balboa island

We had so much fun getting to stay at the Burch's beach house on Balboa Island in California. Jimmy has taken to calling it "Mr. Burch's Beach House" because I called it that once when I was trying to explain where we were going to stay. Jimmy then told me, "I love him." (Mr. Burch really enjoyed this when I told him of his little fan). It is all the more funny that Jimmy calls it "Mr. Burch's" since his cousins all call it "GG's Beach House" and usually forget that there Grandad has anything to do with its ownership. I guess Brian deserves a little credit. Jimmy now asks to pretend we are at "Mr. Burch's Beach House" when we are playing at home because apparently it was way more fun than our house.
This was on our first day on an early morning walk with Aunt Emmy. It was just the bay view, but Jimmy was pretty excited because there were a lot of boats.

Jimmy also really loves Lucy and wants to play with her at all times.

Big buckets of water = almost as much fun as the beach.

Did I mention Jimmy loves Lucy? He also always wants to hold her hand.

The ride on the Ferry Boat was pretty exciting. A Boat with Cars!?--What could be better?

The Balboa Pier

Burch Family

Our family

Getting Milkshakes at Ruby's at the end of the Peir. Delicious!

There are also a ton of cool signs on all the buildings so I took a lot of pictures of them

(And still I missed some of my favorites like the frozen banana stand).

The water was really cold so none of us really wanted to get in too far. Jimmy made it as far as his feet. His favorite pastime was getting buckets of water and bringing them back to the canal we had dug.

Zach and Pete decided to have a little race....

This was about as far as they got before the cold water got to them and they both sort of gave up (FYI: Zach was the ultimate winner... not to brag or anything).

We built lots of sandcastles.

Then Jimmy just wanted to get cozy.

On our last day at the beach we attempted to build Disneyland, but we really only got as far as the castle and Main Street.

And Lucy loved Angie.

And Jimmy loved chasing ducks.

And Baabee is always fun at the beach.

The Fire Station on the island has a really cool old fashioned fire engine and all the firemen are really nice to the kids and love to give them hats and fire department badge stickers.

We had so much fun and got our beach fix for a little while... except that Jimmy keeps asking to go back "right now." I don't really blame him.