On to the Beach

Saturday morning we were up early and ready to continue on to San Diego. Our first day there was supposed to be our beach day. It was 65 degrees which is nice but not nice enough when the water is only 60 degrees. We still headed to the beach, however, just not in our swimsuits. :)

We decided to go to Mission Beach. Mission Beach is nice because there is a carnival, some shops and places to eat. Which was nice since we weren't planning on spending time in the water. We walked through the shops down to the beach and immediately the kids had their shoes off and were running to the water. They were a little shocked at how cold it was but after their feet went numb they didn't seem to mind. ;)

Getting a feel for the water.

Chet and the kids enjoying the water.

One of my favorite things to do, as a kid, at the beach was dig for sand crabs. I remember my dad teaching me to look for the "v's" in the sand after the wave receded. I showed my kids this last time we were at the beach in San Diego so they knew right what to look for and waisted no time in getting digging. They didn't have to dig very much though because there were hundreds of them as soon as the wave washed ashore (they must have just had a hatch). Even in your footprints they would collect! It was crazy! The kids loved scooping up a big handful of sand and then feeling all the crabs trying to dig out. 

Diggin' for sand crabs.

Looking for the "V's".

We had made dinner reservations about a mile up the beach and decided that it would be fun to walk the beach to get there. So Chet gathered up the shoes and we started walking. We were almost to the restaurant when we noticed that one of Liv's shoes was missing. Crap! We had zigzagged a mile up the beach to get to dinner. Her shoe could have been anywhere! Since we needed it for her to get into the restaurant Chet took off running on the beach to try and find it. About 20 minuted later he came back empty handed. We decided to head to dinner anyway.

We ate at a steakhouse called Saskas. It was awesome! When we were all finished eating the kids begged us to walk back along the beach again, which was fine with us. We could look for Liv's shoe again. It was a beautiful walk. The sun was setting into the ocean and most of the people had left the beach. We decided to stick close to the water so the kids could stop and dig for more crabs. As we were walking we saw a big purplish blob in front of us. It was a giant sea slug! Unfortunately it was dead and kinda gross so we didn't take a picture. So we left it and moved along. We were almost back to where we started when we spotted something silver sticking out of the sand ahead of us. Guess what it was? Liv's shoe!! Chet was so mad, he had stopped looking only about 5 feet away! At least we found it. It was a happy ending to a happy day.