Carlsbad Reunion: Places and People

Our first beach reunion!  On July 3, 2021, the Spendlove tribe gathered at Carlsbad, near San Diego.  Our condos were just two short blocks from the beach, so the first order of business was checking out that alluring sand.  Before the trip, Camille had questioned whether Dave and I could be "beach people."  She described an afternoon of relaxing on a beach as, “It’s sort of like sitting in the dirt.”  She also said that she has no memories of Dave and me ever wearing swim suits on a beach.  However, Camille and her family regularly spend family reunions at Newport Beach, California, with Steve's family, and so one of my goals for this reunion was to discover the magic of a beach vacation.

Carlsbad is half an hour from San Diego, an hour from Disneyland, and two hours, in traffic, from Los Angeles.

Carlsbad has spectacular beaches, and a path along the cliffs above the beach that family members often walked or ran along.

We rented two of the three large condo units in this complex.  In retrospect, we should have rented all three.  Each condo had a huge, well-stocked kitchen and a spacious "great room."  The condo Dave and I shared with Lisa's and Mike's families became "party central."

We got very familiar with the paths from our condo to the beach.  

Camille's family dragged "beach toys", beach umbrellas, towels, and chairs onto the sand, as a sort of encampment, where they relaxed, basked in the waves, and took in the sun.  

Lisa's kids especially enjoyed surfing and boogy-boarding, even at night by moonlight!  

Jonny's little boys made sand castles and Mike carried 18-month-old Audrey to the edge of the waves.  She looked out, wide-eyed, and wiggled her toes in the wet sand.  

There was a bit of a snafu over bedrooms.  We understood the two condos had beds for 23 people, but it turned out there were only beds for 16.  In our condo, we gave the huge master bedroom to Lisa and her family, with three smaller bedrooms to Mike and Heidi, Dave and me, and Lisa's son, Spencer, with wife Naomi.  

Lisa and Kyle ended up sleeping in the king-size bed in the master bedroom, but having Kirsten and Alyssa on cots in their bedroom, Grant and Meg sleeping on the blow-up bed in the closet, and Michael K and Bryce sleeping on the couches in the public “great room.”  It was all good.  I wondered what we would have done if Michael K's wife, Rebekah, 7 ½ months pregnant, had been added to the mix!  She sensibly stayed in SLC!  The photo above shows Lisa and her pretty daughters, Kirsten and Alyssa, getting ready for Church in their "dormitory."  We turned the other condo over to Jonny's and Camille's families and let them divvy up the rooms.