Beach Trip

Me and my friend, who's son is 5 days older than Fox, had planned to take the boys to Legoland and the beach for their birthdays. It became pretty clear in March that that wasn't going to happen, so we postponed the trip to July. And then May arrived and there wasn't much hope that Legoland would open again by July, so I decided to take the boys to the beach anyway, just for a change of scenery and to get out of this heat.

We stayed at their grandparents' house in Long Beach, just like we did last year with all of their half-siblings, and it felt so amazing to be able to play outside and even wear some jackets.

Finn wasn't too sure about the sand at first and didn't want anything to do with it. He cried when I tried to put him down and only wanted to be carried. Luckily, he got over that pretty quickly.

See...he even tried to make "sand angels".

Being at the beach always makes me so tired, plus I had just finished up my spring semester, so I enjoyed taking a nap with Finn almost every single day we were there. He's such a cuddle bug and wants to sleep as close as possible to me. I can move to the other side of the bed and he will find me in his sleep and come right back.

Watching the waves with grandma.

It's really windy there and he thought it was so funny.

We rented one of these bikes one morning, which looked like a great idea, but in reality, it was kind of a shit show.

Fox wanted to stir, but was doing a less than acceptable job at it. Finn didn't want to wear his helmet and then decided he didn't want to sit in the front either, so yea...I was pretty exhausted after our hour was up.

Taking a little break from riding the bike to play in the sand and have a snack.

The bike rental place was on the boardwalk right next to an ice cream and funnel cake shop, so of course we had to have a "second breakfast".

Another day, we rented these swan paddle boats. After our bike adventure, I should've known better, but we were desperate for things to do.

It started out well, until Finn didn't want to wear the life jacket anymore and Fox kept asking every five minutes how much longer. Oh well...!

We walked back to the boardwalk for more ice cream, but unfortunately everything was shut down because there were huge riots in Long Beach and all of the sudden we had a 1pm curfew. It was very surreal, the national guard drove around everywhere, shops boarded up their windows and everything was closed, including restaurants and grocery stores.

One of the houses at the boardwalk has a little library out front, where you can donate and take books. They usually only have adult books, but somebody had just dropped off a lot of kids books and Finn was excited to pick one out and read it right then and there.

We had a great time, but it's always nice to come home too. Until next time...