The Shortest Vacation Ever!

Our beach cottage on Kauai. Super cute and really comfortable! The view from the beach right outside our cottage at Barking Sands. That's the forbidden island of Niihau in the distance (I think).

Max crawling around on the beach. The surf was pretty big, so it was definitely not a swimming beach, plus the currents are supposedly pretty hazardous.

Me and Max on the beach!

Max and I just had the shortest vacation ever. Dave had a short underway period that would end with him on Kauai for about four days. So we decided that I would fly over from Oahu and meet him (we were arriving on Kauai on different modes of transportation). My parents would watch Sophie while I was gone and it was decided that Max was still too young to be without me for several days, so he would come with me.

I found out shortly after I arrived in Kauai (in fact I was still at the airport) that Dave wouldn't arrive on the same day I did. I would hopefully be able to meet up with him on the following day. Around 7pm the night I arrived I found out that Dave was on his way back to Oahu and so I would have to check out of the beach cottage, return the rental car and try to get on the first flight back to Oahu. All by myself, with Max (oxymoron I know).

Dave was home several hours before I was. I was lucky to get on an earlier flight out of Kauai and while we didn't get to have our mini vacation, it was really nice to see him again.

So it was short and crazy (less than 24 hours on island), but Max and I had a great time just the two of us.

Baby it's Cold out here! Newport Beach

It sounds funny to say, but it was quite chilly in Newport Beach. And yes it was July. I think we had one day of good clear sun. Which is fine, I don't really like to get sunburned anyways and I also don't like it when it's uncomfortably hot. I think I'm really used to the temperate climate of Hawaii. It was a little chilly in the mornings, which can be verified by Dave (our human furnace) wearing a sweatshirt. But the water was really, really cold. I couldn't believe how many people were swimming while we were there. I will say that I am used to the warmer Hawaii water, so it would have taken a crane and bribery to get me into that water.

Since it was pretty chilly, Max didn't get to the beach much, but he couldn't really enjoy it anyways, so I don't think he felt like he missed out on much.

You can see the Newport Pier behind Dave and Sophie in this photo.

Here's Missy, Dave's mom with Max. Max was quite spoiled by the time we got home. He was used to being toted around by an array of admiring people and didn't enjoy being put in his bouncer or Bumbo so that I could do things around the house. Which meant he cried a lot for the first week or so we were home. Makes me wish I could get Missy to move in and hold Max all day so I could get stuff done. I could pay her in Root Beer and sunflower seeds or Cheetos. Think she'd go for it?
Dave sister, Anne, drove with his Aunt Lynn from Sacramento to see the kids. Anne hadn't seen Sophie since she was about a month old and of course hadn't met Max yet, so it was a treat for her to join us in Newport.

This was Sophie's shubul. I'm trying to write that in the same way she would pronounce shovel. It was a constant refrain of Mommy, where's my shubul. We go beach, get my shubul. That's MY SHUBUL! I didn't have the heart to tell her it was more of a hoe, and I also didn't want her running around shouting she wanted her hoe. Just saying.
She is running away from the water in this photo. It took her a solid four days to decide she wasn't terrified of the ocean and at that point she would run headlong into the waves. This kid has no fear.
Dave worked really hard to get her comfortable with the water. Personally I was happier when she was terrified and I didn't have to worry about her making a beeline for the water when we would walk down to the beach. She can run really fast, and I'm still carrying around an extra 10 or so pounds from the baby.
Dave was on vacation and he likes the scruffy look. By the end of our vacation he looked disreputable and kind of piratical.

Here's our little drama queen when Dave tried to put her down. "Oh no, I'm sugar, I'll melt. I'm melting..." I wonder where she gets that from? Best part is, the water was nowhere near her.

Rock Climbing in Newport Beach

Hey All!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post. Dave, the kids and I headed to California at the beginning of July and it seems like it's taken almost three weeks to get back into the swing of things. We had a great time in California. Since I have quite a bit of the trip to post, I thought it would be easiest to break up our trip into a couple different posts. Easier for me anyways =). We stayed at Dave's Grandmother's house in Newport Beach. She lives about four houses and an alley from the beach, so Sophie spent quite a bit of time hanging out at the beach. This is the view from in front of Grammy's house to the beach.

Dave and I both spent a fair amount of time at California beaches growing up. Dave spent his time at Newport Beach since he's grandparents rented/owned their beach house for years, and I spent a fair amount of time at Long Beach. It's funny how we've probably almost missed meeting each other a ton of times before we actually did meet. We both remember climbing over the rock jettys on these beaches like little monkeys and Sophie made a beeline for this jetty our first day in California.

Sophie loves to climb on anything and she is completely fearless when it comes to her personal safety. She'll jump off almost anything into Dave's arms. I guess that says more about her complete trust in him that he will catch her than it says about her fearlessness. She's actually kind of terrified of monsters and dinosaurs. The whole pretend thing kind of went out the window after our visit to Disneyland (more on this later). She really liked the little rocks that she could climb onto by herself. She loves anything that she can do by herself (welcome to the twos). Plus these little rocks put her out of reach of the waves. That California water is REALLY cold.
We climbed onto the jetty and with a little help from Dave, Sophie was walking from rock to rock and having a great time looking for crabs. We didn't see any crabs this day, but one of the days were we by the jetty some kids found some starfish and let Sophie and I touch them. It was pretty cool.

This really took me back to my childhood. I remember hanging out on jettys as a kid while my dad fished. He didn't really care what we did as long as we didn't scare the fish or get hurt. My brothers and sister and I would spend hours jumping from rock to rock. I just started singing "memories, misty water-colored memories" in my head =).

Dave and Sophie had a lot of fun crab-hunting on the jetty and I enjoyed the peace and quiet when they were down on the beach.