Marina Dunes

I had been planning a trip that I had wanted to take for a while now. I feel like we have lived in California for almost seven years and we have seen so little of it! So instead of just going to LA or Utah again, I wanted to see some sights.  I invited my anyone who wanted to go, and to my surprise and excitement, my sister Chanelle and my sister in law Kristen wanted to go with us!  We were so excited.  I did a lot of planning so that we would know what we were doing rather than just flying by the seat of our pants. I found hotels for pretty darn cheap which I was pretty excited about!  The first three nights we stayed in Marina which was between Santa Cruz and Monterey, so that we could spend time at both places without having to drive too much and without having to change hotels too much too. We drove in Sunday afternoon and found a place to eat dinner, then after dinner we HAD to go to the beach since it was right next to our hotel. The trouble was that by that time it was freezing and the wind was blowing pretty hard. You would think that would deter kids, but put kids and beach together and it could be below zero and they would still want to go.

Annie was just so excited to have her favorite cousin Lucy with her on the trip.  They are just too cute together!  Its hard sometimes living far form cousins that the kids love being with so much.

Luckily the kids were pretty timid with the water and were pretty good at staying a safe distance fromt he waves, all except Russ.  We kept warning him that he was going to fall in if he wasnt careful and sure enough.  That boy! 

We had to strip him down since his clothes were sopping wet.

We made sure to buy a lot of sand toy because we figured the little kids especially would get tire of the water and want to build in the sand.  Man did these toys get used on this trip!

The kids didn't last very long in the water, but did have a good time building in the sand. It ended up being the theme for the trip, every beach we went to they built the same huge fort in the sand. They were so fun to watch.  it was a good first day to our trip!