Joy

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Beach Trip 2018

We just returned form our annual beach trip with my parents.

We drove out on a Wednesday and headed straight to Balboa Pier to catch a cruise.

We were hoping to see some dolphins

(Joy's FAVORITE animal)

but we only saw the sea lions hanging out on the buoy.

Jack thought they were funny.

The kids had a good time and while we were there, we went on the ferris wheel and walked around a bit.

We then headed to our hotel for a good nights sleep and were excited to hit the beach the next morning.

Our kids love. the. beach.

There is never enough time at the beach.
We are quite the spectacle while we parade slowly across the sand to the spot where we will park our stuff for the entire day.

We have found the ideal part of Huntington beach that is never crowded, (even on weekends),

it has a gently sloping sand and calm waves.

It is ideal for little kids but still has good waves for Claire to boogie board.

Jack just can NOT understand why we kept yelling at him not to throw sand.

He thought he was hilarious when he tried to eat sand, and then he did - Just to get a reaction.

In school we just finished learning about tides. I was hoping to take the kids to a tide pool while in CA but there weren't any close enough to justify it. Well, our little spot is right between two flood channels and one of them was pretty much dry when the tide was low.

It was so cool.

We found so many sea creatures!

(Joy on the hunt with her net)

Way more than we would have seen at the tide pools,

We found live clams,

Live sand dollars!

Lots, of them! It was cool to see them slowly move across the boogie board.

Sea slugs,

Look at the trail of slime they leave - even underwater!

A sea cucumber!

When we bothered it, it would puff up and become a somewhat hard ball.

It was gross.

Claire caught a fish with her bare hands (Something must have been wrong with it, we fed it to the sea gulls)

We also found, crabs, barnacles, and sand

crabs of course.

Josh and the kids would ride the current back to the ocean.

There were sand banks that became a second shore during low tide.

We spent all day Thursday and Friday at the beach with my mom and dad.

Poppy is Jack's favorite person (after Josh)

On Saturday my parents went to visit their friends and we went to the beach alone.

The last day we didn't want to go to the beach and drive home all sticky and sandy so instead we rented a bike and pedaled up and down the boardwalk.

One last treat before the loooooong drive home.

It was a wonderful vacation! The girls are already looking forward to next year.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Awana Games Champions!

We had an exciting morning at the Sparks-A-Rama and AWANA Games. Last year was Claire and Joy's first year participating and they didn't know what to expect. This year, they knew what it would be like and that it is really a big deal so they were both pretty nervous.

Nana and Poppy came to watch which made it that much more exciting.

Joy didn't have any fantastic plays this year but she did alright in general. It was painful to watch these little kids and their lack of sense of urgency.

(Joy is the one with hte pink knee pads and blue bow. )
Run!..... FASTER!

Her team got 2nd place which would have been good and expected if we had gotten 2nd to the Greater Phoenix Chinese Church, but they weren't even in our flight this year.

TnT was next. We totally expected to get second with this age group as well because we WERE against the Chinese church.

Starting out strong with the pin.

Our team did pretty well and the Chinese Church team made a couple of huge errors so I knew the score would be close. But they DO NOT lose so you can imagine our surprise when they announced the second place finisher.