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When Grace was five days old she heard the first crash of the ocean and felt her first cool breeze off the Pacific Ocean. We placed her in the far corner of our pop up tent so not a ray of sunshine could kiss he perfect new skin, and she promptly fell asleep.  

For months she would nap all day on the beach. It was heaven for new parents.  While she wailed in our compact living room and sobbed when we placed her in her beautiful new ocean themed nursery; just three blocks away, snuggled in the sand, she would take a deep breathe and instantly drift to sleep. Grace was born in one of the hottest Junes I can remember in California and our little 1920’s beach cottage did not have air conditioning.  Our dark brown, 6lb infant spent much of her first few months in only a diaper to escape the brutal heat.  

I was nearly five months pregnant with Georgia and, it was the one time in my life, when I was too hot. By August I would open the refrigerator and camp out in front of it. Baby and bottle in hand, belly pressed up against the crisper. When I am not pregnant I am cold in a sauna.  This oppressive east coast heat and humidity you all keep warning me about is like mother natures gift to me. I lived in Las Vegas for two years and would regularly bake in the 110 degree heat.  Bathing Suit, hat, slight shade umbrella,a pool (or baby pool) and a beverage and I am good to go. Bring on the heat!

While my husband and I were learning to be parents, we were living in Ocean beach,a suburb of San Diego, in Southern California. It had always been our goal to ride the news train I was on, to San Diego.  Morning anchor in San Diego was going to be our last stop.  We had made it. We survived the heartbreak of missed promotions at NBC in Salinas, Ca and then NBC in Las Vegas, NV, but it was all a part of Gods plan.  We got to San Diego less than four years after my first reporting job in market 120.  By news standards that’s pretty quick. All those doors that closed along the way allowed huge floor to ceiling ocean front windows to open up. 

We had been in San Diego for three very hard years when Grace was born.   Leaving our best friend in Las Vegas to go to paradise and follow a dream had been harder than we thought.  The show I was hosting was cancelled months after my arrival. My husbands company folded under the weight of the economy. And then, we battled infertility.  But, we survived.  We had our hearts desire in our arms, our precious, prayed for baby girl, and another one on the way.  I was on the first of two maternity leaves from a job that, while I once thought was my dream job, had become a place of pain, and we had the summer to spend on the beach with a baby that slept, and slept, and slept… it was a pretty perfect summer.

People still ask how we could have left that house just blocks from the beach to move to Philadelphia.  My first blog pretty much answers that question, but the short answer is; it was Gods plan.  Just weeks before we left, we prayed one more time, prostrate to the Lord, and made sure he wanted us to go.  He can be loud and clear sometimes and this time he was. 

As a childless couple, and even as a new family, we tended to travel more than most.  Grace was on her first plane at three months, and Georgia flew international at just fourteen weeks. 

We love to travel.  The beach is our place.  Mexico is our favorite, but any place where we are surrounded by water and heat and we are happy.  Throw in a boat and life cant get much better. But, this summer we are staying home. We are entering our first summer in our new house, not a two -minute walk from the beach, but a two-hour drive.   I have made it my mission to make this vacation-less summer vacation just as outstanding as the first summer with baby Grace and all the other beach hopping summers before and after.

We started early in March when the east coast was blessed with 70 degree heat in the winter.  Our new rented house has a backyard that is, by most standards, pretty small, but its is the largest piece of land we have ever had.  My husband spent a week bricking a new patio large enough for a double chaise lounge that’s more like a bed (we like to snuggle ) a fire pit, a small table and a couple more chairs We got a huge umbrella more for our two English bulldogs than us, and we spent a couple weeks reseeding the lawn after it became a huge mud puddle over the winter.  We chose fun pantone colors like tangerine tango and lime green for our furniture and just looking at the sherbet colored décor makes me smile.  

I had a few Roberta’s Garden shows and I fell in love the tropical look of their Banana Plants when the brothers showed me how these hearty plants could make even central Indiana look like Hawaii, I was in. I had my husband go online to QVC.com and get those and the lavender another favorite, and anything else he saw that he thought would make our backyard an oasis.  We did this thing with our neighbors called mulching.  My husband made fun of me since, as a born and bred Californian, I had no clue what mulch was.  For two weeks our entire alley smelled of fresh mulch (or according to Grace, cows) as house by house huge piles of  brown bark appeared in the driveways to be distributed throughout the yards.

Over mothers day, when I put on my bathing suit for the first time, much, I am sure, to the confusion of my east coast neighbors (get used to it, I live in a bathing suit in the summer, beach or not,) the good husband and daddy went and got a wading pool for the girls.  Georgia is in heaven in that little blow up pool . 

After spending their first year and a half in San Diego and a month on the beach in Mexico before moving to Pennsylvania, our toddlers have learned to be naked.   Remember, Grace put on nothing more than a diaper for that 1^st hot summer of her life.  In a house without air, we wore as little as possible, and we actually loved the sight of cute little naked babies running around. As a result, I now often unload them from the jog stroller after a morning run, and before I can make it inside the house they have left a trail of discarded clothes for me to follow.  Heat = bare skin for them, yes they are my kids.  The upside is it makes potty training easier. 

I would still like to work on the lighting, but we did get these great lanterns  that double as bug zappers in the back yard, and one day a nice water feature and a small play house for the girls.  Not to mention we need to put in a fence for the furry babies.  Good thing the dogs like to pretty much sit, running is not on their agenda. But, in a rented place there is only so much you can do.   For now I am happy with our back yard escape.  Every morning that I am home, and the sun is shining, we get our coffee and Sippy cups and go out and enjoy the warm sun and calm surroundings. We live on a street with a row of twins, and our neighbors are true gardeners.  Their backyard could be in a magazine, so the view is spectacular from where we sit.  This is one thing we could not do in our beach house in San Diego.  We had no yard and a small roof top deck, but that wasn’t as simple as just stepping outside and sitting. We had major safety concerns and gates had to be up for the kids.  Plus, we did not have a view of the ocean.  And to be honest, spring and even some summers on the immediate coast can be grey.  The marine layer never leaves in May and most of June and it can take much of the day to clear during the summer.  I have been told this warm spring weather is not typical, but I am enjoying it none-the –less.  Maybe now that the quintessential west coast family is now an east coast family the earth will shift a bit and ease us into the wicked weather.  After all, we seemed to bring the mild winter with us.  

This summer will consist of long sunny days in our backyard and bar-b-q’s with our new friends.  We were blessed to land on the kid-friendliest street in eastern PA.  We share space with a group of couples that I couldn’t have better hand picked to be our new friends.  I randomly went to college with my neighbor and he and his lovely wife have two kids around our girls age.  The rest of the street and alley are filled with 18+ kids under the age of 12.  Every warm afternoon is a block party and the adults grab backpack chairs and coolers and catch up on the day while the kids run from back yard to back yard swapping toys and bikes, making fast friends and memories they will have forever. 

Our street could have coined the phrase “it takes a village” we all care dearly for each other’s children. It is another thing we never had in California, and another reason why I know my little girls will have just as much fun, if not more fun, this summer at home than flying off to the beach.  Sure, we will try and spend a weekend at the shore (that still sounds odd to me,) but it will not be the same.  We won’t be locals, and we most definitely won’t have our own whitewashed cottage that holds memories of day old babies.

I watch the commercials at work as I am rushing between one show and the next.  Out of the QVC warehouse and into the living room, or from the beauty set to the live studio and I see the pictures of that carefree model leaping along the beach. 

I do miss it.  My world might be a bit more close to perfect if I could work for QVC and still live at the beach.  But, I am sublimely happy with the home we have created in our adopted city. My children have stopped asking for the “playa” (beach in Spanish) which breaks my heart a bit, but they haven’t stopped asking for the “barcos” (boat in Spanish) so I know they haven’t lost all of their California baby roots.  And even when and if they do that will be okay too.  If they are happy I am happy, and if I am happy, they are happy.  Yes, we had it pretty good in San Diego, but no amount of sand and waves could take away the pain of an unhappy life when you stepped off the beach.  Now we are pretty happy most every day.  For the most part, mom goes to work happy, comes home happy, and spends every free moment basking in the sun of a happy (though 2, so you know they can be challenging) family and home that makes me feel like I am on vacation in my own backyard.

Here is where I could use your help, my new QVC family.  The finishing touches on my home vacation this summer is going to be a few new clothes.  We always buy new clothes to go away right?  Why not buy new clothes to vacation at home?  A new colorful maxi, or bathing suit can instantly put you in the summer break mood. Plus, by not flying four people to a tropical location I am saving so much money that I should be allowed to spend a little on the summer wardrobe.  What should I get?  What will you be getting to put yourself in the summer mood? And if you are going someplace fabulous where is it and can I come?  I pray your summer holidays are relaxing, refreshing and full of you and yours in your happy place, whether that is miles away or in your own backyard.

Blessings,

Kerstin 

See more pictures of our summer stay-cation and read about life with the almost twins on my facebook page, on Twitter, and on Pinterest.