Beach Bums

We headed to Huntington Beach to visit my Brother and his family for a few days. They live about 1/2 a mile from the beach. The weather was BEAUTIFUL it never got over 78 degrees the entire time we were there. Friday we spent the day at the beach. The kids loved it. K was fearless in the water. Trina took her out about up to her chest and they just played in the waves. I was a nervous wreck the whole time but she had a blast. Trina said a couple of times K got a mouthful of water and started gagging. That's where Trina drew the line and said if you're gonna puke go to your Mom. She never actually puked because she discovered she could just close her mouth. O decided, after much fretting, that she wanted to go out too but the first mouthful of sea water and she was done. C went out for a few minutes but we had to assure him that he would not get too sandy and that we would change him into dry clothes the second he returned to shore. He's a bit fussy, like his Mama, hence the reason I was behind the camera and not body surfing. I remember being out in the water when I was a kid and having sand in places I shouldn't when I was done (now I have a few more places for it to go). About 50 feet from where we were playing we had a treat and saw a pod of dolphins jumping and playing. I didn't have my camera out for that part.

The boys were content to dig in the sand with Uncle Bryan who's really only a year or too older than them mentally. Just kidding... he had a great time playing with the kids. Papa, C, K and Trina dodging waves
My Dad held my nephew E like this for about 45 minutes and just let him ride the waves. When he was done his lips were blue and he was shivering from the cold but he wasn't finished playing yet.
Our sand crab. He looks enormous but is only the size of my thumb nail.

O and her loot.

Grandma and her cold boys.After we dried off and changed clothes we had a cook out at the beach. We had hot dogs and smores. The kids were really excited about the fire and kept throwing everything in.We found these HUGE marshmallows at the store and decided that they would make great smores. I used the Pepsi can for size reference. We discovered that when it comes to marshmallows, bigger is not necessarily better! They tasted like bubblegum and were so big the insides did not get that gooey, mushy, molten hot, marshmallow goodness they should have. The kids didn't even like them and we ended up letting them throw the whole bag into the fire and watching them melt.Saturday we decided taking the kids to the beach and then cleaning them all up when we got home was too much of a chore, so we bought them a little pool and let them play. We did go to the pier for Ruby's (a yummy restaurant at the end) and walked through a downtown fair that had some very interesting things. Trina made a great dinner of pasta, salad, and bread, then we had carmel popcorn and root beer floats for dessert. Yes, I did say carmel popcorn AND root beer floats, it's vacation for heaven sake.