A Day at the Beach

July flew by (yeah, I went there), but this was our last time on a plane... for that month...

The last weekend of July we once again boarded a plane and this time, flew to California.  Ruby has her flying pretty much down and, although she was awake most of the time, she did great.  It's starting to be a little less stressful for me.  We'll see how it goes after we give her a nice long break from flying and try to do it again in December when she wants to move everywhere :$

This was me coercing her to sleep for a few minutes.  Literally whispering songs while she stroked my hair.  She always plays with either my hair or her hair and I sort of love it.

  Mission accomplished:

For a few minutes at least... either way, we landed wayyyy past her bedtime and as we were waiting for our rental car (which took almost an hour!  Yikes!), she was doing this.  And waving to everyone else in life and clapping and giggling and just being silly.  So I think its safe to say she was still happy.  What a champ.

Although we went to California so Parker could present at LEAP, I was certain we needed a beach day if we were going to be there anyway.  So the first night we stayed with Parker's amazing and wonderful aunt Julie and uncle Gregg.  We loved being able to visit and eat and stay with them.  Thank you, Olsens!

We decided to be full on tourists thanks to Julie and Gregg's recommendations and drove to the beach via Topanga Canyon... where all the hippies lived in the 60's and still hang out!  (Did you know that Topanga from "Boy Meets World" actually wasn't just a made up word??? I had no idea!)

It wasn't too long before we made it to the ocean.  It was a little bit chilly, but not to cold to put our feet in.  Ruby liked it, but she was a little curious about why her feet kept sinking, I think, and we couldn't really get her to look up.  She was also constantly distracted by all the seagulls.  Joy.

I am so glad that we were able to take her to the ocean for the first time and so glad that Parker was able to be there with us!  We were realizing on our drive there that our nine month old baby has been to nine states!  Keep that average up and you would be quite the traveled person.  Granted that includes Phoenix, and she has only been to the airport there, but she's been there a few times for longer layovers... not too shabby.

So I can remember, Ruby has been to: 

1. Utah

2. Texas

3. Arizona

4. Idaho

5. Wyoming

6. Nevada

7. Kentucky

8. California

9. Tennessee

Parker was able to close his eyes and relax a bit...

... though I'm not quite sure how...

Santa Monica Pier

Reaching for birds

 Her favorite part of this new experience was by far swinging on the beach, surprise surprise.  It was pretty awesome though- we were swinging next to this little girl who was maybe three.  Her dad asked her if she could count and she started rattling off her numbers 1-20, only skipping fourteen and really confused when her dad tried to correct her.  Then she started going in espanol.  "uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco, seis, siete, diez, nine, fourteen, qince, eleven, three..." and so on and so forth.  Pretty cute.

Ruby was also giggling pretty loud while swinging and she kept asking her dad, "why is that girl laughing so hard daddy?"

 We walked around the pier for a little bit, then stopped for a quick bite to eat before it was time for us to check in at UCLA.  We sure enjoyed our little morning getaway though!