Beach birthdays,Park picnics and Fishing trips

This past week I was on a little stay-cation from work. Time away from work is always a good thing.  For me, staying home and enjoying things that I otherwise would not be able to is my favorite thing to do on vacation. My eldest niece, Eva, turned 4 this week and to celebrate, she had a little beach party. The boyfriend and I were both off of work and headed down to Bolsa Chica beach for the afternoon.

 

 

She was having so much fun in the water and throwing sand all over herself.  She was so covered with sand at one point that it literally looked like she was wearing "sand pants". Silly girl!  Her amazing Mom decided to do face painting for the guests. My niece decided that she wanted a yellow dolphin.

 

 

I think she did a pretty great job!  We had a really good time relaxing on the beach. My niece actually shares a birthday with her Mom. (what an amazing birthday gift right??) So, it stands to reason that there would be TWO birthday cakes!  Eva, however, seemed a bit shocked....

 

 

....or perhaps that was just her being overwhelmed at having to choose a flavor? She ended up having a little slice of both. Problem solved! Her little sister was quite happy at the prospect of two cakes and even tried to sneak a bite of them during the singing of "Happy Birthday".

 

 

She enjoyed her chocolate cake VERY much! We had a great time at the party and we gave Eva a little outfit to wear during her actual birthday present from us which will be a trip to Sea World. (hopefully this week)

 

 

A few days later, I met up with my Nieces and sister in law again for a park picnic and some hanging out.  We found a nice shady spot and enjoyed some time at the playground.

 

 

When we got back home, we played for a bit at the house. My niece Audrey has a thing where she doesn't like people to put their hair up. We aren't sure why or where it comes from but we decided to try putting HER hair up and see how she liked it.

 

 

 

 

She seemed to like it pretty well! We tried them on Eva too and both of the girls got a BIG kick about having their hair up.

 

 

After my play date with the girls, I met up with The Boyfriend at a local private lake nearby for some evening fishing. It was such a nice night out! The weather was perfect and, to me, there is nothing quite like being near the water for some good relaxation.

 

 

We had quite a successful run and ended up catching 5 catfish and one random Tilapia.

 

 

This, of course, meant that the next day, The Boyfriend treated me to a lovely freshly made catfish dinner! Now, again I am not the biggest fan of fish or seafood. The Boyfriend has slowly decided to cure me of this dislike and has been wildly successful so far. He has made or given me several different shell fish and fish-fish and I have yet to find one that I really didn't like. I was, therefore, hopeful that I would like Catfish, but it was still up in the air. The boyfriend fried up the fish as well as some home made hush puppies.

 

 

And the verdict is......SUCCESS!! Catfish is officially on my list of fish I like! And that is a pretty small list so far. I actually thoroughly ENJOYED the catfish!

 

 

The other side dishes were pretty awesome as well. It was a nice evening. I won't bore you with the rest of the details of my little stay-cation, but I will say that I got a fair amount of sewing done and it was definitely a nice chunk of time away from work.  Back to the grind stone tomorrow! Hope you all have a nice weekend!