Easter Weekend 2014

We spent Easter weekend (Friday & Saturday) camping at Quintana Beach.  The water was cold, but the kids had a blast digging in the sand, splashing in the water, playing Bocce, flying kites and collecting shells.

 

Then Back home on Sunday for Easter.  Jared is our official egg-hider now.  He had fun thinking of creative spots, like in the fish tank and buried in the garden.

Leo Carrillo Beach Camping

Labor Day weekend we went camping at Leo Carrillo State Beach with a bunch of families from our ward. The kids had a great time running around and getting dirty. Shane and I tried out some new dutch oven recipes (Breakfast Souffles and Chocolate Lovers Delight).
A picture with most of the kiddos.

We had a great campsite with tons of room for tents and lots of trees for the kids to climb.

Serenity and Jared at Leo Carrillo State Beach. The water was freezing, so none of the kids got in.

Serenity and I went on a hike along the top of the cliffs.

Camping @ Carpinteria Beach

It's a tradition of ours to go beach camping every summer, this year we went to Carpinteria State Beach (its just south of Santa Barbara and its where Shane's family always camped when he was a kid). It's one of our favorites because it has great tide pools and gentle waves for boogie boarding. We drove up Thursday and stayed until late Saturday night.

It's always more fun to camp with friends, so we invited the Walters (Jacob, Jessica, Kaden & Reagen). The kids loved going through the tide pools. The tide was really high the whole weekend, but we still found some great stuff.
We always find tons of sea stars.

Serenity found a big sea snail.

We saw the biggest crab ever and lots of small ones. Jessica (Walters) found one inside a mussel and gave it to Jared, it jumped out onto his shirt. Then Jared gave it to Kaden and it crawled up his arms, onto his shirt and up to his neck.

Jared found a few jellyfish.

Morning #1 hair-dos. Look close at Jared's hair, it was perfectly spiked. I was surprised that he did his hair, later I found out he had used Rock Hard Gel the day before (that stuff really holds!)


Shane and Jared playing catch.

Of course we spent lots of time boogie boarding.

Serenity's Big Wipeout

Serenity & Jared

This was Jake's 1st trip to the beach (Jared's 1st trip to the beach was at Carpinteria too and they were both the same age!)

I love to eat roasted marshmallows; the kids love roasting marshmallows (well...it's actually more like catching them on fire). They ended up roasting ALOT more than they ate.

Morning #2 - hair-dos

Jake & Jessica on the trail to the Seal Sanctuary

We saw a heron catching fish.

Jake LOVED his wash tub bath.

The kids found our little gopher friend entertaining.

Half Moon Bay - Beach Camping

The last week of July we planned a beach camping trip with my family (Mom, Dad, Robert & Elizabeth). The first place we stayed was in Half Moon Bay, just outside of San Francisco.
We had the best site in the whole camp, it was on the beach side and the kids loved climbing the trees above our tent.

San Francisco really is the foggiest place, even in the summer. It was cool and foggy EVER day and never got warmer than 60 degrees, except the day we left (it was sunny and 70).

My dad brought his hammock and loved to relax on the beach.

There were lots of bike/horse trails. Jared loved all the jumps!