The Pier

Josh & Simon had to spend all day (seriously, 8am-5pm) at AYSO referee training on Sunday (which, thank God no one asked me because NOPE), so Laura & I took the Horribles to the Santa Monica Pier. The kids got to ride as many rides as they could take (if you go, get the unlimited rides wristbands), plus ice cream AND cotton candy. Laura and I got to gawk at an endless parade of underbutt and women wearing stilettos to ride roller coasters. So we were all winners.

Lucy won a pink elephant playing Whac-A-Mole!

And immediately gave it to Samantha because she is a better person than most.

Yes, Sur

We cut it super-close (seriously--we got home and were at Back to School Night one hour later), but we squeezed a short camping trip into our Summer break. 

We headed up to Big Sur (specifically Limekiln State Park) with our beloved Verlaques and it was spectacular.

This was our site. We had those incredible mountains behind us and the ocean in front of us. We spent the better part of each morning spotting whales and dolphins and sea lions in the water.

We arrived in the late afternoon and the kids were immediately on the beach. They pretty much stayed there for the entire three days.

Josh spent a fair amount of time each evening trying to start a fire using just his flint. No luck, but he did get some pretty tough-looking blisters.

But we had a lighter, so we managed.

Spacehog!

There were ghost stories.

Lucy & Samantha in this picture remind me so much of the Little Mermaid sculpture in Copenhagen.

Right?

Too bad it was so ugly there.

We took and afternoon trip to Pfeiffer Falls, which was lovely. Also, there was a couple getting married right there on the trail, with hundreds of people passing by as they said their vows. People are weird.

Seriously, like 10 feet away from this picture two grown people were saying "I do."

There was a lovely creek running through our campsite into the ocean. The boys heard they could catch crayfish in the creek, so we strung bits of leftover chicken on some string (apparently this is how you hunt crayfish? gross.)

Shadow selfie in the creek.

Hard at work.

Aaaaaaaand, they caught a couple (I don't think anyone was more surprised and horrified than they were).

Everyone was too scared to get close enough to the buggers to carry the pails by their handles, so we devised this ingenious/cowardly transportation system. (No crustaceans were harmed in this endeavor--well except maybe for the one that I spilled an entire glass of wine on by accident--Dash & Will returned them back to their homes after showing them off.)

On the first day we took an incredible hike up the Limekilm Trails to another waterfall. Our fearless children were fearless and scrambled up all kinds of crazy rocks into freezing cold water.

King of the world, Ma!

The head.

Josh: [whistles for the children to return to the campsite for dinner]
Children: [aggressive ignoring]
Josh: Fuck 'em, let's start walking.
Liz: Yup, that's going straight in the blog.

These are Velella Velellas. They washed up on the beach in masses and the kids collected them. Laura, who is the world's best Girl Scout and parent, gathered up the kids and took one to the ranger station to find out everything they could about them. (I recommend travelling with Laura when you can.)

In conclusion:

Fair

We went to the Fair. My jam lost. I was sad but I have recovered.

This is what $12 root beer looks like (but they did get to keep those cups that I'm 99.999% sure are composed entirely of lead & carcinogens).

Here are pictures of two photogenic chickens:

You're welcome.