Mothers Beach

Yesterday, we went to Long Beach to visit my mom for Mothers Day. Kya has been asking for months to go to the beach, so while we were down there, we decided to go to Mothers Beach too. This is a great beach for small kids. It is actually part of the Marina, so there are no waves. A small section of the water is blocked off for swimming and you can actually walk most of the way out without going under. I remember going here as a small child myself and thought it was great that I could re-live those memories with my own kids.

Here are the kids walking to the water for the first time with their Grandma.
Testing out the water...

It was lots of fun to just sit at the water's edge and play in the wet sand.

We found some sand toys and buckets, so the kids had lots of fun building things. Here Kya is bringing some water to the dry sand to make it pliable

Building Sand Castles!

Kya had the most fun getting all sandy while creating things out of sand. And dirty did she get!

Yummy! Mud cakes

Elsie helped out by going back and forth from the sand to the water filling up her bucket. She went back and forth about a dozen time!

They also had this whale that would blow water out of its blow hole. This was lots of fun too!

After playing on the whale the kids said they were cold, so Grandma showed them how to get warm by covering themselves up on the sand.

After this we headed over to the COLD showers to get all the sand off. The kids did NOT like this part at all, but I of course could not bring all this sand into my van. We had lots of fun and look forward to going back a lot this Summer.

Relay For Life

Last Saturday, Wayne and his band played for Relay For Life. This is a fundraiser for Cancer research. With it being so close to home, I took the kids to watch them perform.
Our friends and many of our church family came to either enjoy Sutherland's music or actually be a part of the Relay For Life themselves. As the kids get older, I hope to be able to get a team together and help raise money for this wonderful cause myself. The fundraiser was at a local high school and it all took place on the football field, so that the people walking to raise money could use the track to walk and the field to relax.

Here are some of their BIGGEST fans! Kya, Kattie, Seth, Kassidy and their Daddy, Andy, in the background.

And of course, Elsie.

I love this picture of my two girls. Elsie just walked up and backed herself up against Kya. Awwwe!

The kids eventually got tired of just sitting and listening to the band, so they decided to play some Ring Around the Rosy.

....we all fall down!