Family Vacation Day 1: Santa Cruz

We took our first "family of four" vacation to Santa Cruz for a special Thomas the Train event. When I say vacation I mean one night is all we were brave enough to take on with just us in a hotel room! In hindsight we had such a great time and there was plenty for us to rush in that we wish we had stayed an extra night.

It was a long drive there but we couldn't have asked the girls to do any better.  We went straight to the beach.

Blair with her headphones

Little baywatch runner... This face you can see under Blair's hat is the EXACT concentration face her dad makes.  They were playing play dough the other day when I noticed it.  It is awesome!  She definitely has her dads expressions!

Hey mom, thanks for hanging out in the tent with me.  If we could avoid the sand all over my face like our last beach trip, that would be great.

Boardwalk in the background. Blair spotted the rides right away!

Happy with her Daddy, she adores him.  I think he is a bit sweet on her too :)

Blair likes me to build her a sand bed and she lays down to sleep.  Then we made two holes for our car while daddy had to pack a certain cranky girl.

 

 I finally convinced Blair to go to the water with me.  Once I taught her to chase the waves she was SO into it.  However, she didn't really understand and ran WAY out towards them but didn't realize she had to run back ashore, she kept scaring me.  There are a lot of pics here but we had such fun I couldn't cut them down anymore!

Unfortunately I convinced her to put that "smoother" (a trowel sand toy) down and a wave then took it away.  She was pretty upset about it and told Mimi all about it when she got home.  Of course Mimi promised her a new one so that made it all better :)

We went back to our hotel for a quick shower and had to rush out to the boardwalk for dinner and rides!  All that luggage for ONE night!

Blair picked her favorite pizza for dinner and then we hit the rides.  There were SO many and we ran out of time to do even half of the ones Blair could have done.   Had we known  when we planned the trip that she was such a thrill seeker and there were so many rides this is where we would have liked more time on another day.

 
I know this isn't a great pic but you can see her mouth wide open in glee as it whipped her around the corner.

 Dad volunteered to stay back with Nora while mom got the ride wristband to go along with Blair.

 

We ended the night with ice cream and a quick book before we all fell asleep very quickly ready for our next day of fun!