Here are the July highlights:
- Kids put on 4th of July hats
- Great day at Leo Carillo beach
- We celebrate Nicolas’ birthday
- We host baby shower for Tyson and Heidi
- Cat becomes official indoor cycle instructor, teaching her first class
- I compete in hometown triathlon
A Perfect Day at the Beach
In the middle of July, we had one of those absolutely perfect beach days. Well, we live in southern California, so you might expect us to have ideal beach days all the time. Not exactly. There are lots of variables that go into a perfect beach day. For example, you might head out to the beach only to discover the day is a bit overcast, or a little too breezy, or the surf too rough. But every once in a while all the elements line up perfectly — the sun is out, the wind is calm, and the surf is just right for the kids to enjoy. That’s what we got this month and we spent nearly 5 hours enjoying it all at Leo Carillo.
It didn’t quite start out perfectly, mind you. Before going to Leo Carillo I took everyone to a small beach off PCH with a narrow strip of sand. Getting to this beach required taking everything out of the car and hauling it down some steep steps. Unfortunately, the tide started coming up within 30 minutes of us getting there so we had to gather everything and schlep it all back up the stairs and repack it into the car before heading down the highway to Leo Carillo and starting all over again. We got out just in time before the tide completely erased the last bit of shoreline. That wasn’t too fun, but once we got settled in our new location all the hassle we went through was forgotten.
At Leo Carillo, the kids had a blast waiting for waves to crash into a huge rock. They had a game they played where they would place their hands on the rock and wait for a wave to explode white wash all over them. They must have spent nearly an hour doing this. Next, they tried their hand at boogie boarding. Luke got a little more adventurous than usual but it was Lilah who really got in there and scored some waves.
We Host a Couples’ Baby Shower
Toward the end of July we held a Baby Shower for our friends, Tyson and Heidi. It was the first time we hosted such an event but I think we pulled it off okay. Another good friend, prepared some great food, and Cathy came up with some cool games for us all to play. One of the games we played involved guessing the size of Heidi’s belly. The assignment was for each person to cut a piece of yarn equal to the circumference of Heidi’s belly. So once everyone had their strings cut, each person wrapped their string around Heidi to see who would come closest without going over. The winner of the game was Lilah. Needless to say she was overjoyed. The other game we played was pulling safety pins out of a bowl of rice. For that game everyone got a minute or so to pull as many pins out of a bowl of rice as they could (while being blindfolded). Try it sometime. It is incredibly difficult.
The last game we played was a memory game. In this game Cathy put several baby-related items on a tray (including one called “butt paste”) and allowed everyone to look at the tray for 30 seconds. She then covered the tray and the guests were asked to write down as many items as they could remember on a piece of paper. The person who wrote down the most items correctly won.
Lilah Tries on “Outfits”
Lately, Lilah has become really particular about the clothes she gets. Currently, she’s into Kohl’s but no so into Target. She’s also in an “outfit” phase meaning she wants matching shirts and tops — not ensemble pieces that she can mix and match. Well, when we celebrated her birthday at grandmy and grandpy’s she got her wish. She received three outfits as gifts and had a great time trying them all out and modeling them for us. Below are some pictures.
Luke Wraps up Baseball
Luke finished YMCA baseball this month. He really enjoyed the experience. His coaches said Luke is ready to play little league — they said they liked his hustle and competitiveness. Luke said he wants to play so I guess maybe I’ll get on the ball and sign him up. I hesitate slightly only because I know baseball is a pretty big time commitment. Oh well, if he’s interested then we’ll give it a shot in the fall. It will give me another reason to use the camera. If your child does a lot of sports, you really owe it to yourself to get an SLR camera. That’s the only way you can get sequences like the ones below. Here’s a live action clip of Luke getting a hit (this one was with a Flip camera).
The only bummer for Luke was not getting to go to the season end party to receive his trophy. He was hoping to get it to add to his collection, but we had our vacation scheduled for the same day as the party. In any case, I told Luke we would pick up his prize when we returned and he seemed satisfied with that answer.
The Parents
Last month I talked about how Cathy was preparing to teach her first indoor cycle class. Well, it’s official now. Cat taught her first class solo in July and has a few more scheduled for August. She’s a substitute right now so she doesn’t have a regular class. But since her friend Alicea allows her to teach half her class from time to time, Cat at least gets to practice her teaching. We are all proud of her.
I also raced in my hometown triathlon for the second year in a row. I felt really good about my race. In races we sometimes get happy (or upset) over different things. In this race I was really happy about the way I finished. A guy in my age group passed me with 50 yards to go to the finish line so went for broke and sprinted to the finish and just beat him out by one second. That just felt really good. To boot, I also improved my time from last year by nearly 4 minutes so it took me 1:08:16 to cover the 400 meter swim, 11.5 mi. bike and 3.1 miles.
That’s all for now. More next month!