6/27-7/3

This week was so much fun! I took the boys on a road trip for the day to Monterey to escape the brutal heat. My plans were simple: go to the aquarium and possibly berry picking in Watsonville. The kids had so much fun at the aquarium though, that we decided to take it easy, and head to Watsonville another day this summer.

E pretended he was a dolphin.
Checking out the dolphin exhibit
We took a break from the aquarium to have lunch. Always the frugal tourist, we had coupons so ate for under $10! The kids were so well behaved, it was hard to believe that we were actually sitting at sit down restaurant by ourselves, enjoying the summer breeze. Life is so easy with three (or so it seems sometimes ;) )

E was ready for a nap, but the penguins caught his attention. My sweet boy :)

The view of the sea turtles.

E was fixated on the sea turtles, loved seeing them glide through the water.
We left the aquarium, and I decided it was too early to head home. I decided to venture out along the coast, and see where we ended up. I was so excited when the boys woke up from their cat nap and told them we were in Santa Cruz, at the boardwalk! The kids had a lot of fun seeing the rides, smelling the coastal air, and it was a cool 62 degrees (much different than the 106 we left at home). We were lucky we had sweaters in the trunk of the minivan, because we needed them. I took the boys down to the sand, and we hung out there for a couple of hours, and played in the surf and sand.

I love M's toothless grin, my own little jack o' lantern smile :)

Our beach trip wasn't complete without dinner on the boardwalk. We lucked out since it was $1 hot dog, cotton candy, and soda night, along w/ $1 rides. I told the boys we would go on the rides next time, I could see they were finally getting tired, and we had a nice mile walk back to the car before heading home.
The cool marine air/fog stopping, right before we hit Los Banos. After we passed by the fog, we quickly rose from 62 to 92 in a matter of an hour-scary since it was already 8:30 by this hour.
It was a wonderful trip, we made it home early, only 11pm, which was great timing since we left the coast so late in the evening. The kids had no trouble the next morning, and were excited to go swimming at camp.

Later this week, we made play dough at home.

Friday we went to Sacramento and visited with my friend H and her children for the day. They live down here w/ us, and we see them weekly for dinner, but this week we changed it up a notch and did something different. We went to Ikea, and the boys had free lunch (thanks to a frugal deal I found). It was nice to window shop with H and talk about the new house she will be living in just a few weeks.

Saturday, we took it easy, or as easy as we do it around here. The boys helped R with our garden-the corn is by M, and the tomatoes are by R. Since this picture was taken a few weeks ago, the whole garden has exploded with green and produce. I cannot wait to see all the fruit and veggies we grow.

I had fun capturing some sweet moments of my boys, while we were outside. Hard to believe how fast they're growing up.

We went to K town's firework show. The boys spread out on a blanket, and we camped out w/ our chairs. It was so relaxing-we definitely felt a difference this year taking all three of the boys out later this year. They were behaved, and listened well, and such a joy. It made me think "wow, we are actually thriving as a big family," not that I had doubts, but its such a pronounced difference from how it was with three young boys so close in age, even as recent as last year.

M took turns taking pictures, I'm hoping because he's taking pictures, I'll be in more of them now :)

We watched the show, and it was a lot of fun. We came home afterwards, ready to fall asleep-it had definitely been a busy week, but we wouldn't have it any other way.