There and Back Again: A Conlins' Tale, Round Four

Tuesday proved to be much more promising a day for the beach than our first excursion had been on Sunday and was also a little warmer than our visit on Monday. It's amazing what difference a few degrees can make! Oh, it was still coolish by Southern California standards, and you weren't about to find me in a swimsuit out there, but the kids weren't deterred by the mid-50 degree temperatures in the least and swapped their shorts out for swim trunks for the entire day and ditched the sweatshirts.

It had rained again in the night, but with the air cleaned so that it was almost sparkling and the glorious sunshine and inviting waves calling to us, we headed down the street with Jason and Leah to one of the many beautiful Laguna Beach beaches. Unlike Fisherman's Cove, this beach was one I could see being very crowded on a summer day, but with the weather as it was, sunny but cool, we nearly had the whole stretch of sand to ourselves.

Jason runs a rental business during the summer months: snorkeling gear, boogie boards, things like that, so we brought three boards down with us. He is an absolute pro boogie boarder, and we really enjoyed watching him ride the waves (in a wet suit covered by a dry suit). Our boys, while brave enough to actually enter the freezing water (unlike their coward mother), didn't want to go too deep, so they stuck to the small waves and post-wave wash that was close to shore. It was a wonderful day!

In addition to spending some time playing in the water, Jason showed the boys how to find sand crabs ("NOT sand fleas!") and feed mussels to sea anemones. They built sand castles, dug deep holes, explored up and down and warmed themselves on the rocks. What more could a little boy ask for?! Tommy had his first taste of the beach. He had ditched the beach quickly during the rainstorm, and slept through our adventure to Fisherman's Cove, so he was in wonderland! Everything seemed to thrill him. He was all over the place, but never went too far, too close to the ocean or too fast and would always come back to check in after a bit of exploring--all under the watchful eyes of his auntie, his dad and me.

Jason gave the boys pulls along the shallow water of the shore, it was a riot! He had those boys moving FAST!

I love this picture because even though he's facing away from the camera, you can see Josh has a huge smile from the way the apple of his cheek is bursting.

The water was cold! There were a lot of warm-up breaks.

Scenes from a beach.

The pterodactyls (pelicans, really, but they are a very prehistoric looking bird!) would ride the air currents that moved parallel to the coastline. We would have regular intervals of these giant birds soaring in a huge line, swooping in and out with the curves of the beach without a flutter of wings as the air just carried them out and then back in again. It almost allowed you to see how the air was moving. It was very cool. Luke loved them. Like the seagulls, the pelicans, he-hem, pterodactyls, were his friends.

Sand crabs on Ben's wrinkled fingers. He and Jason had been digging for them for a long time.

Zac continued to love playing with the tennis balls (three total over the two beach days) he found. His favorite game was pass with his dad. I am sure the balls had all once belonged to dogs that had fetched one too many tosses into the ocean and simply refused to get the last one. Eventually the balls made their way back to shore on the waves, long forgotten by the dogs, now treasured by a little boy.

Tommy was pretty fearless when it came to the ocean. He never tried to go in it, but he did walk right up to the wave line without a care in the world.

But then one of the foamy wave washes came up and touched his toes.

Although the pounding serf didn't scare him, the cold water did!

It was eventually time to leave the beach and see a bit of Laguna Beach town. Goodbye beautiful beach! On the way up the hill Jason discovered a little caterpillar on the path. Luke matter-of-factly said, "Yeah, that's my friend. He lives here." As if they had arranged the meeting on the path just to say hello and catch up.

Forget the cute boutiques and art galleries. We hit the best spots in Laguna Beach: the Dryer's Ice Cream Parlor and The Candy Baron!

And for Mom, Casey's Cupcakes. Josh and I love watching the show Cupcake Wars on The Food Network together, and Casey's Cupcakes, whose second store is located in Laguna Beach, won one of the episodes. Being the cupcake fan I am, as well as a fan of the show, I had to have one! Or six. Or a dozen. Casey herself came in while we were there, but I couldn't get myself to take a picture with her. Not because she wouldn't have, I am sure she would have been happy to, but the girl was as SKINNY AS A RAIL! I would have looked like an elephant next to her. So for vanity's sake I just took a picture with her store. It was hard to believe she had ever eaten one of her own cupcakes! But I sure did, it was coconut, and it was DEEEEEEEELICIOUS! Mmmm...every.single.bite.

Tommy had had a long day.

But it wasn't over yet! We had plans to meet up with my cousin Paul, his wife Lisa and their two fabulous kids, Corey and Raeann in Newport Beach at the Crab Cooker. This is a restaurant that has sentimental value to my family, as it was my Aunt Pat's, my mom's middle sister who passed away six years ago, favorite restaurant. As a kid, who didn't like fish, well, who didn't like much of anything, I hated going there. And unfortunately for my picky self, we did every time we visited So. Cal. But as an adult, whose tastes have refined a bit, I love it! I can see why it was her favorite and I love the memories of many past visits that come back to me when I am there. Before dinner we caught sunset on Newport Beach. It was stunning!

Dinner was so enjoyable. Paul and Lisa are such wonderful people. Paul and I were able to spend some time together at my Aunt Barb's last month when she was sick. He buoyed our spirits so much and made the difficult time there much more bearable. It had been years since I had seen his kids, they were as little as our littlest two last time I saw them (although I couldn't believe it). What fantastic teenagers they are! It was a wonderful evening.

The day had been perfect, and the next day we were off to the Happiest Place on Earth! Hooray! But between those days was the night. And Oh! What a night!

We still aren't sure what was up, but about 11:30pm Tommy woke up from sleep crying. And then he proceeded to cry until around 2am, with intermittent wakings to cry between 2am and 4:30am. I had given him some of my crab cakes for dinner and I was afraid he was having an allergic reaction. I kept making sure he was breathing OK, but when your baby is screaming and gasping for breath it's hard to tell if it's the screaming that's making him gasp or if he might actually be having a hard time breathing. It was so unusual! Tommy just doesn't do that. I finally determined that he was breathing OK, but his tummy was obviously hurting him. He would fall asleep on his belly, resting on Adam or me, and then as soon as we put him down or he'd flip to his back (he's a back sleeper) he'd wake up crying again.

About 1:45am I went downstairs to check to see if I could find any children's pain reliever without rummaging too much. I didn't find any in any of the obvious places, so I started back upstairs. Then I stopped to say a little prayer. I had been so stressed about Tommy's crying, worrying that we were keeping the entire house awake and thinking we'd be miserable at Disneyland the next day, exhausted and grumpy, that I hadn't even thought to say a prayer. Seconds after I said "Amen" I remembered that I had some infants' Tylenol in my purse. It was amazing. I said a prayer of thanksgiving as I dashed up the stairs. I dosed Tommy, and I think that was a huge help to getting him to fall into sleep 20 minutes later, he still woke up 3 or 4 times until 4:30am, but at least he was not crying incessantly and falling right back to sleep.

As we drifted off into our first hours/final hours of sleep, I suggested to Adam that we might want to switch our Disneyland days from Wednesday and Thursday to Thursday and Friday, as we had originally planned before I got my new YW calling at church and we had decided to move up the days so we could drive home in time to be at church on Sunday. Adam mumbled, "No, let's still go." OK...I was worried it was going to be a rough day...but I shouldn't have. Because it was impossible to grump in the Happiest Place on Earth.