The Beach and Drivers in Training

We planned on spending a full afternoon at the beach. HA! It turned out that we whittled away our morning trying to recover from our very late night which I will blog about later and then once the kids were done with their naps, we went. It was 3 or 4 in the afternoon. I wasn't all that fussed about it though. It was a much longer drive from the freeway to the ocean than I'd anticipated and it seemed like it took forever to get there. But the beach wasn't all that crowded when we got there. Rebekah and Patrick giggled every time they caught sight of the ocean and they were SO excited to play in the water. I put my feet in and balked. No way was I going in there!! I decided then and there that the blanket needed something more solid upon it to ensure that it didn't get blown away. That was the other problem, it was windy and the sun was behind clouds. All in all, not my idea of the perfect beach day. But the kids had a blast and that was the important thing, right?Me holding down the blanket and a shivering Patrick.

You can see how deep the water got from Mikey's shirt. I'm sure that he lifted Rebekah out of the brunt of it. I think Ireanne loved this visit to the beach as much as the kids did. Yea Mimi!!

Michael buried the kids after their ocean excursion in the hopes that it would warm them. I think it worked. If not, they were certainly distracted enough that the cold no longer bothered them.

You can't see the kite, but that's what they're doing in this picture. It was $1 from Wal-Mart, but it held against the strong wind and Rebekah was tickled pink to see it flying around up in the sky!!

Here's my hotty. I know I'm biased, but I really dig this guy. :)

The kids' first ride at Disneyland was Autopia. They had no idea what they were in for.
Dad? What kind of gel did you use this morning? It's great!

I love that you can just barely see Patrick's head over the dashboard. Okay, so he has a few more years until he'll really enjoy this ride, but he was still fascinated.

This is the face of a very distracted little girl. I let her steer and I jumped and bumped and squealed in all the right places. She laughed the whole time.