San Diego, California - Part 2

Dear Friends:

[This is the second of five blog posts about our family reunion in San Diego, California.  The "family" consisted of all my kids, grandkids and my amazing wife].

We awoke the second day of the trip and celebrated my oldest grandson's birthday.  It's the first chance that we all had to be together, and I think he enjoyed getting a few more presents!

Outside in the back of the house, I found these two grandkids just hanging out ; )

We made our way down to La Jolla Cove, and sought out a portion of the beach that included some tide pools - to make things more interesting.  The walk along the coast was beautiful:

We finally arrived at our desired spot, and the kids immediately embraced all the fun at the beach.  Literally, they just wanted to play in the sand all day long.  I don't remember having this much fun building sand castles as a kid...but they sure did love it!

The youngest ones wanted to experience the water...so we had fun playing in the waves, even when they were a little strong:

We took the oldest boys and hiked over to the tide pools.  They were quite small, but we found an army of tiny crabs scurrying across the rocks.  The boys loved watching these little crustaceans traverse the exposed rocks.

Back at the beach - the sand and wave play continued unabated.  Don't you love the look of joy on kids' faces when they're having this much fun?

This is another scene that I adore.  Most of the youngest kids are collaborating on a sand castle project.  The youngest is only a year old, but wants to be part of the action.  I love watching them work together!

My youngest daughter has found the beach to be her "happy place".  She loves everything about it - being outdoors, playing in the water, using her creativity to build something that will hopefully withstand the power of the waves...

We had a blast, but returned to the house, to continue the fun.  We spent the rest of the afternoon in the backyard pool, and some actually spent time in the massive hot tub that was located nearby:

After a delicious dinner, we decided to roast marshmallows and make s'mores in the backyard.  While a propane-based grill fire isn't the ideal set-up for s'mores, we made it work.  I manned the chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers - and kept the kids and adults supplied with materials through the evening:

Some really didn't want to spend a lot of time roasting the marshmallows - it was fun to just eat them on the end of a stick ; )

Finally, the old man had a chance to make one.  Even though messy, this was a fun way to close out the second day of the reunion.