"The Best Day Ever" according to Henry

My kids have been looking forward to today all week. Once they heard that a Beach trip was planned with our friends they have been talking and talking about it. At first I was not going to go because we have be going and going all week and this is a lot of work to take 3 kids to the beach all by myself. Yes we were meeting a bunch of friends but they had their own stuff to lung out there and their own kids to keep track of. But we went and according to Henry it was "The Best Day Ever".

The Beaches in Santa Cruz are only 40 minutes from our house so we really have no excuse not to go more often and the kids really do love it. They enjoy everything about it.
Running through the waves and trying to catch sand crabs are my kids favorite things to do at the beach. I was actually really surprised by the size of some the crabs the kids in our group caught. Watching them quickly burrow into the ground when dropped into the sand was amazing to watch. I think by the end of the day their big bucket had about a hundred or more. (Not all caught by my kids. In fact my kids usually liked to watch them burrow, so theirs never went into the group's bucket.)
Ian kept saying he was trying to stand his ground as the waves pulled back and the sand felt like it was pulled out from under his feet. Later he and Henry said it felt like they were surfing or skateboarding.
Henry just enjoyed going to "the deep end" of the waves. If the water ever got up to his waist he said he was in the "deep end". I guess he knew that was as far out as he should go. He just loved running around through the waves.
Sophie actually tried to ride a few waves in. She needs a boogie board or something next time I think.

After playing in the waves some we took a walk over to the rock wall the divides the beach from the marina. The rocks were covered in sea anemone and muscles as well as star fish.Here are the kids looking into the crevice between the rocks.
This is what they they were looking at. Sorry it is blurry. But there are some starfish stuck there on the rock.
Henry actually broke out off the wall and the kids got a closer look at it. They put it back even though they would love to have taken it home.
Most of the sea anemones were small. Just right for a kid finger to touch and see it quickly close up. This one was almost a big as my fist. None of them would touch this one. For some reason because of its size they thought it might hurt them.

So now my kids are all a bit red. We spent 4 hours at the beach. No sunblock lasts that long and I didn't reapply like I should. My kids were too busy and too covered in sand to even think about reapplying sunblock. The kids don't seem to mind. I never did either when I was a kid. The beach was and still is "The best day ever" to a kid. They are already planning on us going again next week.

We will see about that.