Surf City USA

The title of our blog is very appropriate for our trip to the beach.  It has been about a month since we have gone on an excursion and I think the girls forgot how to travel.  The whole way here they asked us, “Are we there yet?” so many times.  It took us about five hours to get to Newport Beach from Porterville.  We hit a lot of traffic in the L.A. area, which slowed us down quite a bit.  We arrived at our hotel on Friday evening around 9pm.  We landed at a four star hotel, which we got on Priceline for $80 a night.  We had a wonderful king size bed, which was all squishy and so comfortable.  We brought an air mattress for the girls and the pack in play for Chloe.  The accommodations were amazing.

We woke up Saturday morning and were out the door by 7am.  If you want to find a parking spot at the beach, you have to beat the crowd.  Our timing was perfect.  We arrived at Huntington Beach, which was about 15 minutes from our hotel.  Right across from the parking lot was a Jamba Juice, which has become our favorite smoothie place.  We got breakfast for all of us there and headed to the beach.  Right away we found a surf shop called Zach’s.  Dan signed up for his surfing lessons at the group price…except he was the only one in the group.  Perfect!  He headed out to surf with his instructor while the girls and I played on the beach all morning.  Mya, especially, LOVED the beach life.  She played in the freezing cold water and made some friends on her own.  Chloe took a great nap in her stroller (thanks to a MOPS mom in Porterville who lent us her stroller).  I had fun taking pictures of Dan surfing, but was a little shocked when, about a half hour into his lesson, he came out of the water with his instructor and had blood dripping down his face.  The surf board whacked him in the head pretty close to his eye.  But he was a trooper.  They super glued his cut together, put a band aid on it, and back out into the water he went.  He was very determined to learn the skill of surfing.  His instructor kept telling me that he hasn’t seen someone with this much determination and lack of fear as he was seeing in Dan.  He was laughing because Dan paddled all the way out to the bigger waves with the “big boys.”  He said he hasn’t seen a student do that in a long time either.  The rest of his surfing session went great.

Here we are at Jamba Juice for breakfast....

Here we are on the pier at Huntington Beach.....

I used the self timer to take this picture and had no idea that Dan was done renting his surfboard.  He just showed up in the picture at the right time.  I think it looks pretty cool with him in the background.

And now for the surfing pictures!

 Here is the wounded victim after having his gash super glued together.....

 Chloe missed her Daddy...

After the beach, we headed back to the hotel for nap time.  I was able to escape for a workout session all by myself.  After everyone woke up, we let the kids have some pool time at the hotel.  Then the family humored me and my brilliant plan to get a family picture of us on the beach.  We had very little time to get dinner, get the family showered and dressed and drive to the beach before the sun set.  Well, we made it to a pretty spot just as the sun was setting.  We did not make it to the beach and the crew was somewhat grumpy so we pulled off the side of the rode and took pictures fast.  I was really hoping for a beach scene, but I’ll take what we got.

 We were all so exhausted from our day that everyone was asleep by 9pm.  The kids went to bed very easy.  Sunday morning we woke up around 8am, packed up the kids, checked out of the hotel, and went right back to our Huntington Beach sight where Dan surfed.  We spent yet another morning at the beach and Dan rented a surf board and wet suit.  He was pretty sore from the previous day but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try surfing again.  He was really getting the hang of it by the end of his two hour session.  We headed back home to Porterville around noon…..back to the 100 degree weather.  The beach weather was in the 70’s and of course the pleasant ocean breeze was great too. This was the best trip so far!