So I have a list – a list of five songs that will forever remind of San Diego, making them five songs I will forever love. 🙂 Do you have songs that take you back to special places and fill your soul? I actually have a few “Virginia songs,” too, that take me back to Barracks Road and the walk to UVA Law to this day. “As We Ran” by the National Parks (we played it when we were moving into the Honey House). “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond (it was always played at the UVA sports games). “Welcome To New York” by T-Swift (from all of our New York trips!), and last but not least, “Country Roads” by good ol’ John Denver (because the VA country roads are the real deal. Also, I bleep out the “West” in “West Virginia” — don’t hate me, WV friends)! Isn’t music the best?? Here are my San Diego songs, in order of appearance in my San Diego life…
// Here Comes the Sun. I remember playing it when we were moving into our SD house, literally feeling the sun coming into our world in full force even though Fall was just beginning, and I remember thinking how rad life was. San Diego doesn’t have winter! I thought. Here comes the sun for liiiiiiife! The long-loved song suddenly had a new meaning for me, a young mama who had hunkered down each winter with her babies – from living in the Rockies and then on the East Coast. Yes, that no-winter reality was one-thousand times better than gold.
// California Girls. Need I explain this one? 😉 I remember playing this song for the girls for the first time after living here for a week – we were driving up the 5 to through North County – and I told them that the song was about them and they flipped and started car-dancing, so I flipped and started car-dancing, duh!! We’ve played this little theme song ever since. Plus it gives a shout-out to our beach, Del Mar! How can we not be obsessed with this one.
// Calico. Brooke White nailed California culture in this one so perfectly (“people call it ro-de-o, not rodeo” – if you know, you know)! We latched onto her song when she released it a couple years ago. It’s cheery like CA. And the message is so on point: when life throws a curve ball, catch it and run with it. Brooke is a transplant California girl, too, so we gel with her there, too. Such a good song!
// I Just Wanna Shine. Ryan found this song last Spring, and one crazy, magical night – 10:30 PM, to be exact – on our way to swim in the ocean during the bioluminescence/Red Tide (watch this video, too – our night swim that night was exactly like this, except we had the water to ourselves! And YES it was the most magical thing we have ever done). We blasted this song in the car driving to and from the beach and it seared such a happy, carefree feeling into my brain — I can’t listen to it without getting the chills. Or crying, if we’re talking about this last week, ha! Ryan found me silent crying while jamming to this song in the car. Like he walked out of the house into the garage and just stared at me — “What are you doing? Are you okay??” Hahah, bless him! And me. It just reminds me of my Ryan and our beach together adventures here, and man I LOVE HIM and our memories here together so much, okay??? 😉
// Don’t Let Me Down. Gotta chalk this one up to my Ryan, too — he found this one, as well, and we jammed to it while driving to La Jolla last month to snorkel in La Jolla Cove for our anniversary. It’s a song that was born from the ocean’s waves, I swear (I mean, it’s Jack Johnson, so would you expect anything different??). When we first heard it together, Both Ryan and I said how the sounds and rhythm in this one just feel like how it feels when you dive into the ocean’s waves, pushing through the water till you break through the water’s surface again. It’s a perfect song and one I’ll never quit.
Speaking of those California girls… 🙂 This string of photos piggy-backs off of the pics we took back in June that I posted here. I initially thought that I’d post all of those photos together, but I ended up taking so many of the girls down on the shore, too, that I decided to break them up. Plus these photos below are almost “The Chloe Show” — it was the eve of her birthday that day, after all, so these are basically her one-year-old photos! I will post about Chloe’s actual first birthday soon, but for now, this was the sweetest day down there in the water. Chloe was so happy to be in the water and Sis was being so big!!! She was finally perfecting walking after starting to walk at 10 months old, hence the hand-holding. For mama (lucky me) and for her sweet sisters…
