More Summer Fun

Here's what our week has looked like in terms of the Summer Fun List -

• Build sand castles at the beach and fly a kite - this weekend we headed over to Crown Beach.  Gabriela and I bought new sand castle molds and a giant new beach shovel that she tested out with Daddy.  It was a great success.  Although, it was super windy at the beach, which made for lots of goosebumps and shivering for little girls who insisted on going in the water anyway.
• Visit with Grandma and Grandpa - Grandma and Grandpa came up to Oakland to help celebrate Uncle Nate's birthday this weekend too. We also got to visit with Uncle Jesse, Auntie Ann, and cousin Nolan.  We had a wonderful feast and, of course, Crazy Cake.  We feel lucky seeing Grandma and Grandpa two weekends in a row.
• Dance Class 
• Movie Theater - The movie last week was Smurfs.  It was kind of hard to watch.  Gabriela seemed to be enjoying it at the time, but afterwards she told me, "Mom, I know you want to take me to the movies to have fun, but I don't like mean movies".  I was proud of her for not liking the movie.  At least we had some yummy popcorn.
• Go to the park - We met several of Gabriela's preschool friends at the park last week.  She was so proud of herself for going across the monkey bars all by herself for the first time.  Gabriela has also been riding her two wheel pedal bike to the park when we go.  She still needs to practice starting and stopping, but rides like a champ.  Later that week, we returned to the park to do a summer solstice project and have a tree picnic.
• Go peach picking - this was my favorite part of last weekend. I have lots of pictures and will give you a whole post about this one.
• Bake a pie - I used the wonderful, juicy and delicious peaches we picked to bake a pie. Gabriela was my helper and had fun PART of the time.  If I'm going to be honest, peach pie baking included several time-outs for bad behavior towards baby brothers.  It wasn't totally fun, as a result. BUT eating peach pie for dessert and teaching Gabriela what "a la mode" meant was definitely fun.
• Family beach dinner - on Summer Solstice, Gabriela and I picked up things to have a yummy salad, pesto, and watermelon for dinner.  When Daddy got home, we informed him that we were having Family Beach Dinner, and headed over to Crab Cove where we saw that several other people had the same idea. After dinner, we walked on the beach and collected a bunch of sticks to use as fairy wands for Gabriela's fairy party later next month.

We had plans to see an outdoor movie on Friday, which is on our Summer Fun list, but the weather was awful.  So bad , in fact, that Gabriela said, "What the heck, Mom??? I thought it was summer!" Plan B was just as fun - homemade pizza dinner with friends, movie for the kids and wine and conversation for the grownups.