Day one in California. Highlight of the day was going to Crystal Cove. I'll talk about that first. The kids loved playing at the beach in the sand and waves.
We took the trolley/shuttle ride down there. It was good service that took us to a great drop off stop.
Daniel grabbed and held my finger as we left to Crystal Cove, he is so sweet.
It was a little breezy and cold at the beach, but the kids still loved it.
Something super cool was that a pod of dolphins swam by!
My big and little guys rolling in it.
Mel and Sophi making mud pies.
Corey burying Ethan
Natalie loved the waves.
Natalie and Sophi looking for something~
Wesley's turn to be buried. It looks like someone lost their head!
Owen stayed in the stroller most of the time, a safe distance away from the noisy waves.
We had waited until the last shuttle to the beach, so we also had to leave after just an hour to catch the last shuttle back. We spent most the rest of the evening as we'd spent most of the morning ~ exlporing the hotel and swimming. This morning Owen and Daniel were ready to go check everything out at the resort.
They started by pretending they wanted to go to the other room. We had to get two, and they were only 4 doors apart but it was kinda a pain. When I showed Owen the direction to go, he came toward me and made it there on his own. Daniel, however, decided to go the opposite direction.
Come back here you little stinker! Silly kids.
When we were in the room, the patio made a good cage to contain them.
Just kidding, we didn't lock them out there. But they loved exploring the new environment. Owen didn't swim today, but he liked playing ping pong.
He mostly liked throwing the ping pong ball into the fountain, over and over and over again.
Corey fishing out the ball again, what a fun game!
I took a turn with the toddlers while Corey took at turn at the pool. Owen and I went to explore some more. Over to the west gate of the pool...
Owen liked it there.
Then back to the east gate by the games - Owen and Daniel playing chess.
I enjoyed discovering new and interesting looking flowers!
Rose bushes
And these pretty purple things - flower in a flower!
I took Natalie in to the bathroom for a potty break. After 4 minutes I started to record a video of her, cause she was cracking me up, just jibber jabbering to herelf like Bo on Monsters Inc. I might post t to youtube later. So funny.
And after 10 minutes she's finally done! Wash your hands and let's go silly girl.
Everything is fun with these kids - we're ready for more fun tomorrow.
We went to the beach Monday night. Sort of a FHE, sort of a surfing farewell for Corey. We parked a little too far south on the beach (my fault) so had to walk to the surfboard rental shops and to the part of the beach where there weren't rocks.
Corey went and rented a surfboard and two boogie boards. He looked so macho walking back with his boards that I wanted a picture. I was too slow fumbling around for my camera, so I had to tell him to stop walking... "Ok... got my camera, it's on, ok, go!" He stands there. "No no, pretend you're walking" I said, and this is what he gave me.
Isn't that hilarious? That is his "I'm casually walking to the beach" pose. "Oh fine, just stand there then if you're gonna walk like that."
Ok, I guess that'll have to do. Here's our handsome hero for his last hurrah.
The man and boys got situated, who gets to go first, who gets which board...
Joe's heading out
There we go! That's the "walk" I was looking for! Bent knee, casually walking, looks natural!
...only now I can't see his face. Blast. No dashing features to grace the photo, but oh well...
These four kiddos got busy doing what they do best
Lily in her squat, love it, patting the sand with Mel. She eats the sand, I think she's iron deficient or something. The kids kept making mud balls - They'd go to the waves and get wet sand, run up with it to the dry sand, throw it in and roll it around and it would make a good ball of dirt. Lily thought it was an apple and would bite it.
Then she chased me around trying to get me to try it too. No Lily, I will not partake of your fruit of the tree of dirt!
But she is persistent. And cute. Hmm, well, okay, just one bite.
We started off this weekend with another splash in the pool during the 7 am open swim.
I was glad that Hyrum and Wes were able to take a homework break and join us.
Lily pestered Corey to take a work break too, and soon he was in the pool with us too! Big brothers and fathers are a lot more fun cause they are so strong.
Natalie getting tossed up high!
I'm also grateful that they are able to offer responsible hands to help hold the little ones.
I took a few "Little Mermaid" shots of Abi - doing the Ariel hair thing. I remember doing this whenever I went swimming as a kid, and also doing it during soccer tournaments when we had pool time at the hotel. It's a girl thing, I think all girls do it
I showed Corey how the waterfall works as a back massage. He agrees that we should get one of those in our house.
So we spent the morning in the pool, and then we had to hurry and pack up all our stuff for a room change. Good news: we got a better room with an amazing view. Bad news: Tonight Abi realized she left her retainer in a glass cup in the kitchen in the other room. We've gone by the front desk but they didn't find anything, so that's unfortunate, darn. After we packed up our room, Corey and Wes and Hyrum went to drop it off somewhere in the check in place, since our new room wasn't ready yet, and we waited outside. I didn't know where Corey had parked the car, so we sat outside feeding birds and hoped that he'd find us.
I also didn't get Daniel's shoes or any towels or sunblock, so we weren't really beach prepared. Oh well, it will be an adventure anyway. We went to Waikiki beach. When we arrived and found a place to park, we were glad to learn that Hyrum had grabbed one thing of sunblock as we packed, yay. Corey saw a "surf lessons" van and went and rented four surf boards for two hours for him and HWA to use. As Corey got set up with the boards, the kids found a cool tree to climb.
I have since learned that this is called a Banyan tree and is native to India.
Very cool tree. The kids loved climbing it.
Corey and Hyrum, Wes, and Abi getting ready to head out
I stayed with the little ones at the shore.
We tried to stay as much in the shade as possible. Peter and Owen building a sand pile castle
There wasn't a lot of beach and the waves were pretty active and would surprise us a few times by coming up all the way to the wall. I had to move our bags onto the sidewalk to keep our phones, shoes, and clothes dry. I was a little bit on high alert with our belongings being so accessible to some potential purse snatchers and with kids close to strong waves, but I survived the hour as the lone parent.
Abi came back almost right away. It was too scary for her. I was happy to have a big kid near to help me count heads.
Wes came back with like a half hour of surfboard rental to spare. He was able to get up twice! Hyrum and Corey didn't have any luck. Corey and Hyrum made a few self deprecating remarks that I can't remember now but they made me laugh. Wesley confessed that he saw the local surfers laughing at Corey when they saw him kick with his feet to catch the wave. Use your arms! Corey said he should probably try to regain his upper body strength. Well, it was fun. Corey wanted a fruit smoothie, but felt he couldn't have one without buying them for everyone. So he did. Such good service.
Just us doing our part to help out the local covid economy. (Corey did not disclose how much they cost.)
Very refreshing, I think we'll buy some fruit and make smoothies this week, cause they hit the spot, and I didn't even have that much. In this warm tropical weather all that sounds good to me is cold fruit smoothies.
They rinsed off the boards, the kids said goodbye to their new favorite tree...
Then we had about an hour to kill before picking up Joseph at the airport, so we drove around Diamond head, then around Honolulu for a bit, then I googled "french fries" and we thought we'd have a new experience, so instead of Wendy's or McDonald's we tried something NEW - Betty's Burgers! I got some fries, and they were very tasty. And while we were waiting in the car for Corey and Hyrum to come back, some possibly homeless or special needs guy came up to Corey's side of the car, made small talk, opened the door, and started the car. Wesley is my witness. Then he left. He said we needed to put on the air conditioning for the kids. (We were fine, we were in the shade.) THEN we drove up to the airport, and look who was walking out!
We know that kid! Hi Joseph!
It was nice to have fresh meat for the kids. They put him to work - play with us!
Hyrum throwing Owen, Peter flying, Lily splashing, fun all around. It's great to have Joseph here with us for a few days. He leaves Thursday night, the 19th.
