Beaches, Beaches, and more Beaches

Haha, say that with a latino accent and it's a little funnier...

Ok, we'll start out with the videos because, well, they're the best part right? Eat dessert first, and all that. The first one is just something funny that Paul and Sam do, they play around so much and I just have to sit back and laugh. It's often the classic "honey, don't do that, you're going to hurt him!" followed by a "he's fine, he loves it!" and I roll my eyes as he continues. Luckily Paul's right more than I am. (Did I just say that out loud??) :)

Paul snagged this one one of those mornings when I was conked out and drooling and he played Superdad, taking "first shift". I thought it was cute - kind of like his own little contribution to the blog. A first! :)

First off, Paul finally put his foot down and made me let him cut Sam's hair off. An officer he barely knew saw Sam when we went in and said "dude, your baby REALLY needs a haircut." haha, I knew it was looking a little shaggy, but now that i look back on it - it was pretty nappy. :)
Here's the before

During - we gave him the softsoap bottle to keep him occupied - who knew an ingredients label could be so intriguing? (no animals were harmed while testing...)

and after. Haircuts are so exhausting!

The next day we took our new bikes down to Santa Monica beach and rode the boardwalk up Santa Monica and Venice beaches. It was so fun and a pretty decent workout, we went like 12 miles. We stopped at the place closest to the beach, dragged our bikes across the sand (hooray for forgetting the bike lock key!) and took turns taking Sam down to the water.

After a while a rogue wave drenched his shorts, so we figured what the heck and stripped the poor guy down to his nudies. It must really suck to have such embarrassing parents.

He was less than thrilled with the intrusive sand and was pretty stoked to get back into his clothes - despite this rather irritated look.

On the way back we stopped off at the playground and I saw my future flash before my eyes...

He was a freaking monkey! He climbed that rope so fast I couldn't even get a picture of him going UP, these are both coming down! All that after a broken shoulder. I hope Sam takes after me and just gets fat sitting on the couch watching movies.

Of course we had to do Sammy's favorite thing, the swings. I will never get over this adorable squinch face and yes, you will probably be subjected to it over and over again.


And took a second for photo ops


A couple days later, on the 3rd, we headed out to Zuma beach for a little birthday party for Jordan, our friends' little boy who's turning 3. We made friends with Katie & Luis when we first moved here, and have ended up becoming acquainted with their whole family. Jordan is Luis' brother Julio & his wife Marci's little boy, and he is such a stud! The best part of this is that we know almost everyone at all of these birthday parties already, haha. Here's Jordan's sweet grandma, Virginia, playing with Jordan and Sam.

Jordan opening a few presents with Marci and Julio (please note that the only ones laying out sunning themselves are the visiting relatives from Utah...:) )

All of the kids together - it's pretty much impossible to get everyone to look in the same place, but they conceded to grouping together for 15 seconds or so. :) Eli in the back, L to R in front is Xander, Jordan, Rylee and Sam. Jordan's little brother Carson was asleep so I didn't get him, but I need to. He's SO cute, and HUGE! Not even 6 months and TWENTY pounds! That's as much as Sam! I don't know how Marci's back hasn't given out.

Picture of our group. Tell me how much you dig Luis' CHiPs 'stache - so awesome!

Xander playing in the sand. The water was FREEZING and it was windy, so the kids stayed away from the water.

I LOVE this picture - they both have the exact same look on their faces!

Sam loved to climb up on the boogie board and kind of dance around on it and spread the sand out on the surface.

Eli looks so adorable in this picture! I thought it was so funny that he HATES the sand, he looked at Katie like "you traitor!!" when she had to set him down for a second and he would NOT move because it would mean touching sand with more body parts.

Sam's going to be like some great orator some day. He throws his hands up high in the air and just shouts out whatever is on his mind. Perhaps someday he'll be Sam "the rev" Lamas?

After the beach we all headed up to Moore Park, where they had a 4th of July festival...on the 3rd of July. Hey, we're not complaining, Paul worked the 4th and it was nice to have Sam's first festival experience as a family - even if it wasn't "the big one" (freedom festival) and no Jonas Brothers were to be seen.

This wagon is like right at the top of my "to buy" list after this day. SO handy! It's got these off-road tires so it breezes over the sand no problem. You just pack it up when you leave home, plop your kid in it when you get there, and you're set! MUCH better than our super overladen, incredibly awkward trek across the beach. Anyway, Sam was really tired but he WILL NOT go to sleep if there's stuff going on. We tried to lay him down in the wagon and trek him around to lull him to sleep, but he had none of it.


HAHAHA, this might just be my favorite picture of ALL TIME. The only bathrooms at this park we were at were like 3 port-a-potties, and they were in really high demand - aka 20 minutes of line before you even faced your personal Pit of Despair. Jordan had to pee and that line was WAY too long, so Luis and Julio got creative and made their own port-a-potty (thank you In-n-Out for the donation cup). Of course we're all about modesty so we put up a blanket and let him do his thing. Then they decided Xander should go, while we were at it. Jordan got a peek into "the booth" and then turned around with this face. I'm SO glad I got it on film!

Sammy liked the fireworks a lot but did NOT like it when we cheered afterwards. He just wanted us to sit and watch and keep our freaking mouths shut. haha. I love this picture of Paul, it's the first time I've seen that look on his face really captured on film, even though I see it all the time.

Like I said, on the fourth Paul had to work, but we had our own little bbq before he had to go.

Of course we subjected Sam to some good ol' holiday dress up

After he left Marci, Jordan & Carson came over and we grilled up the rest of the steaks and had another little bbq, and made these awesome little firecracker brownies. We were having such a good time I totally forgot to take pictures! :(

Sam and I decided we didn't need all those tempting little calories hanging around the house, and let's face it, I need recognition for making something cute, right? haha so we dropped them off to Paul at work before going home to bed.

There's more to update, but let's face it, this post has turned into yet another epically long Mary Lamas post, so I'll just end there for now. :)

love, mary