famous sundae. Unfortunately, he died a few years ago and his wife did not want to keep the restaurant going. We miss James but have great memories of him and his delicious food.

Rincon Surf Shop was one of our favorites. They had everything from surfboards, boogie boards, really cute beach wear, bathing suits, flip flops and custom designed t-shirts. I learned this trip that the owner said adios and retired. It was a one of a kind shopping experience. My daughter and I made lots of trips to that store to get unique clothes for her high school days and flip flops for me.

This was our alltime favorite spot for Mexican food. In the back was a kitchen with the best breakfast burritos with egg, cheese, sausage and potato. We’d buy them to go (since there’s no tables) and take them to picnic tables to devour at the beach.

Last year, we were shocked to see the building torn down and the entire block under construction. Like I said. Nothing stays the same. However, I was not prepared for what replaced the fun shops on that block:

Linden Square

It’s a food court called the Public Market and has a few other shops like expensive home goods and a yoga studio. The developer has one in downtown Santa Barbara, too. The upscale food court includes a gourmet pizza place offering $25 small pizzas. There’s a $16 a burger restaurant and Mexican stand with $20.50 burritos. All made fresh with the finest ingredients, of course.

I showed my son and daughter the photo of Linden Square and they were not happy. They said it was a glorified food court that could be found in any upscale suburbia. It doesn’t fit the funky but hip vibe of the Carpinteria of old of which they have so many fond memories.

We used to go camping every spring break at Carpinteria State Park in our tent. Sitting around the campfire at night was so much fun. Easter egg hunts in our campsite was a tradition. So many great memories. Of course, those days are gone as well.

camping at the beach
Camping at Carpinteria State Beach with the kids and Angus.

What have you noticed lately has changed and will never be the same?

Trouble in WordPress land

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I’m frustrated because I planned to post beautiful sunsets for this post. I clicked on the block called “image” and got this message: “This block has encountered an error and cannot be previewed.” It’s not previewing I’m concerned about — it’s posting a photo!

I’ve tried everything suggested after I clicked on help. Live chat is now down. I’ve emailed help and got a response that somebody will get back to me. In the meantime, if you want to see my sunset photos, look at https://www.instagram.com/e.a.wickham/.

According to one of my friends who moved from Palm Springs to Arizona 10 years before us, it’s Sunset Season.

I didn’t know there was a season for sunsets, did you?

Before we moved, we’d visit a friend here who introduced me to my husband almost 40 years ago. The friend and I were from Seattle. My husband came up to visit said friend in Seattle and we were introduced. The rest is history.

Our friend moved to Scottsdale five or six years ago and invited us to visit. We’d stay in his casita and really liked it out here. I couldn’t believe the sunsets for one thing. I wonder if it was sunset season?

The plan was to move here after my husband retired. But then COVID hit and my husband was working remotely. Real estate prices in Palm Springs were going through the roof and hubby felt it was time to make our move — because if he could work from home in Palm Springs, he could work from home in Scottsdale.

At first I was against the move. I loved my old Spanish Colonial home downtown Palm Springs. We were two blocks from restaurants and shopping. We had raised our kids in that home and lived there for 28 years. Our kids promised to never talk to us again if we sold the house. The realtor gave us a price to sell and I (not wanting to sell) insisted on raising the sale price by 40% and told my kids NOBODY would pay that much for our 1930s house that needed work.

To my surprise, we had four offers in four hours — two over asking — and one of those with “no inspections.”

So here we are in Arizona, three years later, enjoying the Winter Sunset Season. Oh yes, the kids got over it. They are speaking to us.

Is anyone else experiencing glitches with WP?

Have you thought about moving your home or blog from WP? If so where would you go?

Views from quarantine

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With the kids on their way to visit, my husband and I kept our promise to quarantine. The days at home gave me new appreciation for life in our backyard. (I wrote about the need to quarantine HERE.)

“Hey, it’s not that bad!” were my famous words I’d tell my swim coach after a hard set. We emblazoned the saying on t-shirts after the coach joked that he should advertise his Masters with my expression. (I wrote about not giving up — whether it’s swimming, fishing or writing HERE — complete with t-shirt pics.)

I discovered staying home “is not that bad” — and I that I love and appreciate my backyard.

The following are views that make me enjoy living where I do:

I watched three Harris Hawks land in a tree across the wall. They love to hang out there. Then one by one, they flew into our yard. I lost sight as they flew over our roof.

Here’s a video of one flying I captured in slow motion:

Look at the sparkle in our pool.
Here’s a young cardinal visiting my Bird Buddy until a Gila Woodpecker takes over.
I was standing outside and these quails didn’t seem to care that I was nearby.

I can’t wait to see my son, daughter-in-law, her brother and my daughter!

What are your favorite things or views from your home?

Conflicted about Christmas

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Christmas in Palm Sprigs
Christmas decorations in our Palm Springs home.

In a couple days, we’ll be leaving to have Christmas with my kids, dad and our son’s girlfriend’s family. Our kids suggested Palm Springs, where we moved from exactly two years ago this week. Last year we gathered in Santa Barbara, which was a fun — if not rainy and cold adventure.

I’m conflicted over Palm Springs. After leaving, I don’t have a strong desire to return. I don’t know if it’s an emotional response. If it brings up too many memories. If I miss it, or if I don’t miss it. It makes me feel things I don’t want to feel.

For the kids, who never wanted us to move from Palm Springs, my husband agreed to rent an Airbnb a few blocks from our old home. It’s all for them, not us.

What I’m looking foward to:

Seeing our big extended family.

Walking around my old park.

Swimming in my former city pool.

Going to my old favorite restaurants for a taste of Mexican food and Italian. We haven’t found any good spots here.

Do you think it’s true that you can never go home again? Why or why not?

Wreath on our old wooden gate
The wreath I made on our gates at the Palm Springs house which was built in 1937.

Play dates? Let the kids play!

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blond boy playing with the garden hose.
My son playing in the backyard.


I saw a blogger on TV talk about “banishing the play-date.”  You can read his post here.

I reminisced about my childhood. I played in and out of neighbors’ backyards, rode bikes from dawn to dusk — with no adults bothering me.

When I had kids, I found they didn’t have freedom like we did. One of the reasons was there were zero kids in our neighborhood besides mine. Then the nine-year-old boy who was kidnapped from his front yard and murdered — 20 minutes from us. It left moms frightened to let their kids out of their sight.

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I went to Mommy and Me with my son at the Palm Springs Pavilion. We learned to sing songs together like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “I’m a Little Teapot” with a dozen other moms and babies who apparently needed the coaching. Each week, we took turns bringing snacks of grapes and string cheese. I look back at this as a training ground for the proverbial play-date.

merry go round at the park.
This was what the original equipment was like at our park.

Play-dates developed from the Mommy and Me group. We had a park day, which was fun and healthy. Moms sat together on quilts on the grass and talked for hours while our kids played on the now-banned playground equipment — a super tall, steep slide, a merry-go-round, and a stagecoach that they could climb into, on top of and jump off of. Sometime during their early childhood years, our city tore out the dated, dangerous equipment and put in rubber ground and safe equipment. Our kids never liked to play on the brightly-colored equipment and our park play-dates vanished. We laughed about the slide where the kids would get stuck going down. It was a “sue proof” slide.

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One day, I got a phone call from a friend. She homeschooled her daughter and hand-picked her friends for a weekly Friday Play-Group. She hired a teacher to run play-group, and each week included a lesson, theme, craft and snack, followed by 10 minutes of supervised play on her backyard swing set.

I felt honored to have my children chosen for the select group. My kids had made the cut. Months later, she took me to lunch at CPK and told me she had some big news. She was uninviting one of the boys. I hardly saw this is earth shattering, but perhaps there was more to this luncheon. Maybe it was a warning!

Years later, when my kids were in high school, they reconnected with friends from play-group. NOTE: This wasn’t just a play-date, it was play-group. They remembered it as if they were fellow Mouseketeers, having survived a bizarre childhood experience.

FYI, I’m using The Playgroup” as the basis for a manuscript I’m currently writing. It follows the friendships and lives of four moms with their young children. They are all bound by the cryptic “Playgroup.”

When my daughter reached 6th grade, we tried homeschooling. Every Wednesday, I picked up her best friend from the local middle school, and brought her to our house to play until her mom got off work. This was another sort of play-date. We moms thought it was an ideal way to keep their friendship going. Since my daughter loved arts and crafts — homeschooling allowed her to try ceramics, mosaics, and quilting — I said that the two girls could do an art project each week.


But that didn’t happen. I was tired from supervising my daughter’s activities to the half hour, and my daughter just wanted to hang out with her friend. So, I retired to my room and left them alone. After a few weeks, the friend didn’t want to come over anymore. She said she was promised an art activity and she was disappointed that they weren’t doing one.

Child at Carpinteria State Beach.
My daughter on a camping trip at the beach.

That made me think about our kids and their overly structured lives. I love having quiet time. I hope my kids do, too. We need to unplug, unschedule, and let our kids regain their creativity and inner peace. They need us to leave them alone and let them be kids.

What are your thoughts about arranged play dates, play groups and activities for kids? Do you think kids are over-scheduled today? Did you have to arrange play time with friends for your kids or did you live in an area where they could go outside and play?

And now they’re gone

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kids on a rock
Laguna Beach picture of my kids from around 2001.

I’ve been fortunate to have two quick visits by my kids. They called my husband and asked what he wanted for Father’s Day. He said he wanted to see them.

My daughter’s visit was fun because she had a few days off and we got to spend a lot of time together. It’s been great to have my son here, too, but he works remotely so we only had evenings free to talk and hang out.

Both kids wanted my home cooking rather than going out. That made me smile. It made me mom proud.

I enjoyed watching my son work remotely. He wears a headset and stands while working on his computer. He’s either typing away furiously or conducting meetings, laughing, talking and smiling. He works nonstop from 8 a,m. until the evening when he finishes up with his last meeting.

I’m very proud of the adult he’s become and how hard working he is. Also, it seems this is a job he really enjoys.

Now that they’re gone I’m a bit sad, but happy that they are living their lives.

It’s back to me, my husband and Olive the cat.

What are you doing for Father’s Day?

Olive cat
Olive giving me that look before she jumps in my lap.

From playdates to playgroup, let the kids play

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I wrote the following post my first year of blogging. I’m reposting it today because my NaNoWriMo novel is based on it. My project is called “The Playgroup” and is loosely based on the moms with their young children. In our neighborhood, my kids were the only kids. That’s true for most of Palm Springs neighborhoods. We had to arrange playdates before the kids were school-age if they wanted to play with other kids. One mom started what she called the playgroup and it was an honor to be invited to her exclusive group.

Toddler boy playing with a hose.
My son playing with a hose in the backyard.

When I was a child, I played in and out of neighbors’ backyards, rode bikes from dawn to dusk — with no adults bothering me.

When I had kids, they didn’t have that freedom. One reason was the lack of kids living around us. Another reason was a child in a nearby town had been kidnapped from his front yard and his body found 10 days later. That terrified the moms in our area for years.

I went to Mommy and Me class with my son at the Palm Springs Pavilion. A teacher, Miss Stacey, taught us to sing songs together and play “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “I’m a Little Teapot” with a dozen other moms and babies that apparently needed the coaching.  Each week, we took turns bringing snacks of grapes or string cheese. I look back at this as a training ground for the proverbial playdate.

images

Our playdates developed from the Mommy and Me group. We had a park day, which was fun and healthy. Moms sat together on quilts on the grass and talked for hours while our kids played on the now-banned steel playground equipment — a super tall, steep slide, a merry-go-round, and a stagecoach that they could climb into, on top of and jump off. Sometime during our kids’ early childhood, our city tore out the dated, dangerous equipment and put in a rubber ground and safe equipment. The kids never liked to play on the brightly-colored equipment and our park playdates vanished.

One day, I got a phone call from a friend. She homeschooled her daughter and was handpicking her friends for a weekly Friday playgroup. She hired a teacher to run playgroup, and each week included a lesson, a theme, craft and snack, followed by 10 minutes of supervised play on her backyard swing set. The moms were not welcome to hang out and socialize.

I felt honored my kids were in the select group. Months later, the mom who had playgroup took me to lunch and told me she had some “big news.” She was uninviting one of the boys. I hardly saw this is earth shattering, but perhaps there was more to this luncheon. Maybe it was a warning!

Years later, when my kids were in high school, they reconnected with friends from playgroup. They remembered it as if they were fellow Mouseketeers having survived a bizarre childhood experience.

When my daughter was in 7th and 8th grade, we homeschooled. Every Wednesday, I picked up her best friend from school, and brought her to my house to play until her mom got off work. This was another sort of playdate. We moms thought it was an ideal way to keep their friendship going. Since my daughter loved arts and crafts — homeschooling allowed her to try ceramics, mosaics, and quilting. I said that the two girls could do an art project each week.


But that didn’t happen. I was tired from supervising my daughter’s schooling by the time afternoon came and my daughter just wanted to hang out with her friend. So, I retired to my room and left them alone. After a few weeks, the friend didn’t want to come over anymore. She said she was promised an art activity and she was disappointed that they weren’t doing any.

Happy child at the beach.
My daughter during a camping trip at the beach.

That made me think about our kids and their overly structured lives. I love having quiet time. I hope my kids do, too. We need to unplug, unschedule, and let our kids regain their creativity and inner peace. They need us to leave them alone and let them be kids.

How was your childhood different from your children’s young lives? Did you have to arrange playdates so they could play or did they have friends who lived close by?