We love our cousins!

We had so much fun playing with our Bentley cousins at the beach house. The kids would all wake up so excited to start the day off with playing with cousins. And we would have to shepherd them all to bed with promises that they could play with their cousins in the morning. It was fun to build such great bonds and relationships with these kids. They all love each other so much!


Karter


Ali

Ali

Karter

Emilee, Ashlyn, Katelyn

Lauryn and Ali in "matching clothes"

Karter, Ashlyn, Brynlyn

Katelyn and Emilee, loved wearing matching clothes

Lauryn and Ali

Ashley and Ali, Ashley looking so thrilled to have her picture taken. ha ha

Surfing/Boogie Boarding

Everyone enjoyed the surfboards and the boogie boards. The waves were great all week long, as well as the weather, so we had plenty of beach time! Bryce even got a free surfing lesson from a fellow surfer, and then he was able to go out there and get up on the surfboard. So much fun!


Mike


Mike

Mike

Bryce and his surfing teacher

Bryce

Mike and Ashlyn

Ashlyn

Ashlyn

Surfing Class

Bryce

More surfing class

Ashlyn

Ashlyn

Zipline Park

We love going to this big and clean park near the beach house. It has a huge ship that the kids can play on and a zipline. And we brought along our bikes and trikes so the kids could play along the paved sidewalks throughout the park. They also have a huge playset and sand area the kids can play in. I didn't take too many pictures while we were there, so this is what I have. It's just such a great park and always a fun thing to do while we're over there.

Sweet Ashley

Mike playing around on the trike

Taking Brynlyn for a quick turn on the trike

Katelyn on the zipline

Bryce is helping the kids get on the zipline

Ashlyn on the zipline

Ty Warner Sea Center

We found another great place in Santa Barbara. It's called the Ty Warner Sea Center. It's a hands-on aquarium for kids. Wow! Such a cool place. There were so many different species of ocean life that the kids had the chance to interact with. They loved every minute of it. We'll go back to this place for sure.

Doing a puppet show with sea creature puppets

Ali, Emilee and Lauryn

Lauryn

One of the hands on aquariums

They would send this big net down into the water and collect ocean life. Then the kids had a chance to sift through what they caught in the bucket and see if anything was alive. If they found something, they would take it over to the microscope and see what they had caught. It was really neat.

Looking in the microscope to identify our catch of the day. Our guide, Caitlin, was from England and had such a great accent. She was so much fun and really helpful.

The week before they had caught an octopus and then quickly realized she was pregnant. She had her 4 tiny babies and we got to look at them under the microscope. They were soooo teeny tiny and adorable. It was amazing to hear about how they will grow and develop.

The kids are sifting through their catch to see if anything was alive.

MIke and Brynlyn checking out the fish through the glass

Karter

These are a certain species of baby sharks. They grow in these little pockets that was laid by the mommy shark and they will grow then eventually push themselves out of these pockets. The one on the far right, second to the end, was moving around like crazy and was farther along than any of the others were.

Sharks in the aquarium. The kids got to pet these sharks.

Sting rays, these guys had the scaliest backs and they felt really rough

starfish

petting the sharks