California Trip Day Four – Conference and Beach

Today was the first day that Nate had to go to his conference. The plan to combine a business trip with a family vacation works well . . . in theory. It is great that some of our travel expenses are covered and that Nate has to use less vacation time. The only real downside is that I am no good at being a single mom to our kids for eight hours a day in a different state. We did mostly okay today. We spent the day swimming in the hotel pool, watching Cartoon Network, and playing cards. Abby spent most of the day crying and saying “NO!” I was very ready for Nate to get back to share the joy. I feel the same way most days at home, but having less space and fewer options for entertainment made it seem a little worse. In Abby’s defense, she is two and has had an extremely out of the ordinary schedule for the last few days. Still, it is a good thing she has cute moments mixed in with the naughty. My favorite is that she insisted on wearing Emily’s goggles the entire time we were at the pool. She looked so cute sitting high and dry in her floatie tube or lounge chair with those goggles on.

The day got considerably better when Nate got home. The kids and I had everything ready so we could head straight out to the beach. We went to Ocean Beach. It was great . . . five minutes away, close parking, and not crowded. The girls were all about gathering sea shells, Ben figured out how to catch little sand crabs, and Abby mostly just wanted to smash sand castles as quickly as we could make them. It was so fun that we decided to go back again tomorrow. I might even get in past my ankles. I don’t love cold water!

We made it back to the hotel in time to get cleaned up and head to Denny’s for kids eat free Tuesday. It looks like tomorrow will be pretty much a repeat . . . hopefully with less grumpiness from the kids and more patience from me.