Love, Learn, Play: California Remix- Day 2

After putting the boys to bed at 7:30 last night, they managed to sleep in until 6:00am this morning. It still kind of felt like 9:00am to us, but given how wrecked I felt yesterday I swear I could have slept until dinner time!

After an early breakfast, we headed out to do a little bit more shopping. We needed a few things at Target and Ikea and then we planned to head down to Travel Town. While admiring the Lego kits in the Lego aisle at Target, we were joined by another little four year old boy also stopping to admire the Lego kits in the Lego aisle. While the three boys got to talking, the little boy's mom asked if we had been to LEGOLAND and I confessed that the boys desperately want to go but that it really didn't look worth it to us- particularly because we don't let the boys do any of the Star Wars, Chima, or Lego Movie stuff. Instead of looking at us like we were aliens (which most people do), the lady smiled and said that her son isn't allowed to do any of those things either and she proceeded to tell us how to avoid all of it while still putting in a full and exciting day at LEGOLAND. She must have been glad that we didn't think she was an alien either because we ended up chatting for a long while and exchanged phone numbers as she invited us to join some of the activities her son's homeschool co-op has planned for the summer and the three boys all agreed that they needed to check out each other's Lego collections (yes- we managed to get the whole thing to California!) It's not always easy for us to find other four year old boys to play with, so I'll chalk that up as one wildly successful trip to Target! After that we grabbed a few art supplies and a laundry basket at Ikea and had some meatballs for lunch. The Ikea is five minutes from our apartment so I foresee us having meatballs for lunch at least once a week for the next month! While at Ikea the boys' manager called to let us know that their meeting for the afternoon had been rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon, which was actually perfect being that we already had another meeting scheduled there tomorrow afternoon anyways, so with our day wide open we decided to ditch Travel Town and head to Malibu for a beach day!

We started at Leo Carillo... it was one of our favorites two summers ago because of the tide pools and rocks to climb on. The boys were in heaven scampering up and down the rocks, even though Caleb ended up with a pretty nice scrape across his back at one point (which of course didn't stop him!) They met a 6 year old little boy who actually knew about Pompeii so for two hours the three of the were excavating the buried remains of Pompeii... not sure how we struck gold twice in one day but the boys had a blast! Jon couldn't contain the science teacher in him and made quite a few kids quite happy by teaching them how to catch crabs. As I was walking by I heard one of them say "You are the coolest science teacher I've ever met!" and it made me smile... because he is. After Leo Carillo we drove down the PCH just a bit and stopped at El Pescador. It was quite a hike down but the beach was practically empty. The boys set up shop in the sand while I kept lookout for the seal we saw on the way down to reappear, which of course he never did. For dinner we stopped at Malibu Seafood for some fried clams- two years ago that was the first fried food the boys had ever had and to be honest I don't know if they've had any since! I'm glad I don't live in Malibu because I think I would have to eat there every night!! Somehow we managed to keep the boys awake all the way home. We hosed them down and got them into bed before 8:00pm. They fell asleep instantly. We have tried for years to get them to fall asleep instantly. Full days at the park, seven mile bike rides, even cottage days don't do it... but apparently a day of Malibu beaches does the trick. I might be on to something ;)

Drove by Pepperdine and the boys declared they are still going to go to school here "So we can ride our bikes to get fried clams every day"