Beach

We had another fun day at the beach. 

It was a little colder than usual. 

We left a little early to eat dinner. On our way we saw this shop called Auntie M's Emporium just like in Percy Jackson. 

Trip to the beach

We spent the day at beach in Lewes, DE with the Rosenlunds. The kids dug a gigantic hole in the sand. We spotted some dolphins swimming off shore. We finished off the day at Fun Land. It is always great to spend the day at the beach, but it sure makes it harder to get up for 9am church the next day. We leave at 6am and don't get back until midnight.

Beach

Another trip to the beach with the Rosenlunds. Thankfully there were no jellyfish this time. We went back to Lewes Beach. The kids seemed to like that they could swim out a lot farther here.

The kids would not let us leave the beach without going back to the little amusement park.

We tried out a new place for dinner. Outside was this sign on the wall.

After dinner we all got ice cream. Hooray for ice cream!

Canoeing

Clay had told the girls we would go canoeing on Crescent Lake when we were on the Olympic Peninsula. However, the weather made us have to switch our plans around and canoeing got left out. The girls were very disappointed. So, being the great Hero Dad that he is, Clay called around and found a place for us to go. We went down to AM Beach (just on the east side of PM Beach). 

We had a good time. Though we had to make some adjustments to the seating arrangements to balance out the boats. Deanna and Emma had a hard time getting around the island. The wind blew really hard, so unless you had two really strong people at the oars you were not going to make it. We switched it up again and were finally able to get Emma around the island. 

These two fell asleep as soon as they got buckled into the car. We had to wake them up for lunch.

Rebekah and Iluma enjoyed playing with the jukebox at the A&W Restaurant.

We must have done something else between lunch and dinner. I can't remember. Maybe it was just getting cleaned up. But here they are at dinner. It's Fairhaven Fish & Chips. All your food is served out of this old double-decker bus.

After dinner we drove down to Marine Park.

Here's Deanna with all her grandkids!

Venice Beach

Clay flew in on Friday to join us for the rest of our family vacation. It was a beautiful day and we decided to go walk around Venice Beach.

Here my sisters and I are having a good laugh trying to be taller than each other. 

There was a fun playground that the girls enjoyed.

We walked by Muscle Beach, but there wasn't much going on there at the time. 

There was also this really cool skate board park. We stopped and watch some really talented kids.

Walking by the shops in Venice Beach is not for the faint of heart. 

There are all sorts of smells and sights that you don't find in quiet suburbia. The girls were a bit dumbstruck. But not so much that they couldn't find voice to a few questions that took quite a bit of care to explain. One of the most numerous shops was the Green Doctors. For just $40 you can get legalized medicinal marijuana. All you have to do is give them an excuse by admitting to any number of maladies. Just for fun, Clay and Layne went over to see what kind of questions they asked to qualify for a medical need. When they came back Clay triumphantly announced, "Heidi you would qualify with just the first few questions!" Nice.

Now, just take a  moment to contrast the craziness of the Venice Beach Walk with the beautiful and peaceful scene of the Venice canals just a few blocks away. I didn't even know these existed!

I would love to own one of these homes! But I'm not sure I would want to live so close to the crazy stuff.

Back to walking along the beach.

Apparently this is the World's smallest front yard. I haven't verified it.

We were mesmerised by this bird's nest/treehouse home.

The cousins liked this purple house.

In Venice Beach you can also find mounted police.

Emma loved this pink mustache. Well, except that it was pink. Any other color and she probably would have bought it. We even saw a few cars with giant fuzzy pink mustaches on the front. Turns out it's a ride sharing service. You can request a ride through an app on your phone. www.lyft.me