Beach!

On the 8th, Howard and I decided that we needed a break.  Working on the house and the yard was getting to us.  The kids have been plugging along on their school work, sometimes doing 3 lessons of math per day to catch up after being sick. We told the kids that if they helped get the house cleaned up on Friday, we'd do something cool that isn't cleaning on Saturday.  Its amazing how fast they can work with an incentive!

On Saturday we piled everyone in the car and headed to Half Moon Bay.  I had never been there, Howard hadn't been there in well over 20 years.  It was beautiful for March.  The skies were blue, the waves were big.  And the wind was out of control!  Annie, Emma and Sarah were brave and possibly just a little excited and played along the water's edge.  I sat huddled in a blanket with Adam and Laura while they tried to dig in the sand.  After an hour of that, Howard sat up and said, "Hey, Santa Cruz is only like half an hour away, why don't we try there?"

We were cold and the drive was pretty so we decided to go for it.  When we arrived, it was awesome.  No wind, warm, the boardwalk was open and we had the whole day to play.  We hit the boardwalk first.  Emma, Annie and I went on the pirate boat.  Whoa, my tolerance is not what it used to be!  We took turns on various rides and of course visited the restrooms repeatedly.

Annie and Emma waiting patiently at the carousel

Adam and the orca

Laura enjoying the ride.  It was pretty cool.

Once we exhausted our sheets of tickets, we headed to the beach.  It was so relaxing. I made sand castles with Adam while the girls did their thing running around.

  And in case you are thinking this was an ideal day, there were kids involved.  What you don't see is that is Laura's second outfit, and that shortly after we took these pictures, Laura fell in the sand and got covered in wet sand from head to toe. Good thing I was SuperMom and had even more clothes in the car.  Also not pictured is the scary McDonald's in the bad part of town where we stopped to use the bathroom.

Altogether, it was an awesome day.  The kids are still talking about it.  I love living within  driving distance of the beach so we can make wonderful memories.