::friday--the last beach & ice::

The last day of vacation is the best and the worst all at the same time.
It's so sad because your vacation is ending, but it's so great because you still get to be on vacation for ONE MORE DAY!!

So anyway, it's hard to decide how to spend your last day wisely. We definitely were challenged by this and solved the problem by just not deciding at all what to do but letting life just happen to us instead.

In the morning the baby actually took a nap, which is always unexpected, and I needed to go on a run, so I did that. Then we got all ready and headed out to the beach--a different beach than we've ever visited before. This beach is called Windansea beach and it's in La Jolla.
We always like to go out of our way to drive by it when we're in that area because it's so picturesque. It has a reef that causes a pretty big break at one spot, so big blue waves are very visible from the car when driving by.
Kris and I always thought it would be fun to go, so we did. And it was great, very gorgeous, lots of interesting rocks and different looking formations. But man the waves were strong. They were pretty big, they were breaking basically right on the beach and they were intense. So Kris didn't get to try the surf break, he just had to stand right on top of Sandy the whole time, watching to make sure Sandy didn't go out to visit the dolphins and whales. At one point a wave knocked Sandy over backwards on the way in, and then on the way out it grabbed him and started to pull him into the water while he was still backwards. Kris said he tried hard not to rescue Sand _too_ many times, if Sandy could possibly save himself, but this was one of the times he stepped in.
Because of the reef there was also some strange stuff going on the surf, there was one wave that regularly came in sideways and ran into one of the regular waves and made like a swirling vortex of terror--which of course Sandy was drawn to like a moth to a flame. You can sort of see it in this photo. Gorgeous though right? Max was in heaven there in the waves. He loves getting manhandled by the ocean. There was only one point where he got washed out to where he couldn't stand. He had his boogie board with him so we talked him through swimming himself back into his comfort zone. He's a good swimmer. The colors in these photos are so gorgeous. They make me want to go back!! I was parked in the beach tent because it was so hot and sunny I knew that if Lucy was out of the shade she'd burn right up. So I stayed in there and hung out with her. She likes me. And she likes to puke on me.

We called everybody back for lunch at some point, Kris was glad to have a little break from the life saving. These photos are all like exact repeats of yesterday's, but just at a different beach, it's cracking me up. (Max looks like he's holding a guy in his hand, that's weird.) (And now the guy that Max was holding has 3 arms, WHAT?!) It was really hard to keep Sandy sitting and eating. He just wanted to go and play again SO SO bad. So I had to talk him into jumping for me again while Kris ate his lunch. I was hoping he'd redeem himself from yesterday. So far so good. Doesn't he have the cutest look on his face here? But big brother is always there to show up the little brother, holy cow Max! This one just looks weird. This one is superb I think. And last but not least--excellent.
That seagull behind the boys thought we belonged to him and he was patroling the perimeter waiting for the boys to drop food for him. They didn't disappoint.

After the beach we went and got cleaned up and got food of course. We had gotten Hawaiian food at a couple of different places during the week, but we ended up going for some more because Max remembered that we hadn't been to his favorite Hawaiian place.
It's his favorite because of the shaved ice. He loves it. So here are the requisite pictures of tired boys out to linner. Making funny faces. They were soooooo hungry that they could hardly wait the few minutes until the food was done. Sandy got a teriyaki hot dog and Max got pineapple slider burgers. Yeah, yum. And here they are deciding on the flavors for their ices. Sandy got the most disgusting combo ever thanks to Max's help--strawberry cheesecake and cherry. I can't remember what Max's combo was so it must not have been quite so disgusting. And then we took Max back to the looney bin, since he was only checked out for the afternoon. Haha just kidding, but the stinker sure does like to make faces. After we enjoyed our outing we went back and didn't get as packed as we should've. Just as it should be. It was a great trip. I'd do it once a quarter if I could.