California Dreamin' Part 1

Now it is always a little bit difficult for our family to head to Disneyland, specifically, the LA area and NOT do Disneyland, but we desperately needed a getaway little vacation for Mom and Dad. Mom requested off work for their anniversary, the 6th, and told Dad that we were going to California!

We opted to wake up REALLY early on Friday to drive straight to the beach and play instead of driving late at night.

We love to stop at Carl's Jr at State Line

We decided to try a different beach than we have ever gone to on the recommendation from our family doctor and friend. Crystal Cove did not disappoint but we had never been to a beach like it. We had to park on the other side of the freeway and use this neat access tunnel!

Yes this was the best picture...hahaha

Once we got to the beach, it was high tide and beach space was actually really hard to come by! Not necessarily because it was crowded, but because the water came up so high.

The morning stayed mostly foggy with sun breaking through the clouds. Luckily it was plenty warm and the waves were a lot of fun.

Sam enjoyed the sand toys and the sand!

I got tossed by a wave almost three minutes after I hit the water. And I mean it TOSSED me.

Iva was panicking over the water. She didn't really want to go near the waves and walking to our beach spot made that hard since the water was literally lapping the cliffs in some places.

She thought the sand was great though.

We decided to a little exploring after we had been there for a bit and took a walk down to where it looked like there were tide pools.

This was the cabin where the movie Beaches filmed

Unfortunately, like I mentioned before it was high tide so the tide pools were a little bit of a bust, but it looked neat.

Iva even got a little bit braver and here she is IN the water. It was a big deal.

Mom loved watching us big girls play in the waves. We just played and played and played.

What sand?

I think Sam might be the favorite. They spent a lot of time snuggling on him whether he wanted to or not.

At one point, Sam was quite DONE with all the sand. He'd had enough.

Daddy loves to do his headstands on the beach and they are really impressive.

Sam was in need of a good washing and so we took to the water. He loved it. Or wait, maybe he didn't.

Just as we were getting ready to leave, Mom remembered that the tide was going out and that even though we were still about 90 minutes away from low tide we should check out the tide pools again. It was kind of fun. There was this hole in the rocks that would fill with waves and you can kind of ride them into the hole.

It was a little bit scary in the hole since there was a current that would make it feel like you were going to be sucked out to sea (which wouldn't have happened), but all of us girls gave it a go with Dad!

Iva didn't even want to get out!

It actually ended up being a great hole to rinse away sand because it was all rocks.

Summer Wrap Up

Guest post by Mom:
I know. It's weird to type a title like that in the BEGINNING of August, but really we have been on summer break since before Memorial Day. It's been over two months and as much as I'd like it to be three. It's not. School starts Aug 11. That's just the breaks.

Summer was quite busy for me and it meant extra money, but I think it also made summer go too fast! I taught a FitKids clinic at the gym. Two days a week, two hours each day. It was Mondays and Wednesdays in June and then Tuesdays and Thursdays in July. What made it worth it, besides money (haha!), was that my two big girls got to do it with me! We spent a lot of time together.

As the last weeks of summer approached, we kind of got sillier and more desperate in our attempts to keep summer with us! We played in our summer rainstorms.

We laid around on our beds instead of being productive. (Iva's forehead still bearing the fireworks from the 24th of July!)

Cara demonstrated her love of pepperoni at the mall....hahaha

We managed to make it to the opening week of the summer reading challenge and the closing pizza party. And that's about it. We did do all of the reading, we just never made it there again!

I'll sure miss the big half of this crew when school starts. We like being silly together.

Lake Fun and Little Jamaica

Soooooo a year ago my Uncle E went out on his mission to serve in Chile. He even went directly to the Chilean CCM (MTC). And it was hard. Very hard. And very scary. And Uncle E came home after about a month. Everyone was happy to see him again, but it was still strange because he had committed to serve for two years and everyone really wanted that for him. Well he spent this last year going to college and working and then SUDDENLY he told everyone that he was going to be going out on his mission again. Like in four weeks. This time to California. We were all very excited for him, but that meant that we were going to be separated again for two years. Mom and her siblings all tried to coordinate schedules (which was ALMOST impossible) and do a canyon and found it just wasn't going to happen because Mom still breastfeeds Sam and we couldn't do it on a Saturday. Then in a golden opportunity, they were all able to get out on the boat with no extras. No spouses. No children. Just them and their parents. It was for about an hour and a half and people had to go their separate ways, but it was awesome. They were silly and Mom's face hurt from laughing.

They tried to double wake surf! It only worked in a few combos and Mom was never one of those but Grandma and Uncle E and Grandma and Grandpa worked! When Mom and Aunt Becca tried it, they just ended up swallowing a lot of water and laughing.

Uncle E borrowed Aunt Becca's glasses...he looked good.

Mom even wake surfed. She has only done that one other time so she was proud of herself.

It looked like Mom had a lot of fun.

Now, just after this magical Wednesday, Aunt Becca asked Mom and us girls to head to a place called Little Jamaica with her. Little Jamaica is a natural spring that flows down the side of a cliff into the Virgin River, but what's CRAZY is that it is directly underneath a freeway overpass. The overpass is massive, but you can still hear the freeway. It's so weird and we weren't sure EXACTLY where we were going and it was a little dicey because we brought Iva and just flip flops, but we found it and got down and it was AWESOME.

We even tried floating in the river, but it wasn't very deep. What was weird was that the spring was cool almost cold and that made the river feel really warm!

This was basically a giant "cold" tub. Like a hot tub, but cold so it felt amazing in the 100 degree heat.

Aunt Becca and I probably shouldn't have jumped. It was only about three feet deep and we both kind of hurt ourselves, but it was fun anyway!

We found a better place to hike out which made it less scary to go up!

Thanks, Aunt Becca, for taking us on a journey. And thanks, Daddy, for watching Sam while we did it.

SEVEN

Cara hit the big SEVEN. 

Mom let her have a swim party at city pool with some of her friends a few days before her birthday. The weather was perfect and I think all her friends really enjoyed the water!

Sam loved her wrapping leftovers!

She made out with quite the loot!

One small sad note to her birthday was that it was going to be one of the last times that she would hang out with one of her best friends, Kailey because Kailey moved to Enterprise.

But we should talk a little bit about WHAT Cara is like at seven.

-She's gotten a little bit louder...but that's comparative so she's really still quiet.
-She reads so well that first grade is going to be a breeze.
-She is normally the first one awake in the girls' room which means she is normally also the first asleep.
-She loves it when Sam will play with her, less so when it is Iva, but overall she is a great big sister.
-This girl is all about carbs....unless it's BACON or even pepperoni. It's a challenge to get her to eat chicken nuggets. She would prefer noodles with butter and parmesan cheese. She does NOT like macaroni with orange cheese. Mom thinks it is a texture thing. Melty cheese is not her thing. She takes it off of pizza. If she makes a pizza by herself, it's crust, red sauce and pepperoni! She also does not like peanut butter. Nutella, yes please. Peanut butter, gag.
-She is just barely starting to wear size 6 clothes and her foot size is somewhere between 10-11.
-She had a meltdown the other night about being short. (Like sobbing because I was making it worse by trying to point out how short she was...Mom wasn't happy!) In her words, "I don't even look like a first grader!" Grandma was able to fix it by pointing out that Grandma was short and LOVED it.
-She has quite the sense of humor and seems to understand sarcasm.
-She still sucks her thumb when mom isn't looking or rather when she thinks Mom isn't looking!
-She does her chores like a champ and is almost done with her first book in piano!

She's pretty easy going. She still bursts into tears if she even THINKS Mom is mad or she's in trouble, but other than that she is pretty mellow.

On her actual birthday, we had cupcakes and Mom made her take pictures!

Mom just told her there were probably lizards in there!

LOVE YOU, CARA!!!