South Carlsbad Beach

Baylee did a small post about our trip to California this year, but I want to add a few more pictures. We had reserved our site in January, so we had been looking forward to this trip for a long time! We were all so excited, we didn't even mind loading the trailer in 110 degree heat. After a long trip down there, we pulled up to the check in place and the girl proceeds to tell us that our reservation was cancelled the night before. As you can imagine, none of us handled that very well! The campground is booked 6 months and and sold out the entire summer. Travis got really mad and started yelling, the kids were all crying, and I was trying to keep it together and get Travis to calm down. The girl asked us to pulled over to the side and she called the park ranger. Well in the mean time, I called reserve america to try to figure out what in the world happened. When they finally answered I was so upset I could hardly talk, plus I had a cold so I sounded really pathetic lol. But when I finally talked to someone that had an answer for me, they said our credit card had cancelled the reservation back in May. And they had tried to call us the night before we were supposed to check in to tell us that, but we were loading the trailer and getting ready to go so we never spoke to anyone. What had happened was that at Christmas we had some fraud charges on that credit card, so the cc company just cancelled all online charges for that period of time. Which included our online reservation for our campsite. By this time, Travis was completely mad, and said we would sleep in a Walmart parking lot and go home the next day. The park ranger finally showed up, and they had talked to reserve america as well to figure out what happened. I explained about our credit card number getting stolen. An he explained to me how full they campground was and that even if they had an open site, our trailer could only fit in 3 sites. And also, it wasn't their fault but the online reservation company. But we must have looked pretty pitiful, because he told me to give him a minute and he would see if he could do anything. By a miracle, he came back and said that one of the people that was in the campsite we could fit in was willing to move for us. And he moved 3 other reservations for that week and got us a spot for the entire week. And then he told me to stop crying :)

Well, needless to say we were very very grateful to the park ranger and ended up having an incredible vacation!

By the time all the drama was over about the campsite, we didn't do anything else on Saturday. But Sunday we went to Sacrament Meeting in a ward in Carlsbad, then went and visited the San Diego Temple.

The cute Johnson's. Some of our friends that were with us camping.

The Horlacher's. They are the ones that introduced us to such a fun vacation spot.

Our entire week consisted of a few basic things. Boogie boarding, playing in the sand, and sitting on the beach.

This was some of the sand crew. They built something pretty cool every day.

Tori, Chase, and Jordan boogie boarding.

Cole seriously LOVED the water this year. He would beg to get down on the beach as soon as he woke up, and played in the ocean boogie boarding the entire day. I would have to force him to take a break to eat something and get a drink.

More boogie boarding.

On Monday, Baylee and Mckinley seriously boogie boarded the entire day. But Mckinley got sunburned really bad so the Johnson's took the day off from the beach on Tuesday. I think Bay played so hard on Monday, she was exhausted the next day. And Trav sleeps so well next to the ocean :)

All the "big Boys" had a kayaking competition to see who could make it out to a buoy that was in the ocean and back fastest. I think the dad's didn't have a very good chance against the teenagers.

Bay and Mckinley heading out to boogie board. That's Travis in the background on the kayak.

Volleyball is tons of fun on the beach :)

More digging :) They had dug so far down they had hit river rocks. So a couple girls held on to Tori and she went down to dig out the rocks. I can't imagine that was fun, but she seemed to think it was!

This is Bishop Pullan entertaining Allie, Tori, and Cole.

Kade dug and dug and dug some more.

This is some of our "beach camp". Travis stayed pretty close under that shade most of the time :)

How cute is this picture?! They took their chairs and a bag of pretzels and sat there for a long time just talking and watching the waves.

Someone brought a skimboard and Kade thought since Carter could do it, he could too. Of course, Carter is 15. But Kade would ask him to go skim boarding with him and he would sit out there and try over and over again. It looked super hard to me!

Nan and Cole having a little talk walking down the beach.

Spencer decided to get into one of Kade's holes he had dug, so of course he got buried.

We had a super fun week, and can't wait for next year!