Memorial Day Weekend

We keep meaning to travel to the northern part of California to see the giant trees and the beautiful mountains, but our plans keep being rearranged. We thought we could take advantage of the three day weekend to do so, even though Memorial Day weekend is typically a busy weekend for everyone: a holiday, high school graduations, end of the school year. We have the additional event of my birthday, so in celebration I thought could plan a family outing.

But our plans for the weekend were rearranged after my son's 4x400 team qualified for the next level of high school track competition.  We cancelled our plans to camp in Sequoia National Park and to see some friends in Fresno in order to head to LA again.

Run! Catch them!

Since we had the extra day, at the last minute I decided to pursue a shorter, closer camping trip, but most of the reservable spots across America were reserved. We had some local friends who had mentioned wanting to camp, so I invited them along, thinking we might find a first come, first served site. They didn't want to wing it, so they decided to reserve a couple spots at the beach campground on a nearby Navy base.

My first reaction was not positive. I don't like beach camping. I wanted mountains and trees. I wanted to force my kids to commune with nature. I wanted my original plan, and if not that, my secondary plan.

But I had involved other people. Now I felt like I had to make other people happy, including my kids. They liked the idea of hanging with friends better than communing with nature with their immediate family

The quandary caused me to squint excessively. My husband sighed. He knows how I operate. I don't like shifting directions.  It takes me so long to commit to an idea that changing it is upsetting. I also don't like conflict and I don't like disappointing people.

Sometimes knowing you have a predisposition to a certain personality trait means you can control or at least temper it. Other times it means you have to ask for forgiveness.

I know I can get anxious about making decisions, especially when the decisions involve other people. I also have a hard time not feeling regret when I do make a decision. Usually, the reasons to feel regret are unimportant in comparison to the reasons to be grateful.

In the end we split the decision. We went for hike in the Los Padres National Forest and even checked out the first come, first serve campsites. One was available, but by the time we drove by it, all but one of my kids were threatening to mutiny if we didn't camp with friends, even though these friends' kids are much younger than mine. My husband wanted to camp with just our family because we have so little family camp time available, but we were both willing to compromise to keep the happiness quotient at a midrange rather than letting it fall into the lower end.

It wasn't what I imagined, but the weekend was nice, nonetheless. I'm sorry we didn't fit in a patriotic activity on the actual Memorial Day, other than a prayer for servicemembers who have died before we ate our burgers, but I can usually find a reason to be sorry for something, as well as many reasons to be grateful for another year of life, another discovery of God's grandeur and sense of humor, another collection of happy memories to add to the memory bank.

Hurrah! Birthday coffee cake at a morning celebration.

Wildflowers and hikers in the Los Padres National Forest

The rock climber extraordinaire.

A view of Piedra Blanca, the white sandstone rocks that were our destination.

Rock hopping

The four boys ready to explore.

My less enthusiastic hikers.

The iphone couldn't capture the color in this shrub

A hazard of beach camping: being so close to your neighbors you can hear them snore. 

Another hazard: Breeding seals. Fascinating and funny creatures.

A hazard of letting your husband shop for camp food: SPAM.