A Gorgeous December Day {at the Beach!}
Last year, we took a trip to California the first week of December. We spent a day in Newport and a few days in Disneyland. Since we had the best time ever, and decided that we couldn't miss Disneyland at Christmas ever again, we decided to make it an annual trip.
This time, we drove to Newport on Saturday and spent the day playing. The girls wanted to start at the playground, and they had a blast swinging away and watching Daddy climb the ropes.
Next, we headed towards the pier to eat brunch at Ruby's Diner, one of our favorite spots. I get this same picture of the girls each year, and it's my favorite every single time.
(So freaking cute!)
As we made our way down the pier, we saw all kinds of animals: seagulls, pelicans, fish, and even dolphins jumping in and out of the water. The dolphins were too quick, so I wasn't able to get a picture of them.
At Ruby's, the girls got paper cars to put together, and they loved decorating them with stickers, while we waited for our food.
We left the pier to hang out on the beach. I grabbed a couple of towels, and we found the perfect spot to have some fun in the sun with no one else around. It was a gorgeous day at about seventy-five degrees, and we were all in heaven.
Charley cracks me up as she runs away from the waves. She is so afraid they are going to get her, and she's always the one that gets taken down. Nonetheless, she giggles the whole time and likes when Daddy stays close.
While they played in the waves, I hung out enjoying the sun and snapping away with my camera.
After this one, I put the camera down for a while and totally missed catching pictures of Charley's wipe out. She cried for a minute until we let her take her soaked jeans off. Grace, the self-proclaimed "Goddess of the Sea", would not leave the water for a second. This girl is happiest when she's on the beach.
Charley started burying herself in sand and searching for seashells. They have a lantern in their mermaid bedroom at home that we are slowly filling with our Newport finds each time we come, so it's always special when they find good seashells.
Grace started her wave dance to make the waves bigger, and then quickly changed it to make the waves smaller when Daddy showed her that the best seashells are right under the waves. They found some really good ones and also got pretty soaked in the water.
We saw a family trying to get a Christmas card picture with this sand snowman. Although we had already ordered our Christmas cards, we decided to build a sand snowman of our own to play with. After it proved to be too much work (and the other family left), we decided to make their snowman our own with our seashells and sticks. The girls thought it was so funny!
After a while, we headed to our hotel in Anaheim to get checked in and showered up. We got an awesome Buzz and Woody themed room with a perfect view of the Disneyland fireworks. After we all cleaned up a bit, we headed to Downtown Disney for some dinner at Via Napoli Pizzeria. It's one of our favorite dinner spots at the parks. Charley wasn't happy that she missed her nap, but Grace was super excited that we stopped at Marcelines Confectionery for our traditional cake pops and chocolate, caramel covered marshmallows. It's always a must the first night we arrive.
We went back to the hotel to watch some football and go to bed early to get ready for our big day in Disneyland on Monday.
Stay tuned for more pictures from our annual Disney Christmas trip...
