dennis the menace

Saturday morning Dan took Grandma to Trader Joe's while the kids slept in (until 9:00!). I don't know what Danny's deal was but Cate had woken up at 5:00 and then again at 6:20 so she obviously needed more beauty sleep.

Grandma was on a mission to see how many Trader Joe's stores she could go to in the 72 hours that she was in California with us. For the record, it was four. 

We got ready and headed to the airport so Grandma could fly home. Just before getting on the freeway, a guy in the lane next to us tipped us off to the fact that our tire looked flat. 

We called AAA. They came. The flat tire got fixed while Cate and I admired the lovely flowers growing nearby. And off we went to the Monterrey airport.

We said our goodbye's to Grandma and headed to the Dennis the Menace playground. That's Danny at the top of the bridge and Dan and Cate waiting to slide. See the sky? Totally overcast. Oh, it was lovely. Three of us were wearing sweatshirts in the middle of the day in July!

And then Dan and Cate took their turn down the bumpy slide. Oh, some of my favorite pictures of the entire vacation. See Danny to the side jumping for joy?

And here's a close-up because it's too good to resist.

A little bit of quality is lost in the zoom but I think the emotion is still there right? Ahhh. Too good for words.

How about another?

Oh, yes. And another zoom.

You see, that slide is just a bunch of tubes that you roll down like some kind of conveyor belt. I had a turn too. It was a weird sensation and I couldn't help but laugh the entire way down. I thought it was quite fun. 

The difference between Dan and me is that I have A LOT more padding on my rear end than he does. Like a lot a lot. So while my bum cushioned me from all those bumps, Dan's did not. 

Now I've got these two close-ups to look at whenever I need to cheer up. So thanks, Dan. Your pain that day will now be my reason to smile. You're awesome.

And then Dan drove us back to Santa Cruz with sore bum cheeks (his bum cheeks, not ours).