Summer Vacation

This year for our Cannon family reunion we went to Santa Cruz California. We rented a beach house in which we all could fit. We spent most of the time on the beach. The kids loved playing in the water. The water wasn't super warm but it was good after you get use to it.

One of the days we went to the Syemore discovery center. They had a touch tank that you could feel star fish, hermit crabs, sea cucumbers and sea urchints. Malia loved the touch tanks. She looked around the discovery center for a minute then ran right back to the touch tanks.

At the beach Degan wouldn't get into the water, but he loved the sand. Malia is sad in the picture above because Degan kept wrecking her sand castles. The ocean where we were at was so full of sea life. There were seals all around. We watched dolphins out in the bay. On our last morning there Jared and I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and went for a walk on the beach. We found lots of sand dollars (dead and alive), crabs, washed up jellyfish, sea shells, ans snails. So while we were on this romantic walk all we could think about was how much fun our kids would have had if they were with us. So we decided to stay an extra day so that we could bring them back the next morning. They loved looking for all the sand dollars and sea shells also. I think it was worth the extra day.

We walked down the beach about a mile to this old ship that is made out of conceret. It was built during world war 1 but the war ended before it was finished. It never got a engine in it. Some rich people boughtit and towed it to this location and left it. Well they turned it into a dance place and dinner thing. They went bankrupt and the boat was left there. It is so ugly. There is so much bird poop on it and it is falling apart.

Degan scared us a couple of time when we couldn't find him. He discovered the big holes that people would dig. He climbs down into them and you can't see him. But he loved to play in there.

We also went to Monteray Bay Equarium.(thanks Jim) It is an awesome place. The kids loved it. It took us hours to get all the way through it and we didn't take our time looking. The equarium also had a touch tank that Malia loved. Candace now says she wants to be a marine biologist and work mainly with sea otters. Oh I forgot that on our 14 hr. drive out there we ran out of gas. To make matters worse we were in Jared's desil truck. You can't just add gas and go you have to prim the truck and then hope it starts. We were there for 1 1/2 hrs. Thank heavens Bryce and Cindy were traveling with us. Anyways thanks to California crew for putting together an awesome vacation.