Coronado on the 4th

We had such fun in San Diego with the kids for the 4th!! After playing all day on the beach on Monday - is there anything more cuddly than a sleepy kidlett?!! Momma loaded her in her wagon and walked back to the hotel - she slept all the way and was raring to go again after that! We rode bikes to dinner, then across the island for ice cream. What a neat place - it is very "small town" feeling. Folks ride bikes and are friendly and casual everywhere you go!

(Our friend has a bike shop and loaned me a bike so I could ride with everyone, since my 30-yr old one was sold at our garage sale. It was a Trek and boy, was it nice!! He said it had a "comfort seat" on it, and although "comfortable bicycle seat" is a bit of an oxymoron - it wasn't tooo bad!! I think I'd like to go ahead and buy it. Hubby has a nice bike - and I think it would be fun if I had one too! Since when we move to NRS, we will only be a mile from Morning Glory - it would be fun to ride our bikes over for coffee on those long summer evenings!!)

We went to our hotel off the island Monday evening and came back first thing on Tuesday. We parked on the side of the island where we would end up for dinner and biked back to where the kids and all the gang had a spot to watch the parade.



We sat by the side of the road under a big canopy and Miss C had plenty of room to walk around and keep an eye on things! I think someone had a cookie and in this picture she was pretty focused on it!!

The parade was so fun - very small town with the Boy Scouts, the vintage car clubs and the High School band - one of the entries was the "Geriatric Surfing Club and Drill Team". They were a riot - all "grey haired" carrying surf boards and the drill team portion had put together some coordinated moves - it was great!

The island is almost half military base - so the Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard all had entries in the parade. It was moving to see everyone stand and applaud as each branch of the Armed Forces rolled or marched by. Boy - some of those beach craft and "trucks" are huge when they are only 10 ft away from you!!



Of course - granddaughter watching was the most fun of all! She is 14 months and is soooo cute! She is very busy and since she started walking 2 months ago, she wants to explore everything!! She is fearless in the swimming pool, and momma is teaching her to paddle to the side. She says "hel-lo" in the cutest little sing-song way! She comes out with what sounds like entire sentences - of course no one is exactly sure what she is saying at this point!! We are working on "I love you Grandi and Poppie"!! What a joy she is!! Momma and daddy are just wonderful with her! It is so neat to see your big grown son be such a loving husband and daddy!


We had such a fun day - after the parade we went back to the kid's hotel (Beautiful with a huge pool!) - we hung out by the pool most of the afternoon with all the gang. Late in the afternoon we cleaned up, packed up and took off on the bikes to the golf course on the other side of the island. On the 4th they close the course to golfers and invite the community to set up their canopies and BBQs and get ready for the fireworks show. The bigger kids were all playing soccer and baseball and just running for the joy of being there! The group has a lot of kids and several babies from 3 months to about 3 or so - they are all so cute together!! Because we live 100 miles north we left shortly after dinner - about 7:30 - so we wouldn't get into the bad traffic later after fireworks. The freeway was wonderfully clear, and we were back at our house in under 1 1/2 hours!! (Ok - I was driving a little fast - but not the fastest on the road!!) When we pulled up - a bunch of the folks from the apts were out on the front lawn - so we joined them and watched the fireworks display from the near-by high school! It was just a great weekend!!