Whale of a Tale

I planned this trip with a very different vision than what we ended up experiencing.  I wanted a last summer vacation that had no hiking, no outings, no plans.  I wanted to just sit at either a beach or a pool for 3 days straight and rest up.  When the first beach we drove up to on the first day offered us this amazing treat of a lifetime, our plans kind of changed.

We were told to check out the Moss Landing State Beach because, if we were lucky, we could see the Humpback Whales that have been on an anchovy feeding frenzy there for the past 2 months.  The below map shows how the Soquel Canyon, where these gazillion anchovies swim around, has a long finger that reaches right to Moss Landing.  In fact, this deep, nutrient-rich canyon ends just 60 feet from the shore!  

We walked up and immediately saw tons of spouts on the horizon line.  About a dozen whale watching tour boats were trolling the area too.  The abundant spouts were cool enough to make us excited and plop down in the sand to keep watching.  Well, as we watched for the next several hours, we saw that the Humpbacks were EVERYWHERE in the water!  And they were close enough that we could watch them breaching, tail slapping, and lunge feeding with the naked eye (though the binoculars and camera zoom did make the viewing even cooler)!  The following pictures were taken from shore.  With my non-fancy little Cannon.  And with my hands trembling from the thrill of this incredible sight!

Humpbacks are baleen whales.  They don't have teeth.  They just scoop up their fish food by the ton and let the water sift back out.  One way the whales do this is by lunge feeding.  When they rise the font half of their bodies out of the ocean to eat fish on the surface, the water they just gulped runs out of these special gills under their mouths.  You can actually see it in the above 2 pictures.

The knowledge of this daily Whale Show changed my "lay in the sun on the beach and do nothing for 3 days" plan.  This beach was cold and because of the huge waves and currents, not safe to swim in.  We still made it to different beaches for a bit of play, but the majority of our time was spent here, watching the whales, with no regrets.  We've seen some cool stuff, but Dave and I totally agreed that this was the best wildlife sighting of our lives.

Oh yeah, besides whales at this beach, there were also millions of birds, hundreds of seals (happy to share the schools of anchovy the whales were herding), and huge rafts of sea otters in the estuary connected to this piece of shore.

A morning in Santa Cruz gave us more wildlife views.  We got up close and personal with the entertaining and noisy sea lions on the wharf, and we watched dolphins jumping around this cove for a long time.

Being in this area, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, had Delia asking why we haven't gone to the aquarium in a while.  By the end of our vacation time we could tell her, "We don't need the aquarium!  Look at all the exciting ocean life you saw for free in just 3 days!!"

Pinecrest 2014

Once again, we leave our annual camping trip in Pinecrest tired and dirty, but full of good memories and already with anticipation for next summer's adventure.  This year we had a wonderful, huge camp site with, oddly, 4 empty sites around us-- unheard of at super-popular Pinecrest!  This means our nights were quiet and we had lots of space to spread out.  So, here are a few glimpses of life around the camp this summer...

Playing card games by lantern light.

Tent snuggles.

Dave, campfire chef extraordinaire!

The girls making their own little house with a kitchen in the clump of trees that was on our site.  Totally remember playing this as a kid myself!

Family Frisbee game.

Giving huge thumbs up to a new discovery this year-- REECES PEANUT BUTTER CUP S'MORES!!

And here are some of the activities that filled our time...

On our first night we went to a Park Ranger presentation about bats.  It was really interesting!  The girls liked seeing some of the rescued bats up close in their box ("Awww, they're SO CUTE!!" Delia declared).  Dave and I loved when the presenter turned on her high-frequency noise detector at sunset and we could hear all the bats in the area come out and start echo-locating!

Last summer we discovered this nearby pack station that let you lead their horses around the trails for just $10!  This was such a highlight of our camping trip last year, we had to return.

Ella rode Petey, who was fiesty and not all that interested in obeying Dave tugging at his halter.  Delia rode Gretel, who was sweet and gentle.

This is such a lovely morning!  As we let the horses graze around this beautiful wild-flower pasture for half the time, I think it's as much a treat for them as us!

After lunch we headed down to the beach for a few hours.  When it comes to Pinecrest, we take whatever reservation we can get, but I am realizing that end of July is the ideal time to go.  We don't freeze at night and the lake is warm enough to get in and swim for long periods of time.

After kayaking on Lake Mary at Mammoth, Dave and I were excited to rent some double kayaks again.  Alas, we were outvoted by the younger half of the family and the paddle boat it was, once again!

No complaints, though!  The day couldn't have been prettier for a peaceful paddle boat ride and that mountain scenery we always enjoy at Pinecrest was only enhanced by all the colorful sailboats out on the water.

The nice thing about the paddle boat is that the kids are pumped to help paddle it.  I enjoyed plenty of time with my legs trailing off the back!

When our hour was up and it was time to get the boat back to the dock, the girls were oh-so-helpful kicking off the back, allowing us to get some "real speed"!

The last notable thing we did during this year's camping trip was pay a visit to the geocache we hid last summer.  We have gotten SO much pleasure out of this!  Each time a family finds it and takes the time to register their finding on the geocache website, we get an email.  And we've gotten tons of emails!  People have left nice comments like, "This was my young son's first geocache and he found it all by himself!" or "Thank you for leading us to the beautiful meadow, we would have never hiked this way otherwise!"  Not everyone registers, so along with the emails we've been getting all year, it was super fun to read the pages and pages of names and dates from all over our state that people signed and left inside the small container-- many of them kids and some including artwork.  This is exactly what we had in mind when we put this geocache into play last summer: it being easy enough for kids to find and scenic enough to give families a small hiking activity to participate in together.

Sure the sleep is not perfect, so the sibling squabbles are inevitable.  And sure, living in that dirt starts driving me crazy around Day 3.  But, our camping trips have always been a real high point of summer and, especially as the kids get older, these trips do seem to just keep getting better and better!  

Friend Week

Guess what?  We've actually been home and relatively un-busy for two whole weeks in a row!  The 14 days we just concluded were the blankest ones on our summer calendar, so we filled them up with lots of play dates, sleepovers and dinners with friends!  

We loved sharing dinner, Dutch Trains, and coconut ice cream with Sara, Arend and Anja on Monday.  We got to know our summer intern pastor and his family even better when we visited their home for dinner on Wednesday.  Ella and Delia even stayed overnight for a much-anticipated sleepover with Pastor Robert's 3 daughters.  And last night, we were so blessed with a night of swimming, conversation, and perfect summer food at our dear friends, Jeff, Amy, Jonathan, Grace, and Benjamin's house.  

These pictures of our friends' baby bunnies are actually from the beginning of summer, but since I don't have any shots of this week's friend activity, I'm gonna use them here.  They're not entirely inappropriate since the girls spent all day Sunday playing at Jetta's house and we're headed back there tonight... 

It's been a very nice 2 weeks of relaxing and reconnecting!  And, speaking of 2 weeks-- that's all we have left!  It is impossible to believe that our summer is nearly over!

Did You Know?

...That July is "National Ice Cream Month"?  Well, now you know and you still have a few days to celebrate!  

As relaxing as these past few weeks have been, ALL the time at home reading, playing, doing chores, watching marathons of TV shows, etc. has given me the Outing Itch.  Dave came to the rescue by suggesting we try out this new Ghirardelli Soda Fountain and Chocolate Outlet, just for the sake of getting me out of the house and honoring ice cream this month.  

Unfortunately, now that we've seen it, there is no way of unknowing that this piece of chocolate and ice cream heaven exists so near to us-- dangerous knowledge indeed! :)

Star Wars School

Okay, here's the story about why our youngest is obsessed with Star Wars.  Back in kindergarten, Delia gravitated more to playing with the boys.  When the boys, who would play Star Wars every recess, figured out that Delia could be their queen, they welcomed her with open arms.  I'd meet moms of her male classmates at school who would say, "Oh, you're Delia's mom!  She's the Queen!"  For years now, Delia has been talking about Star Wars-- all of it second-hand stuff she learned from the boys.  She knew about "Dark Vader" and "Light Savers" and that wrinkly guy who talks funny.

Well, we decided that for the week of her 7th birthday we'd finally treat her to a little (old) Star Wars movie marathon (this was actually a treat for me too, since I've never seen them).  For one week Star Wars became our life.  Yes, this is the most violent and intense thing the girls have ever watched, but Dave pressed pause many times to explain things and check that they were doing all right.  

Perfectly timed with the movie marathon was the arrival of a couple Star Wars birthday presents.  Auntie Kris and family sent this pack of Star Wars characters.  They have been getting played with every single day, but not in the way you might imagine.  They don't fight and no one dies.  Instead they do things like go to Star Wars School...

The girls told me that in this scenario Han, Luke, R2D2, and CP3O are learning about how to use a Lightsaber.  Darth Vader is the teacher and Chewbacca is the TA.  The Star Wars guys have been busy doing lots of other things I don't have pictures of too-- like attending a performance that Ballerina Barbie put on.  

Dave and I are quite amused!

Delia's Perfect Party

Well, since Ella had a friend party in May, it was only fair to let Delia have one for her birthday too.  Because her birthday fell immediately following vacation, like Ella, I wanted something stress-free and easy.  When I learned that the dance studio she's been attending hosts parties for little ballerinas for an extremely reasonable rate, I jumped (jete'd?) all over it!

The dance studio was awesome, providing all the decorations and entertainment.  I pretty much just made invitations, got the food, and showed up.  Delia was excited to invite 10 girls from her 1st grade class.  With summer vacation, I was expecting about half of them to be around.  Nope!  We got 9!

A birthday party post is incomplete without a shot of our food table!    Ella and Delia helped me come up with the menu and fun food names.  And that concludes the description of what I was responsible for...

 While the girls arrived at the studio, they decorated a huge birthday sign for Delia.

Then the girls got a work out for an hour!  They showed off their hula hooping skills and played "Musical Hoops".  

They played "Freeze Dance" with fancy ribbons and "Keep the Balloons in the Air".  Then they learned a short choreographed ballet routine to the song "Let it Go".  I couldn't have planned a more perfect party for Delia if I had done it all on my own!  I loved how active the girls stayed, exercising for an hour straight and smiling the whole time!

Plie Pizza and Ballerina Berry time!  Our dance studio has two rooms, the girls danced in one room and ate in the other.  This room was dark because it had a mirror ball twirling from the ceiling!

 I'm not sure what Delia could have wished for because I think this party was all her wishes come true!

Delia opened up a pile of fun and thoughtful presents and then gave each of her friends a small "Thanks for Coming" favor: candies and a ballerina bracelet (which our dance studio hosts provided) and the Fancy Nancy, Budding Ballerina book (which we added, thinking it would be just perfect).

It was a beautiful thing to just let the dance studio plan and execute such a superb party for us!  Delia was super excited for this day, but admits that even her huge expectations were exceeded.  I celebrate the 7 years of joy we've had with Delia in our lives; a tailor-made event that made her feel special and happy; and the fact that I am off the party-hook for a least a couple years now! :)