Back at the Beach

 We wanted to go to the beach on a lovely Saturday.  Somehow we decided to head towards Sand Dollar and Sea Glass Beaches and find a good place to stop. If we didn't find a new place we could park, we would just go on to Sea Glass Beach.

We followed the road around the coast and passed our parking spot for Sand Dollar Beach. There were cars taking it up already, so we continued on.  We saw a sign that said "Beach" with an arrow, so we were adventurous and followed it.

We ended up driving down this for a bit!  It ended in a parking area with about 10 cars there, so we joined the crowd.

The path down to the beach popped us out to this glorious sight.

It was a lovely beach with soft sand, which is rare. But the soft sand and lovely beach was just here.  You could walk to the right and in 1/2 mile or so you would find Sand Dollar Beach.  To the left, you would eventually get to Sea Glass Beach.  We went left.

It was mostly this coral rock and no sand.  No good shells to find either.  And no sand dollars.

These girls did not care!  Oh, did I mention that we brought the dog?!  Levi was thrilled to be out sniffing stuff.

Much climbing was done. And much fun was had in the process.

I needed a picture of this because it made me think of my geologist sister and how much fun she would have with these rock formations. 

 Trying out their poses.

Being silly.  And making me laugh. 

 Levi did a surprisingly great job getting up and down the rocks.  He was having a blast.

I know, they made me take a million pictures.  Be glad I did not post them all!! 

I think they wanted every mountain climbed to be documented.   

 And they sound this little cave.  It was not very exciting.

Levi enjoyed the sand, but boy was he a stinky mess when we got home! 

 I do not know why Callie is flaring signs.  I think she's just too cool.  Actually, she is, since she found this nifty little cave here.

 Rylee is sulking up there.  Apparently I forgot to take her picture and she was mad.  Since I had taken 500 pictures already, I don't know how she knew I had missed one!

 Selfie at the Beach! I'm loving it!

Levi loves the beach, but is not a huge fan of the water. He prefers knee deep or less.  So Callie was particularly pleased with herself that she got him to swim out and back from that rocky island.  

 And here he is, swimming back in!  He was such a good dog.

We did walk all the way around to Sea Glass Beach and it was a lot of fun.  We made it halfway back before Levi cut his paw on something and we alternated between walking him back, stopping so he could lick it, and getting him to walk in the water to rinse if off.  It ended up being a little cut on the side of his main paw pad, and it stopped bleeding once he stopped messing with it and we got him in the car.  We may need doggie boots for him. Our awesome felt-bottom boots were amazing and kept our feet safe.

Rylee's Field Trip to the Botanical Gardens

Rylee's class had a field trip to the Botanical Gardens and I got to go chaperone it.  It was really fun!  It was beautiful and the kids had a "scavenger hunt" of things they were suppose to find.  I think I had more fun than they did.

It was glorious!  So many pretty things to see!

And there were Capybara!  I love Capybara!

Rylee also enjoyed the capybara and petting them.

There were these piggies as well.  And you could buy some food to feed them and that was fun to do.

I'm pretty sure most of the kids were just grabbing the food and not putting the money in the slot.  But we paid!

This was the coolest plant!  It is a Blue Jade Vine.  This picture doesn't do it justice.  It is a gorgeous blue flower pod.

Selfie so you know I was there. 

There 2was a little enclosure with thee monkey's inside.  You could walk inside with them but you were not suppose to touch them.  They were SO cute!

Playing in the lily pond, trying to catch the fish.

Studiously trying to confirm if the tree is on her list of things to identify.

So many pretty things to see!

The gaggle of girls I was responsible for.

It was a beautiful place to be.  I don't think the kids properly enjoyed it, but it was lovely.

Rylee wanted to pet the duck so badly.  But the duck was not having it.

Anniversary

 We made it another year.  19 years now.  The best part is that I left Dan's card out on the table for him and he left my card on the counter for me.  He opened his first, looked up and said, "Spoiler alert: we got the same card."

We are pretty low-key, but we did go out to lunch.  I picked the Lenai Cafe, because they have the most spectacular hamburgers.  They have delicious pancakes as well, but I always go for the burger.

Dan took a delightfully backlit picture of me and my yummy avocado burger.  Trust me, it was marvelous.

And Dan got the Strawberry Pancakes.  He proclaimed them to be amazing.  

National Junior Honor Society

One of the awesome things about Callie is her sweet, overachieving heart.  She wants to do well and she wrks really hard to get it done.  Her goal this year was to have straight A's, and I'm pretty sure she's managing to do that.  Earlier this year she was invited to apply to going the National Junior Honor Society.  She worked incredibly hard on her application and she was delighted to be asked to join.  We attended her induction ceremony last week and it was perfect.

There was a little pomp and circumstance, and ceremonial stuff.  It was short and sweet and then they gave us cake and punch.  So, it was awesome!

Lighting each candle as a symbol of spreading good scholarship and citizenship, I think.

Getting her certificate.

Posing for the shot with very little delight.

Acquiescing to my wishes for a nice picture of her with her fancy paper.

Sand Dollar Beach Day!

  I was adventurous! Well, I was adventurous, for me.  I have a slightly neurotic fear of finding parking, and will refuse to go exploring based solely on the anxiety caused by not knowing where I can park.  So this was huge for me.  I wanted to go to Sand Dollar Beach-  A place that my GPS does not recognize and I only knew of a general area for.  But Marian, Callie and Rylee were ready to try something new, so we did.  I was quite pleased with myself.

Sand Dollar Beach is a few miles before Sea Glass Beach.  So I set the GPS to Sea Glass Beach, and once we were a few kilometers away, I turned towards the ocean and took the narrow coastal road until I found a place with beach access, that also had a place to pull off and park.  It ended up being so much easier than my anxiety-riddled concerns told me it would be.

We parked right next to this little memorial.  It was all in Japanese, so I have no idea what it was, but it was cool.

The girls were all about exploring the beach and checking out all the cool nooks and crannies.   

And they had a blast posing for pictures.  All kinds of pictures and poses. 

We did make it down to the beach and there were millions of sand dollars.  Mostly they were just mucky brown circles in the mud, but once you knew what to look for they were everywhere!

But mostly broken.

Is this not a beautiful beach?!  It was gorgeous!   

I kind of like these kids.  A lot. 

 They went wading and let me tell you, the felt bottom boots are the best thing ever invented! I am so glad we invested in them.  They are amazing.  Just in case you were wondering.

More pictures and posing by my little darlings.

 I love that they like each other enough to have fun doing this.

They are silly little goobers and I adore them. 

 Ah, this was so you could see what the sand dollars looked like in the water.  Can you see the whitish blob in the middle?  That's a sand dollar.  Most were orange or brown from sitting in th emuck.  Most were old and gross.

Yeah, they had to climb up EVERYTHING!  They had a very good time. 

Rylee's Pretty pose for me. 

Marian had to be different!

And Callie needed a picture as well. 

I thought we were done and heading home, but nope.  They found this culvert and had to explore and play some more.

This is the haul we brought home.  This doesn't count the ones we left behind.  Not too shabby.  Now I need to check Pintrest for ideas on what to do with them!