July 4, 2014.

Hooked great white shark bites swimmer off Manhattan Beach on busy July 4th weekend

"Lifeguards were keeping an eye on beach goers Saturday afternoon in Manhattan Beach as the waters were closed following a shark bite on a swimmer." - Daily Breeze

The shark bite happened on the 5th, the day after we were there at the exact same spot, and by that I mean EXACT! 840 miles of coastline in this state and we are within hours and inches of a shark attack.  We started our day in Hermosa Beach but ended up at Manhattan.  Wyatt spent the entire afternoon in the water and he went out so far that I lost track of him plenty of times. We didn't see the news until Sunday morning and it completely freaked me out.   Wyatt didn't seem to be all that bothered by it.

We planned to find a beach where we could see fireworks shows but ended up leaving about 7 pm for poor planning and dumb lack of food.  We had to walk uphill to get back to the place on the street where our bus (that only comes every half-hour) would pick us up.  Sarah and Tony saw the bus and started running towards it as it was pulling away.  Sarah made it to the bus first and we all followed running at our best beach chairs on our backs, arms full of beach crap pace.  When she got to the bus, she started to get on and the doors closed in front of her.  Someone on the bus must have alerted the driver and the doors reopened and Sarah and then Tony hopped on.  Thankfully that bus driver waited and we all got on.  Eva was so pooped that she didn't ever realize that she had the chair strapped to her back for the entire 20 minute ride. We were so relieved, and so breathless that we laughed our sweaty selves to pieces and didn't even pretend that we weren't ridiculous.   Including  Emily, who would be mortified if she thought anyone knew she might enjoy a silly moment with her family.  We ended up having pizza delivered to our hotel and watched three pretty far away but spectacular fireworks shows from our hotel room balcony.

We also spent a day at Universal Studios Hollywood, a first for all of us.  On our third day we visited UCLA and USC.  Summer 2014 mini-vacation attempt #1 = success!