CA Day 7: One Last Stop Before Heading Home

Day 7: Homeward Bound

The final morning, Kevin got the kids showered, dressed and fed, while I went to work cleaning Scott's apartment (the least we could do to repay him).   It's always nice to come home to a tidy place when gone for a while.   So after leaving some gourmet chocolates on a freshly laundered and made bed, we headed off to Newport Beach.  The weather was perfect, 75 degrees, sunny with a nice breeze.  There were very few people--a handful of surfers.  Molly had put on her bathing suit under her clothes, so off came the clothes and she strutted around the beach like she was a native California beach bum.  

The water temperature was just right so Molly, Keenan, Kevin and I could wade in the water. 

Keenan spent most of his time running in and out of the water.  Every once in awhile he would run up the beach to look at the big earth movers moving sand around the beach.  They would roar by us on their own marked-off super sandy highway.

The tan Molly with the white Mommy.

We had a great time at the beach, but knew it was time to head back to the car and get ready to head to the airport when Keenan fell into the water.  This really wasn't a surprise to Kevin and I as our son is fearless and is not afraid of the water.  He would run out into the receding wave and wait for the next one to race in.  As he is high-tailing it to "safety," laughing all the while, his luck ran out.  A bigger, faster wave caught him and dumped him into the white wash.   When Kevin brought him up to dry sand, Keenan was drenched and had sand all over his body.  When we put  a new diaper and dry clothes on him, we found sand in all of his lower body crevices.  It was going to be a very uncomfortable flight home for him.

As we headed to the airport, we stopped at In-N-Out burger for the second and last time in California:(.  At the airport, there was a gentleman who was on our same flight home to Portland.  As he looked at the Mattias family in their t-shirts, shorts and sandals, he informed us that when he left Portland this morning, it was raining and 40 degrees.  He told us that it would probably still be raining and 40 degrees when we got back to Portland.  Ugh.  

It was a fairly quiet flight home since Keenan fell asleep on the plane, just after we took off.

The gentleman was correct.  It was 40 degrees and raining when we landed in Portland.  Kevin had to whip out some socks to cover up his cold, naked feet.  And we had to search through our bags to find jackets for Molly and Keenan.

It was a grand trip to Southern California.  As always, it was too short.  We got to see some of Kevin's family (but we would have liked to have seen more of them and for a longer time).  Molly and Keenan had some great experiences at Joshua Tree, Hollywood, Disneyland and the beach.