1000 piece puzzle, check

Long Beach Olympics

Here are the relays from Friday, our last day.  Watch to the end for the big cousin silliness.

Long Beach Races

Races are every morning at 11am!  You run, you get candy.  My kids were there!

Isaac only needed me to run with him a few times.

Looks like Anthony is giving his younger cousin some pointers on how to run fast.

Go David!

Stretch...

Yes, that's my stinker.

And Moon Pies were the reward on the last day.

Sand Shenanigans

Burying cousins was the task of the week:

Crocodile racecar?

Isaac remembered Nate's dog Rosco from last year.  Rosco is happiest retrieving his ball from the ocean and Isaac was happy to throw.

That would be Jed's head.

And bring out the big boy shovels!

Let's bury David again!

Game Night

Family game night was a hit with Twister this year for the younger ones.

David brought his chess board again this year and enjoyed challenging his cousins.

And of course there was lots of cousin shenanigans.

And time on the porch.

Baby Turtles

We were lucky to all be out on the beach for our appetizer party when they excavated this turtle nest by our beach house.  Typically, about 100 eggs hatch naturally but the last few turtles at the bottom can't get out and would die without assistance.  It just so happened this nest was excavated when we were there to see it!

The survival to adult rate is only 1 in a 1000, we learned.  The babies instinctively know to hatch at night when they are less likely to be scooped up by seagulls.  Apparently, baby sea turtles are good eating.

These sea turtle nests are protected, roped off and monitored all up and down the beach by the turtle police and are wildly popular as they near their time to hatch.  Nobody knows exactly when it will happen, though there are signs as the time gets near like the nest level dropping as they start to hatch and ants showing up to eat at the shells.

You can see Isaac in this picture.  I was really glad my kids got to see this.

Lia and I camped out at this nest hoping to catch the big exodus... but it didn't happen the night we joined the turtle groupies.

The next night we walked down there and heard 90 turtles hatched and we had missed most of it.  We did see the last few stragglers head to the ocean but it was really dark and they looked like moving clumps of sand.

Nelli Beach

We made it to the beach on Saturday just in time to catch the 5pm mass at Sacred Heart.  Tom got this great picture of our Nelli clan gathered here on Sunday, our first full day.  The weather was a bit overcast the first few days but got nice and sunny as the week progressed.

Isaac decided he liked the beach this year and enjoyed playing in the sand with his cousins.

I thinks he's asking, "Where are the cousins?"

Christopher came to visit at our house often and made Isaac smile and giggle.

Lia and I would take walks to the pier... it's 2.5 miles round trip!