Beach day 2...

On Wednesday we spent another day at the beach relaxing, playing in the sand, finding shells, flying kites, reading, napping--it was wonderful!

 

 

Leightyn stayed safely on the blanket, but she did play with some sand toys and eventually made it to the edge of the blanket to scoop up some sand.  :)

Love, love, love the beach!

Knott's Berry Farm...

So for Ryder's actual birthday we went to Knott's Berry Farm.  We thought about going to Disneyland, but it is so expensive, and we'd heard a lot of people saying they were headed there for Spring Break too, so we decided to check out Knott's Berry Farm instead--and we had a BLAST!!!  It was 1/3 of the price and lines were not long at all, most rides were only 5 or 10 minute waits!  And unlike Legoland where they require 1 adult to accompany 1 child, our kids could ride almost all the rides by themselves.  Ryder and Sawyer were so happy they got to ride a lot of rides!

 

 

Their rides were themed after "Peanuts" characters.

 

The boys were SO excited to go on the rides alone!

 

And the girls were happy to go on some bigger rides!

 

This cute ride was called "Huff and Puff".  The kids had to work the handle back and forth to propel themselves around the track.  Sawyer was a fast little pumper!

 

At the end of the day the kids said how glad they were that this place had rides and not cows or berries--they thought we were going to a real FARM!  Hahaha!!  Super fun day!

Beach day 1...

Among birthday present opening and cupcake eating, we spent time at the beach, enjoying the view and playing in the sand.

 

 

The kids got in the water even though it was cold.

 

This little girl did NOT want to touch the sand.

 

We've seen dolphins swimming by every day.

 

We've seen a couple of seals too.

One seal walked right up to the back of this house!

Birthday celebrations...

This year Ryder's birthday happened during Spring Break.  He decided he wanted to spend his birthday doing something fun while we were on vacation so we let him celebrate and open presents a day early.

 

 

Thanks Tutu and Papa Jack for the racetrack and birthday dollars!

 

Thanks Aunt Kaylene for the Spiderman stuff!

 

He was REALLY happy about all the Angry Birds stuff he got.

 

Thanks Aunt Margaret for the Legos!

And he's ready to play some football for the Cougars!  Or at least he has another Halloween costume.

 

We found a fun bakery nearby that had a sign saying they won "Cupcake Wars" on the food network.  Ryder picked out some good ones!

 

And for dinner my pickiest eater picked his favorite pizza pizza and we sat upstairs to enjoy the view of the sunset on the ocean.  Happy Birthday Ryder!!!