Marina State Beach

One Saturday, we decided to take the kids to the beach.  We hadn't been all summer and it seems a shame not to take advantage when it's so close by.  The night before, we packed the diaper bag with essentials and loaded the car trunk with blankets, chairs, and toys.  When we got up the next morning, we were ready.  It was a little cloudy, but we decided to head out anyway.
I'm so glad we did.  It was a perfect day.

The kids and Steve built a great sandcastle.  The biggest part of the project was creating a trench that would fill up with water when the waves washed up.  Steve spent a lot of time and it paid off with a suitably watery moat.  Anna was in charge of decorations and Matthew did whatever he wanted.




The kids went beach combing with Steve and found some nice pebbles and pieces of shell.  We also
think we saw a seal of some sort out in the waves.  It'd come up for a while and then dive down under the water.  Kind of fun to see something besides gulls!

I tried to get everyone's feet wet at least once.  Steve's not big on being in the ocean and the kids ran away as soon as the water got anywhere close to them.  Matthew in particular didn't like getting wet or how the waves and sand felt.

After all this fun, the wind started blowing and the sun came out so we flew our new kite.  We had a cheap one from the dollar store, but it didn't work at all.  So, we splurged on a nicer one.  It went right up in the air without any effort on our part.  The kids loved holding the string and watching it fly.  Anna let all the string out so it went really high.  Winding it up again isn't as fun as letting it all out.



We left just as the beach was starting to get crowded and it was starting to get quite warm.  We noticed that there was quite a traffic jam on the roads coming in but getting out was a breeze.  It was really, a perfect day.