Santa Cruz Boardwalk

    The last hurrah we had before Mike came home was our first and only trip to the Boardwalk in the summer.  I had been wanting to do this, but was really nervous about it because I didn't know what to expect.  Was it going to be crazy crowded?  Would I be able to find parking?  Would I lose a child?  All the things you think of when you are doing it for the first time, not to mention by yourself.  Well, I wasn't really by myself, we had planned to meet our old neighbors and so us moms had a great tag team system and everyone seemed happy!

  The boardwalk has retro nights on monday and tuesday nights from 5pm till close.  This is where there are $1.50 rides which is a steal compared to the normal individual cost of each ride.  They really make it so expensive that it makes more sense to buy a season pass.  Unless you do retro night.  I put $40 on a card and the kids each did plenty of rides and many of them I was a chaperone and had to pay fare.  We both arrived at the boardwalk around 4 to miss traffic, ate the dinner that we brought, and before you knew it it was 5 pm.

  It looks like a beautiful evening at the beach, but I honestly hardly remember the blue sky.  The clouds rolled in very quickly and we were all very happy we brought sweatshirts.  It was by no means miserable, but sweatshirts were a must!

   The last time we were here, the boys could hardly ride anything.  This time they could ride a handful more and Miss Hannah was tall enough to do them all.  The nice thing was that the older girls could do rides together while we took the littler ones on other rides, or the girls could even be chaperones!  We wouldn't have been able to do this without using them as chaperones!

   Ava telling me to stay right there.  Because you know, she can't not be in control of where I am.  lol!

Someone was too cool for the whale ride.

   The next one all of a sudden became too cool for the whale ride too!  Haha!

  I was so exhausted by this point, it was my last full day without Mike.  I was also so nervous to do this. I'm so glad I did it and the kids had so much fun.  The crowds did not come until 8 and after, so I never felt like I was going to lose a kid.  After a summer of feeling like I barely did anything fun except do our weekly beach day, this was a good way to end it.  We weren't technically at the end of summer, but Mike was on his way home from Japan and a few days later we were to leave on our two week vacation to the NW with school starting 2 days later.  So it felt like a great ending to our Cali summer adventures.