Oh, Happy Day!

And I'm not even being sarcastic or ANYTHING!

Last Thursday, I picked Ethan up from school determined that our afternoon would not be our normal, "I want a playyyyyyyyydate," "I want a snaaaaaaaack," "momma, watch me battle Darth Sideous, Darth Vader, Darth Moll," and then, "watch me battle Obi-wan, Captain Rex, Luke Skywalker..." (somewhere in there he leaps over to the dark side with a little more glee than I'd prefer, but what are you going to do?) After several hours of this riveting entertainment, sprinkled with maybe a walk outside, some coloring (Ethan's newest obsession--as long as its a Star Wars coloring book), we generally come to the "I want noodles with butter and sprinkle cheese for dinner. NOthing else. Don't even try to trick me," portion of our day. The routine is getting a bit soul-sucking boring, so instead of going home and letting the aforementioned chain of events unfold for the next 5 hours, I packed up the car with snacks, coloring books, sand toys, and Ethan's collection of "interesting sticks" (translation: "these are my sticks that make good light sabers when I don't have my real light sabers.") and told Ethan we were going on an adventure.

After a few moments of lamenting the fact that his only companion for said adventure was, well, me (I am apparently super boring and lame, because my 5 year old is really 14), we were on our way to Santa Cruz.

First we stopped at Seabright beach for some "interesting stick" collecting and some sand castle construction. I spread a blanket as close to the water as Ethan would let me get (read: not close at all), and dumped a bag of sand toys. I buried Ethan's feet, he buried mine (digging bare wiggly toes into the sand in January? Heaven.), we constructed some sand buildings and roads, then Ethan went off in search of sticks and I took eleventy billion pictures of seagulls and watched a chihuahua named Zeus chase a frisbee. My Thursday was soooooo way better than your Thursday. Just sayin'.

shiny happy people...

After absorbing the sound of the crashing waves for about an hour, we were drawn to the wharf by the sound of the sea lions cavorting (or beating each other up--the sounds are all pretty much alike), so we hoped in the car and headed over to see if we could find their not so secret hiding spot.

Ethan's favorite thing to say about the sea lions? "Momma, they stink." Indeed they do, little man. Indeed they do.

sleepy sea lions...

Cranky sea lions (no booze allowed...)

taking "the family bed" just a bit too far, thank you very much...

After watching one giant sea lion (the one under the "no alcohol allowed" sign) hulk his way back to the water by squirming over the entire pile of sleep sea lions (each one he jumped on raised their heads, "quuuuuuuuooooooooaaaaannnnnk"'ed at him and then put their heads back down and went back to sleep), we noticed that the sun was rapidly making its way towards the horizon, so we got back in our car and headed to the next beach on our list. We made it just in time to catch the sun setting

Sunset on Natural Bridges beach

we weren't the only people there to watch the sun go down...

Jedi knight using the force to try to keep me from taking his picture....sorry, young Jedi, the force is strong with this iPhone....

The drive home was quiet and sleepy--Ethan tried to convince me he didn't need a bath when we got home, but then proceeded to take his shoes and socks off to dump a metic ton of beach onto the backseat floor of my car. Whatever sand didn't end up on the floor remained lodged between his toes and I assured him that yes indeed, he was taking a bath when we got home. Boys.

After stories and some snuggles, before he fell asleep, Ethan said to me, "we had the best day, didn't we, momma?" Mission accomplished.