Sand Castles in San Diego - Modern Parents Messy Kids

There’s something I didn’t tell you guys last week… we took the boy and went on vacay to sunny San Diego (S got to hang out with the grandparents at home). Did you notice I was phoning it in a bit? I actually worked really hard to get all of the week’s posts done ahead of time but there were still a few things that fell through the cracks like making the Look Book photos open in a separate page. Oh well, the sun and fun were definitely worth it!

I literally took over 500 pictures during our trip (I’m still a total photography newbie so I tend to go for quantity and hope for quality). Don’t worry – I’m not gonna post them all today. Instead, I thought I’d just share an activity we did A LOT of while we were there, making sand castles.

We were in San Diego for my husband’s annual company conference and were fortunate enough to be put up in a suite right on the beach. It was one of those places were they have everything you need waiting at your beck and call (lounge chairs, umbrellas, sand toys, food, drinks… we even saw the resort set up entire BBQ parties for several guests).

We had a few dinner commitments during the conference so we brought my sister along to babysit. She and I agreed that this place was straight out of a Saved By the Bell episode. Do you remember the ones I’m talking about – when Kelly, Zack and the gang all worked at a beach resort for the summer? Yeah, this place was filled with kids dressed in preppy uniforms clearly working for some summer cash.

See that umbrella C is playing under? That’s there because I realized after he had already built about a dozen sand castles that he was no longer in our shaded area. No worries – one nod to the nearest cabana boy and we had instant shade again. I’m telling you, we were seriously spoiled.

Read on for more pics of our beach adventures (including one very cool sand castle building contest).

The ironic thing about having a kid with baby blue eyes is that you think you’ll get amazing pictures of those eyes sparkling in the sun. In reality, they’re super-sensitive and are always squinting instead (even when it’s not really sunny out).

Anyway, back to the sand castles. This is yet another morning we spent practicing for the big competition coming up on Saturday. C has just spotted a large blue tractor heading towards us to rake up all that seaweed and he’s a little excited about it.

Finally Saturday arrived and it was time for the contest. Around 30 – 40 kids from hubby’s company participated and they were broken up into four teams. We made friends with this super sweet girl the day before at the pool and here she’s giving C his top secret assignment. Can you see the concentration in his eyes? Or is that confusion?

C’s approach to sand castle building is “go big or go home”. So we made 5 big sand castles (which promptly fell apart) to go around the front of our group’s showpiece.

The rest of our group worked on burying this guy in the sand. He was actually much happier about it than he looks in this photo. I think this is right about the point when he realized that being buried was going to prevent him from helping to fill up the super-cool moat with ocean water.

Finally it was time for the judges to make their decision. They examined each of the four creations carefully and then made their announcement. The winner was…

To tell you the truth, I forget. See the judges took a little too long deliberating, the kids spotted that big blue thing called the ocean, and nobody really stuck around for the rest. This photo was not staged and their wasn’t anyone telling all the kids to run into the ocean. They all just decided it was a good idea at the same time. Eventually most of them did wander back and beach ball prizes were awarded to everyone. All and all it was a great day.

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