End of Swimming Lessons and the Beach

Friday was Joshua's last day of swimming lessons. He swam all the way from the steps of the shallow end to the "candy cane" rope thingie that separated it from the deeper main section of the pool...and then swam all the way back to the steps with no help or anything. It was wonderful to see! He was so happy with himself and what he's learned. He even swam with no aid in the deep end - not very far, but it counted. Here is a picture of him jumping into the deep end and a picture of Nathaniel watching from the stroller:

Yesterday we drove over to the coast. It's only about a 90 minute drive or so - depending on how much traffic there is. A small accident held us up a bit at one point, and then a bike race on the narrow windy road to the beach slowed us down quite a bit for the last stretch. Nathaniel did not approve of this and let us know quite vocally that he was tired of the carseat and wanted out and wanted a dry diaper and he wanted it NOW! We hadn't told Joshua where we were going - just that it was a surprise. He was quite surprised and enjoyed himself. The "marine layer" never burned off. It was actually a little thicker when we left after 2 pm than it had been when we arrived around 11 am. The boys played in the sand and surf and we build sand castles and dug a moat. Nathaniel, of course, tasted the sand (he kept licking/chewing on the little shovels!) and crawled all over in it. In fact, we had to keep grabbing him because he wanted to crawl right down to the water. After and hour or so, the tide was starting to come in, so we cleaned up stuff as best as we could (I hate sand...it's just so dang...sandy!) and had lunch. Then we took everything back up to the car. (*Just a hint, I read this in some magazine or something, a sled is an AWESOME way to lug all your paraphenalia down to the beach...it slides right over the sand. Brian thought I was kind of crazy when I told him to bring the sled, but we but our ice chest, bag of sand toys, towels, blanket, etc. on to the sled. What would've been at least two trips was only one. Awesome!! That's the most use we've gotten out of our sled being as we bought it to go up to the snow in the Sierras and then found that none of the ski resorts/snow parks let you use your own stuff.) After we ate, and before we headed back up to the car, we went back down and watched the tide destroy the sand castle and moat...after just a few waves, you couldn't even really see our creation...it was just a slight depression in the sand.

Brian wanted to go check out some tide pools that he remembered from a field trip when he was a kid and he says we checked them out when we took Joshua to this same beach 4 years ago...I don't remember that...but the tide was too high so we didn't get to find any sea anenomes or anything like that. We did find a large jellyfish on the beach, but didn't mess with it too much. Looked like a big silicon implant.

Joshua wants to go back, but we told him we didn't think we'd make it back over there until next summer. Both boys were pretty tired and slept most of the way back. I dozed off too...luckily Brian didn't!

Well, I'll post more pictures of the beach tomorrow. It's too late tonight to do more...especially since I have to rotate them. buenas noches