God’s blessed us with wonderful friends in our lives that cheer us on, inspire us, teach us, and guide us. The
Roberts family is definitely one of those blessings! Before Christmas 2008, on Erica’s blog, she posted that her family established a mascot for them and it happened to be good ol’ Kermit the Frog. So cute! I remember thinking, “That’s a neat idea,” but shortly after the ‘read’, it went to the back of my mind. Months went by and another state. On day one at Disneyland, as the Kempiak Party of Five stood in line at Peter Pan, Jon noticed the Roberts ‘5some’ behind us some ways in line too and attached to their backpack was Kermit. Jon asked me about the green little fella and I explained. Right away Jon insisted that we buy a mascot too (assuming we would when we arrived back home). Without even looking for one, we came across the little critter we needed for our family. I’d like to introduce to you, Cocoa Kempiak (the non gender, ever so cute family mascot). He’s already loved very much and we know he’ll be on some mighty adventures with us, whether on backpack like this trip or in another fashion. Isn’t he adorable? More about Cocoa another time…as life goes on…
P.S. This mascot thing is too much fun! We were even able to find an antenna decoration that looks like Cocoa to us.
Most days we hung out at the beach ALL day. Wouldn’t you? From building sandcastles, endless dolphins and seal sightings, bird and people watching, sand castle making, as well as quick naps on the warm conforming sand, the Kempiak Party of Five would rank them all as ideal days! This California gal has been away from the Pacific Ocean way too long!
(Every day we'd see this sailboat take passengers along the ocean...Owen thought it was a cool "pirate ship")
(Cocoa had to join us in our family adventure. He liked the lazy lifestyle too!) 
(Notice Cocoa Kempiak's vacation shirt too?)
(Nathan especially had amazing focus on building this castle with me. We'd tell stories about the people who lived inside and those wanting to enter the kingdom.)
(As most kids, our's loved to run from the waves and did this for hours on end.)
(We couldn't get enough of the beach time play so we'd stay until the sun would set often! Temperatures really cooled down but that didn't stop us.)
