Epicly Ever After

This post is brought to you by the new Santa Fe from Hyundai.

As some of you may know via Instagram, Archer, Fable Hal and I spent last weekend in Santa Barbara at Hyundai's Epic Playdate. We're halfway through filming our family epic playdate video which I can't wait to show you and we are having so much fun.  (If you haven't already you should check out Maggie, Heather, Jordan and Liz's vids. They rule, too.)

In the meantime, I wanted to introduce you to the campaign and show you some pictures of our weekend, which took place at Dos Pueblos Ranch just north of Santa Barbara.

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When FM & Hyundai were first planning the event they asked if I had any ideas for what activity I'd like to host.

"Yes! Poetry!"

I am not very crafty but I teach a mean poetry lesson. It's actually the only thing I know how to teach... ish.

And FM was like, "Huh. Cool, if that's what you're into, rad!"

My booth at Epic Playdate was "Poetry in Motion" and the idea was to get everyone writing (something! anything!) and then, encourage everyone to join forces as a group and create one huge poem full of all of the poems. A poem train if you will. (All aboard!)

Except, sadly, I had very few takers. Archer, Leta, Heather, Fable and Hal were kind of it. (Thanks, guys.)

Which I totally understand because there were so many amazingly fun activities to do. SO MANY.

epic sand art!
epic tin foil party!

In my two years working retail I picked up the valuable lesson that in order to "sell" something one must become the most enthusiastic buyer. Which I happen to be when it comes to poetry. So? I taught my lesson to Hal, Archer, Fable and a few of our closest imaginary friends.

Poetry is LAWLESS! You can write "poop" a thousand times! You can write upside down and backwards and misspell everything! As long as the poem means something to you, the poet YOU CAN SAY ANYTHING YOU WANT IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD! You can make up words, swear if you want to... You can poke holes in a piece of paper and be like, "this is my poem! THIS IS A POEM!" 

So long as you FEEL it in your bones, you can "write" anything.

This is why I love poetry. This is why we need to spread the word, people. POETRY IS FUN! Poetry is EPIC PLAYDATE MATERIAL! HERE'S A CHALKBOARD, READY? GOOOOOO!!!!!! 

And slowly people trickled in to write and share and, yes, even add to my giant chalkboard poem which ended up being about Selena Gomez.

And Archer, bless him, kept coming back to write more poems because he felt bad that nobody else was.

"Hi, mom. I'm here to write more poetry."

And he did.

I had to beep
but I fell asleep
I had one dream right by the stream...

After a long day of sand and tin foil princess dresses and bubbles and balloon animals and sun, we walked over to the beach where a bonfire and a Brett Dennen were waiting. And Fable sat on my lap and smiled back at me in the way she does when she's shy and excited and totally beyond exhausted, phew. (With barrettes for miles. Of course.)

And we all swayed and clapped while the kids ran around and the sun went down and holy perfect moment o'clock.

And the soundtrack could not have been sweeter...



(especially since Maggie sang a kick-ass duet with Brett by the fire.)

The whole day was amazing. The whole night and the sleeping in the tent and the walking through the darkness with a flashlight on my head so that we could find a bush to pee in at 3am and how it smelled like cows for some reason but we had this amazing smelling air freshener thing and we all played musical air mattresses through our rather sleepless night.

And then there was the waking up at 6am to friends spitting toothpaste in the grass and crazy windswept hair and "race you down the stairs!" and running down the beach looking for rocks and all of these amazing women to talk to everywhere and their amazing children and...

All of it was beyond.

One of the coolest parts of the weekend was watching Archer and Maggie's son, Hank become inseparable soul brothers. Over dinner they contemplated the afterlife and then traded homemade jokes over dessert. They even fell asleep in our tent side by side like puppies.

It blew my mind and broke my heart in the loveliest possible way. I kept punching Maggie in the shoulder like DUDE! Our boys have matching hearts.

And they do.

In the morning we all had breakfast.

The kids blew bubbles together.

Fable and I went for a walk.

And then we drove home, feeling refreshed, inspired and completely grateful for life in general. The weekend was a giant poem across a humongous blackboard of poked holes. Selena Gomez in the sky with diamonds. 

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Thanks to the team at FM/Hyundai for including us in this event and video series. It's been an amazing experience for all of us. 

And thank you, Mom and Dad  for watching Bo and Revi Saturday night so that we could take this trip as a foursome. We missed them but oh, man, twin toddlers in a tent? Not quite ready for the "epic" of that. 

GGC