Best Vacation!! Warning: Tons of Pics

We had an amazing trip to Huntington Beach this year.  The kids are all finally at an age where it's not so hard it isn't even fun...we all had a blast!!  We had to stop in Vegas for a night because Mike had a tradeshow for work, so we made the most of it.  We picked a good hotel for kids...we went swimming, saw a movie, ate snacks, watched tv.  It was great!

We got to Huntington late Monday night.  We were glad we were there in time for the street fair.  They do it every Tuesday, and it's just fun to walk around and people watch.  And buy a bag of kettle corn!  We sat by the pier to eat it and watch the ocean.  :)

We drove to Laguna to see the tide pools, but it wasn't quite what we expected.  Parking was ridiculous, and then the tide was so high that tide pool access was closed.  We decided to just hang out on the beach since we were already there, but even that made me nervous because the waves were bigger than the kids were used to, and it got deep really fast.  It was a beautiful beach, but we're happy with Huntington!

This is Molly pulling her monkey move.  If she doesn't want to be put down she'll wrap her legs around yours and make it impossible!  She always takes a few minutes to get used to the idea of touching sand.  And she refuses to walk on it if she's wearing shoes...she hates getting it in her flip flops!

Mike and the boys ran in the waves...Molly sat in the sand.  She would sweep her foot across the sand and say, "Mommy, a rainbow!"  Love this girl!

Every day we would go to the beach, then stop by the pool to shower off and swim.  When the kids were thoroughly exhausted we would go home, throw them in the tub, feed them, and put them to bed.  It was so great!

The kids loved playing with the boogie board in the pool.  Will towed Molly all over, she was in heaven!

Papa started teaching Molly how to float on her back.  She actually did it!  Well, not without help, but that's still pretty good!

Mike took me out to dinner and a movie, and it was so fun!  We had reservation at Houston's, one of our favorite places to eat.  It's a lot fancier than our normal night out, which is why we do it once or twice a year.  The food is amazing, the atmosphere is really cool, and being in a restaurant where you have to have reservations (or wait at least an hour...any day of the week) makes you feel much more important than you really are.  :)  We saw Captain America afterwards...it was such a great night!

Uncle Nick was in town on business, it was really fun to see him.  Sam and Uncle Nick are buds, it's really fun to listen to their conversations.

The kids dug a lot of holes on the beach.  It kept them entertained for hours!  Except for the time when Sam buried his flip flops and it took forever to find them, this was such a great activity.  :)

The boys wanted to be strong like Mike and pull the beach wagon.  I think they moved it about three inches.

Molly's favorite pool activity is to knock Mike's hat off.  She was in the process right here...she thinks it's hilarious.

Love this.

We always go for surf week (US Open of Surfing), and one reason we love it is because they also do this skateboard competition and a bmx competition.  The bmx is my favorite (it was awesome last year), but they did it the day we left, so we missed it.

We had so much fun, we're so grateful that Lon and Grace let us come visit them at "Papa's Beach House!"  We had such a great time, we loved every minute of it!