A day at the beach

It's still frying hot here. My apologies to those who are surviving freezing temperatures, but we probably have a few more days of beautiful weather for you to thaw out if you can book a last-minute trip to California.

I'd wanted to go to the beach earlier in the week because of the high temperatures, but I was worried that there would also be blowing sand, so I decided to not even attempt a trip and deal with the disappointment if it didn't work out. But today was still, so we left the house around 8 a.m. and there were still hundreds of people at the beach...because it was a picture perfect day, there was a surfing event, a benefit walk, and the rest of the people who just wanted to enjoy the surf.

We brought Lukas' bike, the baby backpack and a small stroller for Natalie and had a good walk down the boardwalk before returning to play in the sand for a while. Lukas loved dragging Tom's camping magnet along (what is a camping magnet, you ask? it's a magnet you drag through the sand before you set up the tent to make sure there aren't any nails on the ground), which picked up nails, but mostly iron filings naturally mixed in with the sand.

Konrad just looked very cute while playing in the sand, and Natalie had a few yoga poses, scooping her hands into the sand, lifting them up and letting the sand fall out. Tom and Lukas worked on digging a hole in the sand with a stick of arundo (with the surfers lined up for the next set behind them) and then Lukas played in the hole.

It was a perfect day! We left in time to go home for lunch, we didn't bring a blanket, and no one went in the water, so it was easy beach play since we didn't have to lug a ton of stuff out on the sand.