Whale Watching

On our last day of summer before school started we wanted to do something really great to celebrate the change from summer to beginning of a new school year so we went whale watching!  Unfortunately, our camera battery died so I only got these few shots with my phone but we had a great time.  We went out of Santa Cruz on a three hour tour, a three hour tour.  We didn't end up shipwrecked, but we saw dolphins, sea otters, sea lions and a beautiful humpback whale.  We saw the same humpback several times as it would surface for a few minutes and then dive.  When it would dive we would get a wonderful view of the tail coming out of the water and then going straight down.  It was a gorgeous day on the ocean and a great way to celebrate the last day of summer break. 

Beach Fun

Right after school got out we headed down to the beach for a long weekend where Nick was playing in a soccer tournament.  We were blessed with near perfect with weather to play in the sand and surf.

  

Noah demonstrating his skills with the Asian squat while digging for sand crabs.

 Aliyah enjoying playing in the sand.  Every once in awhile I am able to capture her "true" smile rather than her "mom is taking a picture so I'll say cheese smile."  I must say though that getting the sand out of her hair was a major undertaking!

 Pete and Nick playing baseball in the sand between soccer matches.

Nick playing in one of his three sand soccer games of the weekend.

Cooling off in the waves after the last game.  It was a perfect weekend to kick off our summer fun :)