Beach Day

Shule and Shazer goofing around

While Friday was a major shopping day for most of the country, it was our beach day. We all headed over to the pier after breakfast and pretty much spent the entire day on the beach.

With all the sand on the beach they still had a separate sandbox playground area just for kids (and I mean just for kids, there were signs that said the only adults allowed were ones accompanying children) which seemed a little overboard but was actually really nice. Sally made an immediate friend who was kind enough to let the girls play with all of her cool sand toys :)

I watched the girls while all of the older kids played volleyball next to the playground. We were lucky we came early because by the time their game was over all of the other nets had games going on and they were consistently full the rest of the day.

Jon is pretty sure that this is when he hurt his hip which gave him a serious limp by the end of the next day. It only lasted a few days, though, and he's fine now :)

Football

Kelby and Daina and kids met up with us a little later in the day.

Somehow in the darkness the night before we ended up leaving the original small shovel and purple pail we had brought to the beach and ended up with a much bigger shovel with a broken handle and a new blue bucket. Weird.

Sophie has been so cute lately with her attempts at jumping. She throws her arms way up and thrusts herself forward on her tiptoes- she actually got some air last night in the bathtub (serious dangergirl). She's reminding me of Shazer when he was a little older than her (closer to 2) and he got the "Tigger" nickname for jumping more than he walked.

Speaking of Shazer, here he is walking on air, believe it or not ;)

Pop-pop with his girls.

Cousin Maddy

Shazer and Ethan were born in the same year, Shazer's about 6 months older. I love how no matter how long it's been since they've seen each other, they are always fast friends. I never had a cousin that close to my age so I think it's pretty cool :)

Daina trying to warm up her girls Emily and Maddy.
We treated the cousins to ice cream cones which turned out to not be such a good idea because the winds started picking up and all the kids were freezing before they finished their cones.

As the sun began to set we headed back to Austin and Tammy's room at the hotel (we'd already checked out) and we waited for a visit from my dad's sister, Rosey, who lives in Thousand Oaks. She drove down with her two girls who have grown leaps and bounds since I saw them last- amazing! Rosey brought two huge (I'm talking huge-punch bowl size) salads, one was a yummy macaroni type salad and the other had brocoli, bacon, and grapes among other ingredients. Really tasty, thanks so much Rosey!

Rosey with Sabrina

Samantha

Jesse, Austin, and Jon all took turns entertaining us with songs. Then we said our goodbyes to Rosey, Jonny, Jimmy, Tammy and Austin and all of us AZ folk loaded into our cars and drove down to Anaheim where we stayed the night at the Castle Inn and got some rest so we'd be ready for DISNEYLAND the next day...