4th of July at Laguna Beach

To celebrate the 4th of July, we went with our friends, the Weijland's, to Laguna Beach.  What a fun and eventful day!  Makayla played in the water a lot with Jenna and Jessica, twins that are her age.  When they felt like they had swallowed too much water, they would come back to the chairs and play in the sand.  They thought it was fun half burying each other.  Kelli and Laney didn't like the water as much because the waves crashed a little too much for them.  However, they had a really neat playground nearby and they were more than happy to hang out there.  Jacob finally found a kindred spirit who likes to play and play and play in the water.  He spent a lot of time in the water with the Weijland's teenage son, Jacob. 

There was a spot just down the shore from us that had a bunch of tide pools.  I don't know which the girls liked better...climbing all the rocks or looking at all the weird creatures in the tide pools. 

While Jacob and Jacob were boogie boarding in the water, there was another man and his son that were kind of hanging out by them.  They all kept riding waves in then going back out.  After quite a while, the waves kind of died down so they couldn't come in as much.  Jacob (my Jacob) finally saw a perfect wave and was getting ready to ride it in but felt he shouldn't do it so he stayed out in the deep water.  Good thing he did.  He happened to look up and saw that something was wrong with the man and his son who were playing by him.  The boy was screaming for his dad and the guy kind of kept going under the water.  Jacob quickly swam over to them and found the guy was unresponsive.  The boy was really panicked and kept trying to get to his dad but ended up pushing him under the water more and more.  Jacob had to push him out of the way and then started pulling the man back in to shore.  They were in water over their heads and between fighting the current and all the boogie boards they all had strapped to themselves it was quite an ordeal.  While all this was happening the rest of us were just talking and playing by the chairs so we didn't really know what was going on.  Then we heard people scream and go running out to the water toward where the Jacob's had been.  Not being able to see what was going on, we sure were panicked for a while.  Let me say, I have never seen someone literally so blue in my entire life.  We were sure the guy was dead.  The lifeguards finally got to them when they were only like a foot or two deep in the water.  They brought him high on land and started doing CPR on him.  Eventually the ambulance came and got him and took him to the hospital.  A friend of the man asked Jacob for his phone number so they could call us later and let us know how things turned out.  Come to find out, the man had a brain aneurysm and lost consciousness in the water.  If Jacob hadn't been there, he would have drowned.  He ended up staying in the hospital for about a month but he and Jacob became friends.  They would text each other every couple of days.  It was such a cool experience for Jacob. 

After the brave rescue, we went out to dinner and wandered around town for a bit.  Then we came back to the beach to watch all the fireworks shows.  From where we were on the beach we could watch several different places where they were being shot off (and yes, one was close to us so I was happy.  I don't really care to watch fireworks from a long distance away.  I like to feel the boom and have them almost seem to be falling on my head.  Thank you, UBIC).

 

I think one of the reasons why we enjoy going to the beach so much is because it is so relaxing.  I can take a nap at home, but it still just isn't the same as relaxing at the beach.  There's something about hearing the waves crash...  When you do it with friends, it just makes it that much better:)