Beach

What happened?  Our beach trip is over and we're back home.  It was such a wonderful trip.  There were lots of funny highlights and whole strings of relaxed and peaceful moments.  The real world hardly intruded, especially after I lost my phone.  It was nice just to be gone.

The first day, we made our pilgrimage to the 99 cent store.  This is the best 99 cent store in the world.  You can find treasures there, and we budget a hundred bucks for our first visit.  Ryan saw us loading up on girl-scout quality cookies and bags of chips and thought we were going overboard.  We told him this was just the stash for the first day.  Sure enough, we were back for more chocolate-peanut butter and thin mint cookies within twelve hours.  We're hard core when it comes to cookie consumption when we're on the beach.  Jennie magically solved every childish complaint with four words:  "Ya want a cookie?"

With Ryan and Jennie and their four kids, our group was a bit of a freak show.  I tried to downplay the number of kids we had trailing after us, but people still gaped.  My favorite was one day when I went from the beach to the hot tub and nine of the ten kids managed to follow me.  I was sitting in the hot tub with all of them when Freestone said urgently, "Mom!  There are only nine kids here!"  He thought we had lost someone.  The other people in the hot tub just stared.

My favorite zoo moment was when Ryan saw a roaming peacock and pushed Xanthe and Izzy in the stroller toward the bird.  Xanthe got all nervous and said, "I don't like chickens!  I don't like chickens!"  Scott's best zoo moment was getting caricatures  done of each kid.  They turned out really good.  Scott was all teary-eyed, thinking about how much the kids wanted to have their caricatures done, and how it reminded him of a trip to Tijuana as a kid.  He had dragged his parents all over the city looking for the best black-velvet painting.  He finally found it, a moonscape, and they hauled the big, framed piece of art everywhere.  He knew they loved him.  It does take love to allow your child to buy a painting done on black velvet, and then to let them hang it in the house!

Tuesday was Scott's 40th birthday.  He and I got dressed up for a night out in Coronado.  Our plan was sushi, but we ran into a quaint little French restaurant with a prix fixe menu that sounded delicious, so we went in.  It was the perfect celebration.

I think we did everything on our list, in between the hours of lounging.  Ryan and Scott took the older girls to the Cheesecake factory.  Ryan rented a surf board and was schooled by the Pacific Ocean.  The Scott Dopps dined out together at a hamburger joint in Coronado.  (6 kids in a restaurant=freak show.  No good.)  Jennie and Ryan took Lexie and Golda to the San Diego temple to do baptisms, then out to lunch.  What a special experience!  Later in the week, we hit the pier, a street fair and Bibby's Shell Shop.  Bibby had new murals on the outside, so we took lots of pictures besides the traditional shark.  Every morning, Scott and I each took a kid or two on a special date.  Scott likes Katy's Cafe and I usually go up the street to Starbucks where the kids can get a one dollar hot chocolate and a chocolate croissant and I can people-watch.  We barbequed outside, which was delicious.  We made hot cocoa every night in our cocoa machine, topped with whipped cream.  We visited the Atnips in their new, fabulous home in Temecula.  What fun seeing old friends!  We had a really good time.  In fact, our kids all wanted to move in with Tim and Courtney!  And we logged many hours of boogie boarding, sitting in the sand, simmering in the hot tub and swimming, the staples of a good beach trip.  And the cookies, of course.  And the incidents like "Hot Tubgate" and "Aloeveragate."  We loved sharing the trip with Ryan and Jennie.  Thanks, guys.

The last day, one of the kids started to cry when we said goodbye to the condo, and it got all of us sobbing.  Even though Imperial Beach only happens once a year, if that, the condo we rent feels like a second home.  I can still hear the ocean waves crashing and the clothes dryer humming and see the littles fast asleep on the floor near the windows, their cheeks sunkissed, hair toussled, bodies completely relaxed.  I love that feeling.  I love Imperial Beach!