4th of July weekend

We kicked off the weekend with our ward's children's parade and pancake breakfast in the park. Unfortunately it was freezing cold so we didn't stay long.

I promise there are more kids in the parade than just our boys and Tori. Carter was going so slow at first because he kept looking back at the motorcycles to make sure they weren't going to get him. He was very nervous about them.

Then he picked up the pace and left everyone behind us in the dust.

Cool guy Jude. About a decade too late.
Reminds me of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

On the 4th, we went down to Lindsay and Brian's house. Amy and Jon and Ralph and Sandra were there visiting so we crashed their family bbq. It was so fun to see everyone and catch up a bit.

My boys LOVE Lindsay! And "baby" Van. Carter asks if we can go to Lindsay's house at least twice a week.
We really should get together more often.

The next day, we drove over to the coast and visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Carter, for some reason, has been dying to see seahorses. We thought this would be our best bet. And they didn't have any :( Oh well, we got to see a lot of other cool things. This is a weird picture but the boys are in a bubble inside the piranha tank.

Carter loved this huge turtle. Jude kept saying "ribbit! ribbit!". Any animal that he doesn't know what sound it makes, he makes it say ribbit.

Look how huge this crab is!

The jellyfish tank was my favorite

This was Carter's favorite. Or maybe his favorite was the gift shop.... either way, they loved touching the starfish and stuff.

There's this part of the aquarium where you walk through tunnels and there's water all around you. Carter liked looking through the window on the ground.

The last tunnel was filled with sharks. It was pretty awesome.

We bought these silly things for the boys. You've probably seen them before, you can make the shark's mouth open and close with the handle. Jude's is an alligator. They both keep feeding anything and everything to their new little friends. You can see that Carter found and nice pine tree branch for his shark to eat. His favorite thing to do is pull Jude's pacifier out of his mouth with the shark. It's pretty funny.

This seal was hilarious. He would swim straight at us and then do this little back flip and swim away upside down. They boys just laughed and laughed at him.

We headed over to the beach after lunch. It was so windy! Jude refused to walk in the sand so I had to carry him the whole time. Carter thought it was great until his pants got wet in the ocean. They both were so cold, so we didn't stay very long. Not nearly long enough to make the trip down and back up to our car while carrying way to much stuff and both boys worth it.
Now we know.

This was the only way Jude was happy. Eating sandy chips and sitting on my lap so that I was blocking the wind.

This face means it's time to go.

It was a short fun trip. Next time we'll spend a little more time there and maybe just skip the beach part.