Birthday at Newport Beach

We had the pleasure of taking one last run to the beach before summer ended the last weekend of July.  There were about 15 families from our ward/ around here that went, and we had a BLAST!  That is the way to go to California!  Our kids were in heaven playing with friends, and we had a great time talking with all the adults.  Truly heaven on earth.  We all decided we need to do this every year!

Addi made friends with Gary (she pronounces geeeiirreee)  They had a ton of fun!!

Just getting buried.

Some of the group chillin' on the beach.  The weather was perfect!

I had to snap this picture of the shop in Balboa.  No one spells Kathryn like I do!  

 We ran into this crazy guy on the sidewalk.  Yes, he is standing on the handlebars riding down the street!!!

Conner and his best buddy Matt with their sand crabs.  We could not get these guys out of the water for 3 days straight!!

Addi and her strut.  I wish you could see it!

Savannah, Addi and Sara enjoying a little cupcake for dad's birthday.

Lane's birthday is the 28th of July, and it was the Saturday we were there.  I mentioned to my friends I was going to sneak away and pick up a cake at Costco that was about 4 miles away and bring it back.  They quickly and very wisely convinced me to just go to the grocery store up the street and buy a cake there.  With traffic they said my 4 mile trip would take 2 hours! 

Boy were they not kidding!  Holy cow!  I walked all the way down to our car (almost 1 mile away) and drove 1 mile to the grocery store where I bought 2 cakes and some cupcakes and utensils.  Then I drove back and circled for 20 mins.  looking for any parking place!  No dice.

Then I started calling Lane and all my friends praying someone would answer so I could meet them at the beach and drop off all the stuff I bought and then go park the car far away.  No one was answering!  I was getting super bugged because I had been gone almost 1 hour with my little "errand".  I finally got ahold of someone, and they sent Lane to grab all the stuff from me, and I drove clear down the road, found a place to park, and walked all the way back.  Overall it took me 1 1/4 hours to do that little errand!  Crazy!!!

Oh well, at least Lane got his carrot cake for his birthday, and everyone sang to him.  Course we couldn't light the candles because it was wayyyy too windy!

The big 45!!!!

That night 6 of us families met at the Claim Jumper and we had a great dinner and dessert to celebrate Lane's day again.  It was so fun!  What a great group of people and friends, and I can't figure out why I don't have a picture of all of us!  I'm sure someone does somewhere!!We played some serious beach volleyball. Ha! 

This is the amazing huge jellyfish one of the teenagers caught.  Don't worry, we released it back into the ocean.  But how cool is that????

Kayla and her daddy

We took a little trip over to Balboa island to get Balboa ice cream bars, and they made a side stop in the candy shop!  What  a cute little island with darling houses that only cost around $2 million!  We'll probably buy one next week. Ha!

Anyway, it was a great trip, and though I didn't really get Lane many gifts for his actual birthday, I think he was OK with carrot cake on the beach! :)