Sweet Sixteen: Day 3

Because you know our life is nothing but rock concerts and oceanside vacations, here are the pics from Day 3 of our anniversary trip.  We spent most of the day down on the beach by our hotel:

That's a little couple smooching back there:

I happened to see this as I was walking along looking at rocks and shells:

Anyone have any clue what this could be?  I'm pretty sure it's a crustacean, but what? (Bethany?)

We couldn't tell if it wanted to stay in it's little cocoon or if it was trying to get out:

In the end, Brandon helped it out:

Lobster, anyone?

After throwing it out to sea . . . (hope we did the right thing!)

Someday I'm going to take a "photographing nature" class. As a teenager, I dreamed of traveling the world as a National Geographic photographer. Hmmm . . . slightly different life than I'd envisioned. (Photographing my kids is kind of like photographing wildlife, right?) But more than animals, it's the landscapes and up close shots of nature that I love:

Just wish I knew better what to do with light.  I need to take a class!!!

After changing out of our suits, we headed out for our evening plans, taking a little unplanned pit stop at another beach that sounded promising. (Isn't that the beauty of vacations? Doing what you want, when you want to do it. Was it really already a month ago? Sigh . . .)

One of my favorite things about going to beach is that there is always someone there doing something kooky. In this case, it was a guy being photographed in the surf wearing a full suit. Whatever churns your butter, dude:

Love this one:

We decided we'd like to buy this place when we're rich and retired:

You can get one of these down the street from us:

We wanted to watch the sunset, but we had a reservation at this place, up in the trees:

Passing by the cute little barn full of goodies from the day before:

I stood up with my head sticking out of the sunroof for this one:

Here we are:

Lilacs always remind me of my dad, who for as long as I can remember has snuck out early in the morning on Mother's Day to find some blooming somewhere in the neighborhood so he could pluck off a little bunch for my mother. Isn't that just the cutest? (If not illegal trespassing.)

Groups large and small reserve their own private mineral spring hot tubs up in the trees:

Brandon having a Zen moment. (Before the earthquake hit and we had to hit the emergency shut-off switch. JK) Nice farmer tan, Bran:

Such a fun fuinki (Japanese for "atmosphere"--I want to Americanize this word because it's so fun to say) up there, especially once the sun went down and we could see the stars and hear little animals creeping around.

Only one day of painful bliss left . . .