San Diego Mom - Carmel Valley

This surf camps is for 6 yr olds and older.  The two instructors have years of experience in YMCA, public school and other settings.  I don’t have personal experience with them but the program was recommended by a friend.

www.solsurfcamp.com

If you check it out, let us know what you thought! 

If you’re like me, you’re knee deep in summer camp brochures right about now.   I confess, my 5 yr old is still i think too young for surf camp, but I know I want to do it when she’s more confident in the water.  This surfing camp for little ones has been recommended to me, so I thought I’d pass it on.

http://www.menehunesurf.com/ 

I don’t have personal experience with them, but they have lessons from 5 yrs up.   Write in and share with the San Diego Mom community if you can say anything about your experience there.

Related to the Menehune Surf school, this school is for girls teaching them the art and discipline of surfing. 

 
They advertise as "helping girls connect with themselves, their peers, and the ocean."  A little earthy crunchy, but I think the gist is that they provide a safe and nurturing environment for girls to learn to surf.  And that appeals to me.

They offer camps (half day/full day) and also clinics, lessons, overnight and after school.  Ages 5-18.  Even birthday parties.  Locations in Del Mar, La Jolla Shores and Oceanside. 

http://oceangirlsurfschool.com/ 

If you haven’t been to a seaside concert in the summer in San Diego you are missing out.  This is by far our favorite thing to do. 

Our favorites?  The Del Mar ones as there is magic in listening to the music, sitting comfortably on the grass, while watching the sunset over the water.  Order your pizza from Del Mar Pizza on 15th St. early and pick it up on your way down to the grass.  Nothing better.  Bring sweaters as it gets cold.

Prefer another beach or venue?  San Diego has a ton of these concerts all summer long.  Make a note to check some of them out with your kids and dance the night away together.  Or get a sitter, and bring a glass of wine and chairs for an ideal date night.

http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/features/258/index.html 

I just stumbled across this site and its pretty impressive!  This link gives some amazing date night ideas for San Diegans.  I can’t wait to try some of them!

http://www.nearhere.com/dates/ 

Among the suggestions are things like: the Gondola cruise in Coronado (I’ve done this, very fun to see the georgeous homes along the water in the long gondolas), Irish folk lessons in Balboa park to making chocolates in Chuao in Carlsbad.  

This is also a great site for other topics:

They provide an amazing list of running trails, tennis courts, outdoor side trips from town for hiking, surfing, and more.   

The site’s owners Terry and Dave do a good job of providing reviews/descriptions and invite others to join in.  The site has a ton of potential.  I highly recommend bookmarking it and visiting often to check on what’s new.   

If you’re like me and weren’t raised along the ocean, surfing is a bit of a mystery still.  I took one set of lessons and failed miserably.  Couldn’t even understand what my instructor was saying frankly there was so much lingo in his speech. 

Anyway, I’ve heard AMAZING things about Surf Diva in La Jolla and intend to rope a bunch of my girlfriends into going for a class one week-end this summer.  Its my goal to learn to surf before my daughter does!  And this place specializes in working with women. 

http://www.surfdiva.com/index.asp 

Several surf companies offer surf lessons off of Del Mar Beach.  We had a great experience with Surf Sessions - for kids especially though we took our own lessons too with them.  http://www.surfsessions.com/selectclass2.asp 

The Boys and Girls Club in San Diego is very active, many different locations.  We have several in our area - two in Carmel Valley and another in Del Mar and Solana Beach.  There are after school activities for various age ranges - primarily school age not younger. Arts (dance for 2 and up; acting for 6 and up), sports, swimming, volleyball and more. 

http://www.bgcsdto.org/Allred.htm  This is the link to one of the Carmel Valley locations and the drop downs there will take you to the other locations as well.  There is even some transportation from schools to the facility if you are a working parent and need someone to transport your children.

I don’t have any personal experience with the programs, but I have spoken with some of the folks administering the programs and they were very nice.  Seems worth a look.   

So, the name in town for the best swim classes is Murray Callen. http://www.murraycallanswimschools.com/

They start swim lessons as infants and are known to be the experts.  The location is Pacific Beach or out East - I think San Marcos.  So, for Carmel Valley residents either is a hike. Don’t discount this.  My daughter routinely fell asleep on the highway trek down to PB and I had to wake her for class.  This didn’t help matters to say the least.

We started our daughter at 18 mos or so and tried several years of several sessions and had a terrible experience.  She just wasn’t happy and she definitely didn’t learn.  (I will say other kids in the same classes made huge progress rapidly and did swim at an early age.)  I was really dissapointed as swimming I felt was critical living in Southern CA. 

It should be said, this experience of swimming lessons with kids is notoriously mixed.  Many kids don’t learn right away, are afraid, etc.  You have to find the right fit, the right age, etc..  We finally did when my daughter was 3 find the lessons at the Lomas Santa Fe Country club (noted in another post) and she learned rapidly and still has a ball there.

I think setting had a lot to do with it.  Murray Callen is an indoor pool, with a TON of lessons and kids in the water at the same time.  Its noisy and a bit chaotic to get used to.  Instructors are important too.  My daughter never clicked with any of her instructors at Murray Callen but adored her new one at Lomas Santa Fe Country Club.  I started referring to the instructor as the "Baby Whisperer" as she truly whispered in my daughter’s ears while she held her and gave her instruction.  But, my daughter responded well.  Lomas Santa Fe also is an outdoor pool with only 4 lessons going on at any one time, spaced out across the pool.  Both pools are heated to the high 80’s, low 90 degree so the kids don’t have the distraction of a cold pool.

The Pacific Athletic Club in Carmel Valley is an option if you’re willing to pay the steep membership fees to have access to a great health club, heated pools (open longer hours than the local rec center), and children’s classes/activities with child care.  Its nice, there’s no question, but you pay for it.  General membership is one fee, when children reach a certain age they must be added to the membership and tennis/raquet membership is extra.

http://www.pacsandiego.com/ has all the info and some photos.  The childcare here is great if you want to get a work out in, limited to 2 hour time-frames, but they offer a lot of good children’s classes (from sports, to art, to drama, etc.), camps during summer and vacations from school and for adults there are a ton of great Yoga, Personal Trainer, and Spin type classes too. 

The facility is new and offers a full Spa as well.  There is a healthy food area too for families and several pools for the kids that are heated.  One pool is no more than 3 feet deep the whole length and offers a waterfall to cool the little ones off.  There are two other large pools - one adult only - the other for families. 

Swim lessons are offered here and I’ve heard good things about them.  Personal swim lessons are available too. 

Ok, easy access to this beach is the single best thing about living in Carmel Valley.  The beach front is georgeous, lots of sand below, but a huge grassy knoll above if you don’t want to get messy and want to take in an unbelievable sunset.  Parking is without a doubt terrible.  Better in the winter, then summer.  But, just bad.  Hard to find.  Bring quarters for meters and a lot of them because Del Mar charges a mint for an hour.  There is public parking, but its expensive too.  Walk from a few blocks away where there are no meters, but you’ll have to circle in the summer to get a spot even there.

Summer concerts are amazing here - they offer them typically on Tuesday nights for free and they are busy but a lot of fun.  Link to the last schedule and hopefully the future schedules: http://www.delmarfoundation.org/summer.htm 

There are a lot of good restaurants up at 101/Camino Del Mar and 15th street in the Plaza at the top of the intersection and along 101.  Our favorite on the casual side is good NY style thin crust pizza from Del Mar Pizza on 15th street. Order one to take down to the grass near the beach and watch the sunset and you’ll sigh with happiness that you chose to live here.  We never tire of it.  Another favorite of ours is to order off the club/bar menu at Jakes - their hamburgers are great and you can watch the sunset from inside there as well.

Powerhouse park has a children’s swingset/play structure sand area and the kids love it.   The Powerhouse itself has bathrooms and a small set of showers to get rid of sand when you come up from the beach. 

I have friends who love this place and their kids are learning to swim there.  I’ve heard mixed reviews about it too though.  Most of the swim schools fall into this bucket; works for some kids, not for others.  Depends on the kid.  One advantage is that their program doesn’t require an every day commitment.  You can find all the info on them here: http://noonanfamilyswimschool.com/

The school is located in Del Mar. 

If you live in the Carmel Valley area, the recreation center on Townsgate Drive has a large pool and children’s pool.  swimming carmel valley pool.  Its generally open from June-September and close the remainder of the year.  Phone: 858-552-1623.  Fees have been around $2/visit or $35/pass (20 swims) for residents, slightly higher for non-residents.   But, the fees may have gone up, so check with them - link to the info, brochure, etc. for the pool: http://www.cvsd.com/RecCenter/pool.html   The pool hours may vary so I won’t quote them here.  But, they have generally been closed after 4 pm, with a few evenings for  7-9 pm swim in the evening.

The pool is clean and its a nice facility.  The children’s pool has slides, play structure.  But the water is COLD.  The larger pool has an ocean gradual entry on one end for little ones.  This pool is also COLD.  I’m sure its heated, just not as warm as the wimp in me would like.  The large pool also has a slide for the big kids.  Though it was out of service most of last year.

Lessons are offered here as well during the summer.  I have no personal experience with the lessons but I know the classes fill up.  The pool is located on the recreation center facility so there is a small park nearby too for after a swim. 

My daughter learned to swim at this amazing family run program after having a terrible experience at the San Diego classic school - Murray Callen.  I adore this family and their methods.  Joanne McDonald and her daughter (and the other siblings too from time to time) offer lessons for kids ages infant to 2nd or 3rd grade maybe older.  They are incredible and several neighbors, new friends I would meet along the way mentioned them to me.  They don’t have a web site or advertise really.   From what I can tell people learn about them from word of mouth.  But, their classes are always full and I wouldn’t use any other instructors now.

They lease the pool at the Lomas Santa Fe Country Club and classes are open to the public.  You do not need to be a member of the country club to take these classes.  Call: 858-755-4173 for information.  They can send you a schedule of classes.  I believe they start in May and go through August.  The sessions are several weeks, classes are every day so it is a commitment.  But, your kids will learn to swim and have a ball with them.  Classes are 1/2 hour long.