Weekend at the Beach House with the Fam

Later that night my family (mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, nephew and eric) and I headed up to a beach house in Pescadero, right on the coast. We have a family friend that owns it and shares it with everyone: family, friends, and friends of friends. They are very generous people! I celebrated my 16th birthday there with about 6 of my friends...it was a blast. I was so excited to go to the beach house because 1. I have fond memories there and 2. I would finally be able to spend quality time with my family (no work or school to worry about...for them, not us, we were on vacation!). This is the beach house, isn't it gorgeous??

By the time we got home from Sonoma, packed for the weekend trip and got everyone in the car and ready to go we didn't leave until almost 11:00pm. That's how my family is, we say we're gonna leave at a certain time and we ALWAYS, ALWAYS leave a few hours later, without fail. And we always need to make a stop at Safeway (my favorite grocery store) before we go anywhere, whether it's somewhere close like Great America or whether it's a little further away. My family is late for everything but always prepared, my Dad never forgets a thing. The car is packed to the brim...but everything fits like a puzzle.
After we got situated and fought over the bedrooms, we ate a late snack and got ready for bed. The next morning we slept in...well I did, my nephew Samuel woke Eric up early because he wanted to play. I can sleep through anything so I wasn't bothered and got up later. Once I got up, a little too early, like 8, first thing we did was head down to the beach. Eric was cute and picked a flower from the pathway that leads to the beach and put it in my hair. He looks shy and innocent in this picture...you can barely see the flower in his hand...no worries because it was soon put in my ear (hope that's the right side, I think it's supposed to be on the left if you're taken).

The whole first day we just relaxed and didn't leave the house except to go to the beach...of course we didn't swim because the water was freezing, can't you tell? It was so nice to be lazy, spend time with family and not have a worry in the world. I love just being at home with family...my mom spoiled us...cooked for us and just gave us love and attention. I miss her...I talk to her on the phone almost everyday (not for hours, just for a few minutes).
The next day my sister, niece and brother-in-law joined us at the beach house. We celebrated our birthdays together...as we always do every year, again. I know we went out for sushi to celebrate our birthdays (as I described in a previous post) but your birthday only comes once a year so we party as often as we can! Hers is on the 22nd and mine is on the 26th of August...years ago I was supposed to be born on her birthday. My mom wanted to postpone her slumber party until I arrived b/c she didn't want to make my dad to have to take care of 6 screaming 13 year old girls. Days later I still hadn't come...so as luck will have it, the day she finally decided to have her slumber party my mom started having contractions and was sent to the hospital. So even though my mom tried to avoid my dad taking care of 6 13 year old girls, it happened anyway. My dad fortunately made it to the birth and...and there you have it...a random story that I don't even know why I shared. Any who, my sister and I are 13 years apart and are similar and yet so different...maybe because I'm 100% virgo and she's oh maybe only 80% leo...b/c she's borderline virgo...does that make sense??? Getting back to our trip...

My sister brought my favorite ice cream cake...since we didn't have candles my mom and niece improvised and used licorice...it worked quite well and at first glance it looks like very red candles. We still pretended to blow out the candles and make a wish! Doesn't it look good?
Here is part of my family, from left to right, my sister Ana, sister-in-law Iris, mom, niece Ashlee and me. Below are my two cute nephew's, Kellie and Samuel. They are eating junk food and watching Meet the Robinson's. I can't tell you how many times we watched that movie in the 3 days we were at the beach house...it was playing non stop. Samuel wanted to watch it over and over and over again. I liked it the first time around, but by the end of the weekend I'd had enough for my lifetime...wait til we start having kids, right!

My darling parents!

The day after the party we went and visited the light house which wasn't too far away but we drove because it was too cold and windy. It's such a cute lighthouse, they have a little museum inside that teaches you all you need to know about lighthouses, the different fog sounds, a video on the different ways lighthouses were created until they finally use what we have today (they first tried using candles, that didn't work very well), etc. I also learned that Northern California has one of the foggiest coast lines in the world, I should've known.

To end our last night at the beach house we sat on the beach and enjoyed the waves. Eric kept scooting further and further away from me to be closer to the water. He was playing a game...he was trying to "control the water". When I asked him what exactly he was doing in this picture he said he was telling the waves to come and then stop right before it hit his toes...it worked half the time. I tried it and it's a pretty fun game...a couple times he got soaked when a huge wave would come...it would get the bottom of his bum drenched. It was very entertaining to watch! He's such a kid...I love it.