“I love anything about mysteries. You know that!”
10:44 AM Jan 31st

“I love my butt, and I’m really glad to have one. It’s so useful!”
2:30 PM Jan 29th

“I crack myself up sometimes, didja know that?”
12:44 PM Jan 22nd

“I love looking at myself in the mirror. It makes me so happy, I wanna do a little dance!”
2:47 AM Jan 30th

“Hey, I’m eating standing up…cool.”
1:30 PM Jan 21st

“I’m glad God gave us thoughts. I like thinkin’.”
8:55 AM Jan 19th

I have a bunny right here, and she’s NOT made of dust. All right, she IS made of dust, I made her myself. But I painted the dust!”
5:47 PM Jan 18th

“Something tells me I’m gonna be a world-traveling girl. Except the North Pole and Antarctica, they’re too cold.”
2:41 PM Jan 17th

“I have to wear my red dress backwards because I want to pretend I’m Fire Nation.”
12:01 PM Jan 14th

“I’ll go take a show-er, Mis-ter Ro-bo-to, domo!”
6:59 PM Jan 13th

“I’m pretending that I’m a lifeguard and it’s my first day on the job, and it didn’t go so well. They kicked me out of the pool.”
4:00 PM Jan 12th

“I have 482 secrets. Maybe more.”
3:16 PM Jan 2nd

“You know me, I can’t resist quality food!”
8:09 PM Dec 29th, 2009

“I sure will miss Aurora’s cute open-eyes face.”
3:34 PM Dec 26th, 2009

“I require TOTAL SILENCE.”
5:53 PM Dec 21st, 2009

“Goooo, Chuck! Kick those baddies’ butts, yeah!”
4:51 PM Dec 25th, 2009

With our upcoming move, we’ve been in one-last-time mode for a while now. A couple of weeks ago after Bug’s birthday party we stayed the night at a hotel with Sue, Heather, Rapunzel & Superchic so we could get up in the morning and meet Brenda and Bug for doughnuts and lattes at the beach one last time.

Not like Annalie needs a special reason to go to the beach. This time, even though it’s January, I was smart enough to bring a swimsuit so the poor kid wasn’t doomed to wearing soaking wet clothes home. I did forget a towel though. Oops. Good thing Brenda had extras to share.

Rapunzel and Superchic didn’t have swimsuits with them, so they just rolled up their cuffs and tried to stay dry. The water wasn’t as cold as you might expect it to be in the middle of winter, but it wasn’t exactly warm. You wouldn’t think it would have been that hard for them to stay dry.

Of course that doesn’t take Superchic pretending to be a puppy into account. And we all know puppies love water.

Then there’s the fact that Rapunzel loooooves the beach and would happily camp there all summer long if she could talk her parents into it, I think. She has the same problem as Annalie, she loves the water too much to care about the fact that she’ll have to walk home in wet jeans full of sand.

Swimsuits or street clothes, all the kids had fun splashing in the water and playing in the sand. Sue and Brenda sat up on the lifeguard tower for a while, enjoying the view.

Heather and I mostly sat on the towels by the stroller and drank our lattes and guarded the doughnuts the kids were too busy playing to eat.

Bug wasn’t much interested in the water. She’s little enough and cautious enough to be kind of afraid of the waves. That makes life easier for Brenda, of course. If Bug is content playing in the sand or snuggling with Grandma, then Brenda is free to talk or read or sketch.

I, on the other hand, spent the morning calling out reminders to Annalie that she wasn’t supposed to go in the water deeper than her knees. Ever since she learned to swim and lost her fear of the ocean, she’s been so bold about going in the water. In the grand scheme of things that is awesome and I’m very happy about it; on the beach in mid-January I don’t want to have to charge into the water in jeans to rescue my kid, if I can avoid it. So we aim for the happy medium of knee deep.

All in all it was pretty much a perfect doughtnuts-and-lattes-on-the-beach day. The sky was clear, the sun was shining, the water was deep blue. We all knew that rainstorms were coming later in the week, and we were grateful to have such a gorgeous morning with friends before we go.

One of the things Lauren wanted to do while in California was watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. Where she’s from, she can only see the sunrise over the Pacific. We picked a good day to hit the beach, because the sunset we saw was stunning.

Brenda kindly took this photo of me and Annalie for our photo for Troy. We’re silhouettes, but I’m pretty sure Troy knows what we look like. Also, who cares about us with that gorgeous sunset behind us!?

Thanks for taking this photo, Mom!

To see more beach photos, and photos of our visit to Old Town yesterday that I haven’t had the chance to blog yet, go look at the photoset Lauren’s visit to SoCal in my Flickr.

If you’re reading this in a feed reader or email, be sure to go to my actual blog to see the awesome new banner Brenda designed for me in honor of the Season 3 premiere of Chuck on Sunday, January 10th.