Our Week at the Beach House

Whilst Rich was on his trip in Japan we decided to get out of apartment living and head to my grandparent's beach house in Ventura, about 1 hour north of Santa Monica. We left on Saturday afternoon and stayed there until Thursday.

The weather was quite temperate during the day, though the mornings were very cold. The water was FREEZING and I have no idea how all the kids we saw jumping in the waves in just their swimsuits could stand the water. Here the three of us are just hanging out on the sea wall. The house is great - you literally walk out of the back door and there is about 10 feet to the edge of the sea wall, climb the steps of the wall and walk down the stairs and onto the beach. Love it!

Here are Sydney and my grandpa "Gramps" just enjoying the view of the ocean. Nature put on quite a show for us while we were there. We saw dolphins every day but one, and the first day they hung around for about an hour leaping into the air, flipping over, etc. The day I went shopping they saw a seal. We often saw up to 30 pelicans flying around and diving into the water for fish.
Even John got to get in on the action of the beach to say hi to some of the neighbours. We had several hours of low tide each morning so we took advantage of being able to go down on the sand and poke around in the tide pools.

Here's Sydney and I wading our way through some tidepools. We collected all sorts of shells, poked our toes into sea anenomes (or "sea enemies" as Sydney called them), chased hermit crabs, tried not to slip on the mossy rocks and ran through every small puddle we could find.

The next five pictures are actually in reverse order than I wanted them, but I couldn't be bothered changing them around. These are the rocks just outside my grandparent's house. We have a zillion pictures of my family on these rocks, so of course I had to take one of Sydney. One of the great things about the week was being able to see my little girl run around the beach like I used to all the time. It's like time has come full circle.

My grandfather was especially excited about sharing the beach with her. He so desperately wanted Sydney to hold his hand to walk through the water and to play with him. She took a few days to really warm up to him, but by the end of the third day she was holding his hand and playing with him. She calls my grandparents "Gramps and Nana" so she now bascially has a different name for every member of the family except for the two Grandma's who she both calls "Grandma".

OK, so Mom was mean, again. I have this picture of me buried to my neck in the sand - albeit I'm about 7. So I dug a big hole and buried Sydney. As you can see, she was less than thrilled. The day before she happily sat in the hole Grandma made and got buried to her waist, but up to the neck was a bit much. That's me hold her hands so I could unstuck her as soon as the photo was taken. She was only there for about 5 seconds, but that was enough for her. Don't think we'll be doing that again any time soon.
Here's a much better impression of her excitement to be on the beach. I'm actually standing on the sea wall looking down at her playing. She quickly figured out how to drag her finger in the sand to "write" and spent a lot of time drawing in the sand. We hadn't brought her swimsuit as we knew the weather would be a bit cool, so instead she spent her days playing in the sand in her tracksuit clothes and we just did a lot of laundry.
Here's Gramps, Grandma and Sydney walking across the sand bar. About three hours after this picture was taken the water would have been all the way up to the sea walls. One of the mornings we had a negative low tide, meaning the water was actually lower than sea level - not quite sure how that happens considering we're at the sea, but anyway. Mom said she walked further down the beach than she ever had before, pretty cool.

We got our official key to the beach house from my grandparents, so I think we'll be spending quite a bit of time up there. I can't wait for Rich to have some time off so we can go up together as a family and have some real relaxation time.