Saturday: The Backyard Beach

We were up really early on Saturday monring.  Like 3:15 AM early.  Which, technically, was 7:15 Colorado time, but I figured with a long day of travel and a late night the night before, the kids would sleep in a bit.  Ah, well.  After listening to McKay sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and I'm Trying to be Like Jesus until about 6AM, we were up for the day.  The good news at least was that we were able to watch the sunrise over the ocean.  It required all of about 10 steps into the backyard to have a perfect view.  In a word:  breathtaking.  The photos will just never do it justice. 

The back side of our beach house

We spent the better part of the day Saturday playing on the beach in the backyard.  I had my first ever snorkeling experience with my cousin-in-law, Heather.  I seriously loved it.  I just wish I had an underwater camera.  Just trust me that it was awesome.  Until Heather got stung by a jellyfish on her hand.  Though she said it hurt like crazy, she was a total trooper and kept right on snorkeling! 

My Little Surfer Dude

Seriously, this kid LOVES the ocean

He's was a regular Tarzan on the rope swing, too.

He learned it from his Uncle Sean.

Or maybe his mother?



Yep, Ty was loving his life!

  Meanwhile, McKay spent a lot of time doing this:

He actually was enjoying the water until a big wave knocked him over.  Then he was done.



My father-in-law rented a kayak for the week, so Saturday afternoon was also spent taking turns rowing out in the ocean. 

Did I mention that Ty had a really great day?!

Uncle Spencer also helped some of the kids construct a huge sandcastle,

Which evolved into a volcano.  And no volcano would be complete without some diet coke and mentos, right?

We didn't think so, either.

The guys rounded out Saturday night doing some guy stuff.  6 brothers in 1 house = plenty of ping pong and arm wrestling. 

There was much debate in the family about what the caption for this photo should be.  In order to remain in my brother-in-law's good graces, I will not mention who won this particular arm wrestle.  Happy, Greg?



It was a red-letter day.  Absolutely perfect.  Almost, anyway.  I forgot to mention that Ty consumed approximately 40 vitamins on Saturday morning.  He asked me around 9AM if it was lunchtime yet, so I knew he was hungry, but was distracted doing something else and didn't get him a snack.  A few minutes later, he said to me, "I ate many, many vitamins."  Upon inspection, I found that he ate the entire bag of gummy vitamins that I had brought (2 vitamins a day per boy x 10 day supply).  There was a bit of panic on my part, but after Adam called a Kaiser RN and Michelle called a local pharmacy (who in turn called poison control), we were assured he would be fine.  Thank goodness there was no iron or flouride in those particular vitamins!  It didn't seem to bother him a bit.  Thank goodness.