Lately Mom, Dad, and Ava have been playing games after dinner. Ava likes all of her games. Sometimes we play Uno or Operation. But her favorite game right now is a Dr. Seuss game called "I can do that". It has a little foam thing called the "trick-a-mastick" and you need to do different things. In this picture Ava had to tiptoe around the trick-a-mastick with the ball on her belly.
Sunday was an Easter egg hunt! One of Mom's friends had a big Easter egg hunt at her house and lots of children were there. Ava wore little fuzzy bunny ears and used Dad's Easter basket from when he was a little boy. Ava found a bunch of eggs and had a really good time. We are looking forward to decorating Easter eggs and finding the baskets on Easter morning.
Ava had her favorite Wonder Pets with her at the beach. She pretended that they were swimming in the water.
After the boardwalk we went out and played on the beach for the rest of the afternoon. The waves were a little high but Ava went out to get bucket after bucket of water. Mom and Dad were a little nervous but thought that it was probably okay. However it was not! One guy got a little brave with the waves and went out to far, then next thing we know the life guards came up with sirens on and had to swim out and rescue him! One of the buckets of water turned in to "lava" and Ava poured it all over the volcano that Mom and Ava made.
If you ask Ava what her favorite ride is at Santa Cruz she will probably say "all of them." But there are a few that we know she likes best. One of them is Dropzone. It takes you up about 20 or 30 feet in the air and then freefalls back down almost to the ground. She was a single rider and there was always one open seat so she got to go to the front of the line and ride it over and over again. She rode it about 5 or 6 times in a row!
Spring is finally here in NorCal. We made our first trip to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and beach. It was sunny and just warm enough for the beach. Ava got her year pass to the Boardwalk and rode all of her favorite rides. The first one that she always goes on is the Nascar ride. She rode it about three times in a row! She loves to raise her hands and slide to the outside of the seat on every corner. It is funny but none of the other kids on the ride look nearly as happy and smile and scream as much as Ava!
Friday was the Dad-Child Olympics at Ava's school. There were several different games set up for the Dads and children to play. The first was bouncing a ball around some playground obstacles. Ava was sure to tell me that the balls were brand new for the Olympics and not the old balls that they usually played with.
The next event was a sack race. Dad barely fit in the sack and it was actually pretty hard for Dad to hop in it. But Ava fit just fine and her feet were small so she quickly figured out that she could "run" in the sack. She was fast and ran down the field and back. The other parents thought that this was pretty cute and laughed. Some of the other children copied Ava's technique.
The third event was tricycle riding. Fortunately this was only for the children. Again Ava told me that these were the good tricycles that they only used for the Circus and the Olympics. The other tricycles were older and were kept in room 17 and that they had to go get them out when the wanted to play with them. Dad is amazed at all of the details that she knows and remembers.
The last event was balancing the buckets and walking on a crooked tape line. We each got one bucket of sand and one of water. Dad also had to put a pillow on his head. Then we walked down the crooked lines and back.