Day 10 (tues)

We went to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose.

I haven't been to this place since I was a little kid, and it was even better than I remembered.

The children's literature lover in me fell head over heels for the Clifford section of the museum.  They had the entire town set up, with props and costumes in each for the children to explore.  The sets were amazing and we felt like we were inside the pages of a Norman Bridwell book. This was my favorite part of the museum.

Reese loved all of the science exhibits.  She created electricity by turning cranks and spinning a windmill, she put on a dinosaur shadow puppet show, and got to look at her hair and her fingers under a giant microscope.

Quincy loved the water area but her favorite was the bubble room where you could create walls of rainbow bubbles to put your arms through.

 The best part about this place is that they had activities to entertain all ages.  I took Reese and Quincy to make corn husk dolls (I remember making one as a kid at this place) and Aaron took Corbin to play in the wing that was geared specifically for 2-4 yr old children.  Everyone always had an age appropriate activity to do.

But who had the most fun? Aaron!  They had a water section where streams of water would suspend plastic balls in the air, or send them through baskets and funnels.  It was crazy awesome. Aaron had a crowd of kids gathered around him to watch as he lined up the balls so they'd go up the streams through a cool marble maze type contraption. 

Day 9 (mon)

Monterey is one of our favorite places.
We went to the wharf, watched the boats and the sea otters, ate clam chowder in a bread bowl, ice cream, and watched gumballs drop at Gilberts, watched the taffy pull and got grape flavored (yum!) cotton candy at the candy shop, then walked over to Dennis the Menace Park.

The owner of the candy shop gave the children giant suckers on our way out of the store, because they weren't sugared up enough from lunch, ice cream, bubble gum, and cotton candy.

Dennis the Menace Park is awesome.  Sadly, the giant slides and the climbing train were closed off for construction/maintenence, but the kids still enjoyed the huge roller slide, hanging bridge, climbing wall, maze, twist slide, swings, tunnel, lion fountain, and playgrounds.

The children crashed on the way home. Too much fun in Monterey. We let Coco wake up Corbin and when he was barely awake he said, "Oh, hi doggie (pronounced doh-gie)! You're so cu-ute." then fell back asleep. After that, we couldn't stop calling Coco, "Dohgie".

The party really started when Aaron found the ping pong table in my parent's garage.  It was set up, and he challenged all of our nephews to a tournament...with a promise that he'd take anyone who beat him at ping pong to Foster's Freeze.

 Pretty soon, a bracket had been drafted, and refs were assigned.  I had NO idea how seriously Aaron takes his ping pong. I don't think I've ever even played ping pong with him before.  If I had, I probably would have already known that Aaron is a freaking awesome table tennis player.  No joke. Aunts and uncles were included on the bracket as well, and he schooled everyone.

Except for Parker!  Due to his own mistakes, Aaron lost the final game by 2 points and Parker was dubbed house champ.  They went to Foster's and celebrated Parker's victory a few nights later. 

Go Parker!

And seriously, Aaron, when did you get so good at ping pong? I was totally impressed.  

Days 7 and 8 (sat and sun)

Over the next couple days:

-I saw the worst movie ever made (Battleship) with Mark, Melinda, Amy, Josh, and my mom.  The first part was funny, and then they lost me at the arrival of aliens and it all went downhill from there.  Take my advice, save your dollar and don't even redbox this one.   Everyone else seemed to really like the movie. Maybe it's just me?  I did enjoy teasing Amy and Melinda for seeing it 3 times.

 -Aaron arrived (yay!)

-Corbin made the cutest little father's day craft in nursery in my parent's ward.

-We made s'mores in Paul and HolleeAnn's backyard, heard every Chuck Norris joke there is and watched the kids perform a bunch of skits they learned at cub scout day camp.

-Had a BBQ and impromptu talent show at Mark and Melinda's house.
-We went back over to USA Sport to hang out, watch Taylor tumble (incredible), and so the kids could jump in the whale and show Aaron their new gymnastics skillz.
-Jordan went to Ceres, Garret left for DC and Taylor came home from EFY.

-Taylor taught Corbin the art of the cell phone self portrait

it took him a minute to figure it out, but he caught on...

-Lots of playtime with family and Coco.

-More Super Taq, In-N-Out, It'sIts were eaten. 

Day 6 (fri)

Well, the nice thing about taking loads of "down time" off my feet is that I'm catching up on the vacation blog posts fairly quickly.  I have zero desire to go through and crop photos and make them nice and pretty. I know that if I go to that place, the chances of actually catching up are basically zero.

Day 6 was BEACH DAY, baby!  Knowing Aaron would want to be with us when we hit up the Santa Cruz beaches and Monterey/Carmel coastline, we opted for a Watsonville beach for while he was away.
The thing I love most about Sunset Beach is that it's always littered with sanddollars and other seashells if you get there when the tide is out.  We sent out an open invite to local friends and family and headed for the coast.

The weather. was. perfect. PERFECT!
Prepare for photo overload.

 These two were in heaven and chased waves for at least an hour.

 Q collected dozens of shells. We brought home a couple bags full for her collection.

 Steven with a sandy buddah belly.

 Parker and Steven.

 Corbin with a bucket of sand crabs. Gross. He loved them.

 This is the only shot I have of us together.  Corbin was very worried about his shovel and bucket.

I forgot to bring the kids' hats and sunglasses.  Auntie Amy offered her glasses to Q and she kept them on for most of the day.

 Toy cars and tiny sand dunes = monster truck rally. Complete with cheeto fingers.

 Buried Brock.  This convinced Reese that she wanted a deep hold dug so she could climb in and be buried so only her head was level with the sand, and then she wanted to take one of those trick pictures where it looks like someone is leaning forward over her and picking up their head off the sand.  She rounded up all of the older boys with the real shovels and convinced them to dig for her.  She sad on the sand and ate chips and watched while they slaved away like the rowing scene from Ben Hur. When the hole was finally deep enough, she climbed in and crunched up her legs and they started to back fill the hole.
Que freaking out.
She screamed, "help! I can't move my legs!" and scrambled out of there as fast as possible, giving Quincy a warning to "NEVER let a boy bury you in the sand. It's horrible and you can't move at all." 

A short while later, the tide moved in and as soon as the not-so-deep-anymore hole filled with water from a wave, Corbin titled it "the swimming pool" and jumped in with wreckless abandon.  His drawers filled with sandwater and he was happier (and dirtier) than a pig in poop.

Speaking of holes...Annette felt bad that I was stuck sitting up when all the other girls were laying comfortably on their stomachs on the sunwarmed sand. She got one of her boys' shovels and dug a big belly hole under our blanket.  It worked!  I haven't been able to lay on my stomach in months.  My back cracked as I sprawled out and it felt wonderful.  I hung out there for awhile, until baby discovered the sand beneath us and started kicking the ground so much that I felt like there were tremors beneath me.

Thanks for the belly hole, Annette!

 "Man I love watching that kid eat."  -Carla

A snuggle.  I love that Q and Brock are throwing a high five in the background.
I hold no shame and offer no apologies for my white skin.  My kids and I are the only ones who didn't come home from the beach with a sunburn.  Well, us and Caroline, but she's already sporting a lovely New Zealander shade of bronze skin.  I kicked it under an umbrella for a few hours, and reapplied spf 50 to myself and my crew multiple times.  Pass me the sunblock, baby!

We were joined by Amy and her boys, Melinda and her boys and two of Taylor's friends, The Meyers, Dicksons, Andersons and Nagels. It was great because there was someone there for everyone to play with.  They did gymnastics, ate nonstop, played football, built sand castles, boogie boarded, body surfed, chased waves, dug 100 holes, ate some, napped in the sun, and discovered the joy of playing with "wet sand".  I realized that at the park, they're only ever exposed to dry sand, so being able to pack wet sand into a bucket, then showing them how to flip it to make a sand castle tower pretty much made me the coolest mom ever.  Simple joys.
Goodbye, beach.  We love you.