beach bound.

On the day of packing for our trip, I opened up Kosty's backpack and found that he already packed one thing.  It was all I could do not to pounce and clobber him. I love that he (a) thought of his scriptures first, (b) got a giant ziploc to put them in, and (c) included his yellow highlighter. 

not only did he pack his own set of scriptures, he made sure we packed the family scriptures too. I'll admit we've never kept up our family scriptures while on vacation, but he was running the hotel show. We would play hard every day and as soon as we got back to our room, he would get ready for bed and call us all around for scriptures and demanded lights out at 8:00. Since he "can't sleep" with even so much as a dim cell phone light on, we would all end up falling asleep at HIS bedtime. It was a restful week. 

our tradition is always eat dinner and then walk straight to the beach, no matter what time. 

there was the nicest (super drunk) lady that insisted on taking our picture, and took it, she did. She was so wobbly she kept trying to take another one, over and over again to get a non blurry.  She cracked us all up. And so glad she didn't drop my phone!

We went to the Mormon Battalion Museum and Jer got picked to suit up 

its CA tradition we stop for ice cream most every night, and this trip I found my favorite of all time, peanut butter chocolate Haagen Dazs. Best PB ice cream ever ever ever. 

Kosty is always ultra happy and affectionate while on vacation, this little hand holding session just wouldn't happen anywhere else. 

its no secret that I am a terrible driver, map reader, and parallel parker. But one morning I did all three (alone) to get one of the best acai bowls of my life. 

This was our first year switching up our beach! We traded Newport in for Carlsbad and we couldn't help but make constant comparisons the entire trip. There were tons of pluses. Tons of minuses. But mainly, we switched because we wanted to be in walking distance to the beach to avoid the horror of parking, and that's just not an option in Newport. There are several families in our ward that stay at this particular hotel and told us it was walking distance. If you consider a mile walking distance, it was. But carrying chairs, boogie boards, towels, sand toys, etc...we only walked once. Luckily parking was super easy to come by. Carlsbad isn't nearly as crowded or touristy. The homes and surroundings are breathtaking and it has a real life feel to it, not a "beach city" feel. There are tons of good shops, and not typical tourist shops. TJ, Target, Marshalls, Home Goods, type of shops--way more fun for me. Jer was bummed when he needed a surfboard leash though, and we couldn't find a surf shop for miles! another minus--no donut shops on every corner. In fact we drove 5 miles one day and found out they closed super early--unheard of in Newport. Another thing we missed about Newport was of course, the boardwalk. Morning and night walks and runs along the strip, down to the pier, shopping, Janes corn dogs, and donuts. REALLY MISSED THAT PART. But we loved our cozy hotel, free breakfast every morning, clean sheets every day with no sand, and the pool for dipping our be achy bodies before we all took showers.