I had a birthday while we were there, and Rachel had hers just before--so she got a cake too :)

I am holding my little niece, only 8 weeks old and adorable...too bad she did not like me too much and always started to cry :( gotta get her used to me.  

Sam finally scored some linen shirts so he was in a super good mood.

look how fun Uncle Sam is :) 

 Helping build sand castles...

Finding sand crabs... (love this picture because it shows Sam with his 3 year old niece who decided Sam was her favorite uncle ...AND her favorite Aunt.  ha ha it was clear Sam was her favorite Uncle, so I was trying to get her to say I was at least her favorite Aunt, only after prompting, when I asked "Who is your favorite Aunt?"  She said again,  "sam!" :)

Ocean is still a little chilly

the boys did lots of boogy boarding

Even my Dad--I thought that was pretty impressive :)

Speaking of impressive, this little sand monster was contantly covered in an impressive amount of sand.  Here she is doing sand angels.  Ha ha :) 

Here is another good one --even though you can't see her face, you can see alllll the sand on her suit :)

Here are some lousy attempts at some family photos...better than nothing.

PS--Sam's good mood ended when a bird pooped on him and his linen shirt on the last day :(  

We all thought it was pretty funny, he was not able to see the humor at that time though.

We also went to magic mountain and took all of the older kids.  We were excited that they were tall enough to ride this super scary ride.  They were so excited that they went on it FIRST! I couldn't believe they didn't want to ease into it, but maybe it was better to get the scariest ride out of the way first. Rachel and her cousin sat in the very first row--Rachel seemed a little shocked when she got off, like you could tell she was scared out of her mind during the ride and I waited to see whether she was going to burst into tears or start laughing--and there were no tears--only excitement :)