Long Beach Sandcastle Contest

I cannot believe how many great pictures I got from the sandcastle contest at Long Beach this last weekend. My husband and I just happened to be at Long Beach for the weekend. We had no idea about the Sand Castle contest. It was also a lovely weekend. Here is a selection of pictures from the contest. I really didn't have time to process any more pictures. These were from my three favorite sculptures:

The first set of pictures here is Some Maintenance Required. These guys were fantastic to watch.

This was my favorite of all pictures. This guy was a maniac. That is sand flying as he is stomping down the sand.

This second set of pictures is Two Scoops. This sculpture was originally supposed to have a vertical ice cream cone, but after it collapsed they made due and changed it to a two horizontal cones.

This third set is from a sculpture called Parrots Of The Carribean.

Here is the original mold. Fascinating how these teams made these sculptures.

Above you see the ship and parrot emerge out of the mold.

This was a fun thing to spend the day watching. I have a lot more pictures. The Long Beach Sand Sculpture contest had a lot of different categories, including Novice, Intermediate, and Family. Even beginning sculpters had some terrific results. More to come later.

Dogs At Sand Castle Contest

My dear husband and I went had a lovely, romantic little weekend at the beach. Surpise to us, there was a Sand Castle Building contest that weekend. I have some neat pictures to show you from that. But they will have to wait. I have never seen so many different dogs at one place, with the exception of a dog show. I really should have taken more pictures. But, I wanted to share the pictures I did take. It is amazing to me the variety of dogs that exist. Enjoy.

An Australian Shepherd. We own an Australian Shepherd. Unfortunately, I am never able to take her to a public event like this. She would bark like crazy. I saw several Aussies at the beach, however. They come in a wide varieties of looks. I saw one that looked just like ours, but didn't get a picture of him. This one happened to have three legs. An amazingly sweet dog.

I'm not sure on the breed of this dog. I'm thinking some kind of terrier. Really cute though.

This is a very sweet Rat Terrier. She was a little nervous to be among so many people and dogs. She was about twice as big as the dog in the previous picture.

Is this some sort of Pomeranian? She belonged to one of the sand castle builders and just hung out all afternoon.

I loved this little bull dog. She's about five months, her owner told me. Isn't she just adorable? She seemed pretty calm too.

3/4 Pyranese. I love the mellowness of these dogs. When I was looking for a dog several years ago, I shyed away from this breed because the literature said they could be defensive of their family (aggressive). They seem so mellow though.

Weimeraners are such a beautiful color. They remind me of my parent's dogs, which are Rhodesian Ridgebacks, but just a little calmer. I think this breed tends to be quite energetic like the Ridgebacks, however. But, seemingly, a little more easily trainable.

I Heart Faces - Sports Action & Pet

Here is my Iheartfaces photo for the Sports Actions theme this week. This shot was taken a couple of years ago at my daughter's soccer practice. The girl in front is my daughter's teammate. My daughter is behind her moving much less enthusiastically.

This week's pet photo competition mentioned the "pet" didn't have to be a pet per say. Well, here is one of my favorite animals. I think she is just beautiful. And, although, she won't let me pet her, she makes a great Momma and is a friendly, calm animal. Her name is Ruby.