Beach Time

*Well, blogger USED to let me copy and paste pictures in the order I wanted them to go. Not today. *sigh*

We went to the beach yesterday for the first time since living in California. We went to a group of tide pools during low tide to catch a glimpse of starfish and octopi and crabs. We didn't happen upon any of those things (unless you count a hermit crab) but we did see anemone, plenty of mussels, and these fun sea slugs that were pretty neat.

We had a picnic (translation: our kids ate sandy sandwiches and apples) and then the kiddos played in the sand. Ryan was nervous at first and kept telling us he wanted to go home. He was afraid the boats were going to get him. There were some pretty loud motor boats. He warmed up to the ocean eventually and spent a LONG time playing in the sand making sand castles and filling the bed of his dump truck.

Katie wanted in on the action too. She crawled around and touched and ate everything she could manage to put in her mouth. She didn't even want me to hold her while we were looking at the anemone and such, she wanted to get a piece of it all.

The following pictures are in no particular order.

Happy Birthday to You

I had absolutely NO plans for Katie's birthday yesterday since I figured she didn't know the difference, but then felt like I wanted to celebrate the day she was born, even if it was just for me. :) Ryan was really confused how it could be Katie's birthday and not his birthday too. He also said to me multiple times in the morning, "I want to go to Katie's birthday". He didn't understand that we don't GO to birthdays, we HAVE them. Luckily, some moms in my ward planned a last minute play date at the park so we took along some cupcakes and sang to her and it felt like a party enough for Ryan.

Katie doesn't eat sugar so I wanted to make something for her besides a cake. I finally decided on a fruit pizza (thank you Cindy for the idea). I know it's a cookie, but I felt like it was better than cake.

She was so daintily plucking off raspberries and blueberries and enjoying it very much. I realized we had one more cupcake left from the park and suddenly decided to give her the choice (for once). I put it on her tray and she picked it right up and got a mouthful of that poison called "frosting". YUCK! She would go back and forth between the cupcake and fruit pizza, but finally settled on the cupcake.

Ryan was told that he couldn't have any of the cookie until after he ate his peanut butter sandwich. He fought and fought and finally ate his sandwich and got his slice of pizza.

He came to me and said, "Here Mom, you can have the rest." He didn't even eat one bite of the cookie itself, he only picked off the fruit. That's my boy! (The bite was from Derek.)

Today we got in the mail 2 packages from grandparents. Grandma Cookies sent a darling little bracelet (on her other wrist in this picture), and Grandma and Grandpa Bayles sent the prettiest little dresses you've ever seen (along with a few other treats). We went to Target last night to find her a birthday present that we thought she'd like. Due to the highly unimpressive selection, we settled on a "My Little Pony" which she likes pretty well, and we know Ryan will soon hijack it from her, as he has every other toy she's been given.

Happy Birthday!