I promised the boys a while back that I would take them to Legoland by the end of the year. Mama's early christmas present to the boys was making their Lego dreams come true. A quick 4 day-long weekend trip to Southern CA, for a visit to Legoland and Del Mar sisters- cousin Chloe quality time, the second weekend of December
2010 FIRST sisters-cousin special weekender at Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara, CA to....
PRESENT DAY 2017 sisters-cousin special weekender at Hilton Del Mar, CA (below)
Amazing what difference 7 years can make! These kiddos wanted to duplicate the portrait they (Chloe) remembers taking in front of the hotel lobby glorious christmas tree. On the last pic, it was like Taji x2 with Jax popping into the picture! You realize how time flies and how much kids grow.
The best part of a sisters & cousins weekend away when the kids gets older is that we have a built-in babysitter now! Chloe stayed in the room with the boys watching a movie after our amazing sushi dinner, so that us sisters could go hangout and "wine" out at the pool fire pit area. It was so nice to catch up and have some much-needed girl time! Made some incredible summer plans!
Sisters and kiddies weekends (or "sisters-cousins" weekend since our kiddies are getting bigger and older) originated back in 2010 when Taji was barely 6 months old and I had an opportunity to photograph a friend's sister's wedding with an all expense paid hotel stay at Bacara Resort. While I worked the wedding and reception, photographing, my sister stayed and entertained Chloe and Taji. Then I later met up with them and we had all of the next day to hang out. From that point on we decided on an annual quality time such as this so almost the following year 2011, we actually had a 2nd annual sisters-kiddies weekend when I was very preggo with Jax, exploring Scripps Aquarium in San Diego and having a sleepover at their place in RSM.
It may have taken us almost 6 years due to difficulty with our polar opposite west coast/ east coast zip codes, but we managed to create another sisters-cousin weekender memory! Here's hoping and planning we get to enjoy many more, in awesome locations (maybe international too!) before our kiddies turn into adults. We have another 5 good years to make these happen before Chloe heads to college!
Oh, and lets not forget going down memory lane when I took the boys back to Roger's Gardens in CDM on this trip. I couldn't go back to CDM in the month of December and not make a stop at the christmas tradition we began when we first found out we were pregnant with Taji! Back before we didn't know we would be moving our family to WNY, we planned to frequent Roger's Gardens every year before Christmas time to pick out a special (and pricey) ornament and relish their gardens and train. Of course, now they have an amazing restaurant too that I was not able to snag a reservation at this time.
After the very first preggo pic (above),
we returned when Taji was a baby and had his first Santa visit here...
then the 3rd year was when I had my very large bowling ball belly named Jax
To 2017.... my "baby" Taji now 7 years old along with his crazy little "baby" brother Jax (at almost 6 years old!) When we find ourselves here again around this season in the future, there's no doubt we will capture another one of these "tradition" photo ops!
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