Winter Vacation

Today, in keeping with my new obsession of "Must go! Must do!" I once again denied Husband his day of rest & piled us all in the car. Please, it was a holiday Monday! A total freebie! It wasn't even really a holiday anymore! We had to do something!

Yesterday, the real holiday, I will admit, we did a big fat nada. I woke up with a slight cold, we were all activity-lagged from the day before, and after a brief attempt at festivity at a local 4th of July carnival where I ate potentially the most disgusting "hamburger" ever produced & spent much of the rest of the day waiting to revisit it in one form or another in the privacy of my own facilities, I acquiesced and agreed that we could indeed vegetate for the better part of the day.

But today? All lazy bets were off & we headed to the coast, to this place. Now, I've lived here for ten-ish months. I know that when you go over the mountains and get closer to the Pacific, the temperature tends to dip a bit. So, being an awesomely prepared mom, I packed everyone a sweatshirt, figuring if it was pushing 90 in the valley, it would be in the low 70's at the coast, maybe high 60's. That seems totally reasonable, right?

So imagine my surprise when we got to the Moss Beach tide pools & it was barely in the mid-50's. And windy. Downright wintery (well, for California). In July.

This shouldn't surprise me. When Husband & I were returning from our Hawaiian honeymoon in 2005, we stopped for a few days, we stopped in San Francisco for a few days to break up the jet lag & were shocked by how freaking freezing it was. Before we could get on the cable car, we had to duck into Old Navy and buy corduroy jackets to endure the chill of San Fran's August air.

But still, I had sweatshirts! I had hats! What I didn't have, however, was long pants for the kid. And Ethan has, shall we say, adapted. This New England native is most definitely raising a California boy. He seems to be living under the belief that it should be sunny & warm every day of his life. So when faced with blustery weather? We look like this:

Not happy. Not happy at all.

Husband lugged him around to some of the pools, leaning over while Ethan clutched onto him and struggled with the fine balance of maintaining his crankiness & indulging his fascination with all those little crawling crabs!!

amemom...anenome.....anemone!

black turban snails, the shells of which can also be taken over by hermit crabs. We saw a lot of these babies sidling around in the water.

After a few minutes struggling to maintain his crabby demeanor, Ethan gave over to the fun of it all and actually enjoyed himself. I think, in part, it is because he is going through a stage of fierce independence right now and the reverse psychology of "fine, if you're not having a good time, we can go," will undoubtedly illicit the response, "NO! I want to stay!!!" Which, of course, gives him the impression of being the one who makes the decision. Bingo. We get to stay.

yes, he's carrying his foam guitar. This should not surprise you, interwebs.

Granted, he had more fun playing in the sand & rocks than he did in the actual tide pools

My boys

See? Happy!

After we'd exhausted Ethan's interest in things which may or may not be snails or crabs, we headed to our next attraction, Point Montara lighthouse.

Mr. Brave Man wandered down the narrow little trail to the cliffs. That is, until I had a small panic attack & made him back up.

zOMG, people, I love this kid.