Beach Day and a 'First'

The girls kept pretty busy with swim every afternoon, but I really wanted to do another beach day.  We decided to head out early and, of course, it was super overcast and pretty chilly!  But we started at the Channel Islands National Park Museum.  They have a beautiful garden out front with all native plants from the Channel Islands.  There was a booklet explaining what the different plants were and what the Native Americans used them for.  The girls had fun finding the plants and then listening to their uses.  In front of the doors, they had these cool relief maps of the islands, spaced apart like they are in the ocean to scale.  We read a little bit of history about each island.  Then we discovered these little beauties and had some fun!

The museum was pretty cool too.  Evidently they found mini-mammoth skeleton on one of the islands.  There is also a very rare bird rookery and an elephant seal rookery on the islands.  Because the islands are so segregated from the mainland, although not very far, some animals evolved differently than their mainland counterparts.  There are also dozens of plant species that are only found on the Channel Islands.  Anyway, it was really cool to wander through the museum.  It was small, but packed full of great displays that the kids enjoyed.  We also wandered up the observation tower and saw....a lot of fog and clouds!  But on a clear day, I'm sure you can see the islands.  There was a 25 minute movie that we stayed to watch and the museum guide was really friendly and helpful.

I was hoping the girls would be happy with that because it was still pretty chilly, but they wanted to go to the beach still...darn.  It was 'mother's beach' and not very crowded at all.  My children had a wonderful time running from the waves, building in the sand and climbing on the rocks.  We really are lucky to live so close to the beautiful ocean.

That afternoon, I decided that we really needed to trim the ends off Rachel's hair.  It was actually her first haircut!!!  She really wants to grow her hair long these days, but it was getting really scraggaly at the ends and a trim made it lovely.  She was a good girl and thrilled to get her lollypop.