More summer fun!

On Day 3 of the Oceanside trip, the boys entertained themselves by pushing/running cars around this little table in the living room.

Then we headed down to the beach to soak up some sun... or not.

It was kind of crazy how cool and cloudy it was considering the week before had been pretty hot.

We made the best of it by hanging out and building sandcastles... actually, Larry made them and King Kong (Amelia) would come out of nowhere and try to stomp on it.

We buried Porter in the sand...


And rolled around in the sand.
And then came back to the room where many of us took a nap.
I love naps.
When I first saw Colby like this, I thought he was joking.
Sure enough, he was asleep with his chin resting on the bed. I think my neck might literally break, but he seemed pretty cozy!

The next day was SeaWorld day.
We were laughing when we saw these signs on some strollers.
The blue one says: Reserved for sweet baby Lincoln.
The pink one says: Reserved for Drama Queen and Miss Behaving.
Seriously... so fitting for us!
I seriously had a split second thought of waiting for these people to return to their strollers and asking them if they wanted to get together and start some sort of a club.
We went and saw the dolphin show and then attempted to go to the Shamu show.
Amelia lasted about 5 minutes while Lincoln lasted about 10.
We ended up taking the kids out and they both quickly fell asleep for a nap.

This picture is kind of crazy to me because it's funny how so many people are looking in the same direction. I know, I'm weird.


You can see how thrilled Derek was. (And this was pre-meltdown!)

After a quick little nap, Amelia played with the mantarays.

We felt bad that we had separated from everyone, but our kids were stinkers that day and just didn't want to participate by sitting and watching the shows.

So we made our way to the playground area where we met Grover.

We met back up with everyone and decided to get pizza before heading back.

Derek and Lincoln got in some sweet pinball playin'.

Amelia played Pac Man.

Everyone at the pizza place.

Since we had eaten pizza down in San Diego, we headed back to Oceanside fairly late. We had been gone all day and our kids were pretty much done. Derek and I rode with Autum, Phearson, Tav, Lincoln and Amelia in Autumn's van.

It seemed like it was only a few minutes after we'd been on the freeway that it sounded like we had run over something. It was dark and we had no clue what it was so we continued on. Not long after that we heard a loud boom and the car started to shake. The flippin' tire had blown and we were over in one of the fast lanes. Autumn was so awesome and managed to get the van over to the side of the rode. The car seriously felt like it was fish-tailing. I don't know how she did it, but it was amazing!

Derek got out of the car and came back with the report that the back passenger-side tire had blown. The only problem was that it was up against the curb on the shoulder of the road and the driver-side tires were on the line. If we would have moved the car out to change it, we would have been in a lane on the freeway.

Of course, I was totally freaking out and imagining all of the horrible things that could happen and all of the stories I had heard about parked cars getting hit on the side of the freeway. There we were with four children, one parent from one family, and both parents from our little family. I kept looking back at the headlights coming towards us and hoped that the drivers were paying attention and not drunk.

We all made calls to different people... thank goodness for cell phones! Autumn called Ryan, Derek called his dad, and I called 911. Derek ended up driving us (on the shoulder) off the freeway. Just as we were about off the freeway, the highway patrol arrived and escorted us the rest of the way until we were to a safe place and could change the tire. It wasn't long after that that Larry, Louise, and everyone else in the other car arrived to help too.

Sweet, unknowing, sleeping children.

Crazy kid awake for the party!

While the tire was being changed, Emily came over to talk to Lincoln and asked him what he was doing and he replied calmly, "Oh, I'm just freakin' out."

I can't even imagine where he would have heard that!

I love that little dude!