4th of July

Happy 4th of July! Our lives have changed dramatically since having kids. One of the ways this is evident is in our celebrations. We kicked the day off with a trip to Cayucos and we were on the beach by 10a.m. (when you are awakened at the crack of dawn by two chatty kids, what's to stop you from getting an early start on the day?). We started with a web cam geocache (the GPS led us to a designated spot on the beach, from there we called Darren's dad with the web site info to capture our pic on a local hotel's web cam, that's the cache). We then checked out the sand sculpture contest. These are a few of our favorites. We ate lunch on the beach then headed back inland around 1. This gave Cameron ample time to nap before going to Grammy and Papa's for a BBQ. I hated to leave the coast, it was a perfect day at the beach. Paso Robles was sweltering near 110 degrees, you can barely breathe at that temp. The kids enjoyed the wading pool and hose in Grammy's backyard and Jason had Grandma Jean doubled over in laughter during a wild game of Old Maid. Now this is the part where I admit that we didn't actually watch live fireworks on the 4th of July: we didn't watch live fireworks this year! Instead we headed home at 8:30, put the kids in bed and watched fireworks on TV. How sad! Even sadder was the smug satisfaction of not being stuck in post-firework traffic with cranky kids. We used to be so different.....