It's just a matter of time before this (staged) picture will be happening "for reals". Scary, isn't it! Just 4 years until the oldest is 16.
This picture is from a fun little drive we took last weekend. It was fun, but the kids didn't like driving on the freeway with the doors off. It's apparently a bit windy in the back seat.
It was a few weeks ago, but we went on our second Disneyland trip over my birthday weekend. It was a lot of fun. I forgot to take very many pictures. But I did get this one. Pretty good picture, eh (insert sarcasm). We hit all of the favorites and didn't feel at all rushed. It's wonderful having season passes!
Almost as popular as Disneyland was the beach. We went to the Corona del Mar state beach near LA. It cost $10 but we could park right by the beach and they had showers, bathrooms, and lifeguards. The water wasn't TOO cold, and the waves were perfect for boogie-boarding. It was a blast. Some of the waves were actually a bit too big and I was smashed into the ground a few times. But I always got up with a smile on my face!
There were some tide pools near this beach where the boys could catch crabs, so that was fun. The 10yo accidentally let some of the larger crabs escape. While he was looking for them, something really large crawled across my legs as I was drowsing in the sun. Needless to say, I jumped out of my skin, but I found one of the missing crabs. On a side note: Jill didn't come with us this time, so no one got sunburned :)
One of the exciting parts of our beach trip was this giant ray corpse that washed up on the beach. It was neat at first to see it up close. That lasted about 5 minutes. Then it became a rotting stinky corpse on the beach. Blech. After 20 min or so, it washed back out to sea. I was glad to see it go, until I realized that I no longer knew where it was. I only knew that it was lurking somewhere in the surf. We went swimming way down the beach after that. It washed up on the beach and back out several times that day. When it was up on the beach the seagulls would go over to peck off a little snack. The funniest part was all the ladies that were scandalized that the birds would dare deface such a magnificent creature. They would say things like, "You leave him alone, you terrible birds!", and try to shoo the birds away. These people need a lesson about nature. One guy ran over to the lifeguards to see if they would haul it away. They wouldn't.
Sadly, I must report a tragic end to our bird hatchery. I went outside and the nest had fallen from the tree. One little birdling was dead and the other hadn't hatched yet. I guess the mother bird didn't do a good enough job making the nest. If you look closely at the nest in the previous post, you'll notice that it seems much too shallow. Sigh.
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We have a new addition to our family, kind of. The 7yo noticed that we had a bird nest with mamma bird in residence. We're assuming that she's sitting on her eggs, as she will not leave the nest. The daddy bird hangs around too, pretending to be useful, as we daddies do. She picked our 'devil-tree'- the tree of 1000 thorns, so she should be safe from the neighborhood cats. It'll be fun to see the babies hatch!
