shred it: California Adventure- Day 8

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Our first full day with my family here! We woke up early and headed out to Venice Beach- what an awesome day! We went over to the skate park first. It is literally right on the beach... pop your board up over the wall and its in the sand. Alex and the boys had a blast. Some professional photographer also had a blast taking pictures of the boys skating in their "Imported from Detroit" t-shirts... they were pretty gosh darn adorable. While the boys all skated, Jon went down to the beach for his first ever surfing lesson. He was awesome!!! He was up on his board within 20 minutes and rode at least 20 waves... not huge, but we were all totally impressed that he got up as many times as he did. About a half hour into his lesson we left the skatepark and went to camp out on the beach to watch daddy surf. The boys still aren't big fans of the water. Not sure why- they LOVE the lake, but they're just finally starting to dip their toes in the ocean... and not necessarily 100% willingly! But they could sit and dig in the sand from now until forever. I'm contemplating just leaving them there and walking to a Starbucks or something... I wonder if the lifeguards would notice. Maybe we'll try it next week :)

After nearly two hours on the beach we got changed and hit the boardwalk. What an interesting experience. My personal favorite was the homeless guy selling "bum signs"... he had a large and varied assortment of black magic marker on cardboard scrap signs. His fellow homeless friends could chose from a number of "Will work for food" and "Hungry- Please help" signs if they felt inclined to change up their approach. I also liked the homeless guy who was selling "Shitty Advice" for a dollar! Hard not to appreciate his creativity!! The boys enjoyed all there was to see on the boardwalk but mostly they enjoyed the skateboarding shops! However, it didn't take too long for them to totally crash in their strollers. We turned right around and headed back for the car thinking we could transfer them and spend some time driving around so they could nap. We should have known better than to even think it might be that easy! So a five minute stroller nap it was. We hit Stoner Skate Park on the way home so Alex could skate it for awhile and they boys were back on their boards for another hour. I can only hope that someday they can put this passion and focus into something fantastic that will make all of their dreams come true :)

My mom, Jon and I made a big dinner for everyone back at the condo, except they boys ate half of the beets before we could even cook them. Anyone willing to volunteer to do diaper changes tomorrow??? Then we tried to go out for ice cream but the boys were skateboarding on their little Tech Decks and every time we asked them if they wanted to go out for ice cream they said "No. Wanna skate!" Seriously?! These two need a psych eval. What two year old passes up ice cream?! Eventually we just had to tell them we were going. Yup. We forced our kids to go out for ice cream. My mom found a super cool little frozen yogurt shop right here in Sherman Oaks called Humphrey Yogart... it was unbelievably delicious and the perfect end to a perfect California day!

A big shout out to our most faithful and fantastic blog reader- Hi Uncle George! Thanks for following us every morning while you eat your breakfast! We miss you lots!!!

Caleb and grandma scoping out the Venice Skate Park