Seaside Vacation

Towards the beginning of the month we got to go stay at Michael's mom's timeshare in Seaside for two days.  This was, of course, within the week that Michael got let go from his job.  I suppose it we hadn't paid for it months earlier, we wouldn't have gone, for lack of money.  But it was the perfect time to get away.  We enjoyed having time together as a family being away from home.  I had been sick and the first morning I woke up with pink eye.  That was the pits, but otherwise I loved it!  My favorite thing was around 10 p.m. each night.  The kids were asleep.  The dishes were done.  The suite was clean.  I had no work to do.  I didn't know what to do with myself.  So I set the table for breakfast the next morning.  What a great feeling that was to have nothing better to do than that.  And then I did lots of reading.  I must say that I loved not having a job for two days.  :-)  Here's some of our favorite moments...

Evan was so excited to go on the bumper cars.  Michael was paranoid of whiplash (ha!) so I held his head tight to me whenever someone was going to bump us.  Apparently Maren was looking on longingly because you have to be 2 years old to ride.  Poor girl.

It is very, very rare to get a good picture of Maren...especially one where she has a sort-of-smile.  She loved the sand.  And her raisins.  But the two of them didn't mix very well.

I was deemed the doofus mom when everyone realized I had forgotten to pack our kite.  Since we were officially terrified about spending any money, I think we took a whole $20 with us to do everything we wanted to do (no surrey bikes...bummer!).  But Evan really wanted something to fly on the beach so we got him this cheap little thing.  Ha!  The things that will appease kids.  Evan and Michael built a sand castle and it got to fly on top.  Coats on the beach.  Still looks strange to me.  I still feel like I have California blood a lot of the time.

Yes, indeed, that is a kite string you see Evan holding.  That's because next to us on the beach were a couple of moms with their kids.  They had this kite they were trying to fly and it just wasn't working.  Michael stepped in to help since the moms were definitely mechanically challenged.  He spent probably half an hour putting this thing together, helping them get it up and teaching the kids about it.  One of the moms said I should hire him out.  Instead we just asked if Evan could fly the kite for a minute.  And I was forgiven.