8 hour beach day

Thursday morning we headed out to the beach to build the sandcastle of all sandcastles. The boys (Jacob, James, and Andrew) were on outer-wall duty. Their job, essentially, was to keep the ocean away from the city. They built some excellent drainage systems and even used their own bodies as breakers at times.

Jacob builds the outerwall

Rachel destroys the outerwall

Our battle against destruction had two fronts: the ocean and Rachel. Rachel is almost as powerful as the ocean when it comes to destroying things, but not quite.

I want to stomp on something!

Keeping the ocean at bay

The girls (Sarah, Emily, and I) were in charge of the inner wall and the castle. I helped with that a little, although much of my time was spent keeping Rachel from destroying the castle.

Emily and Sarah decorate the castle walls

Emily and I mostly scavenged for shells to decorate the castle with after the wall was built.

Emily lends a hand with the outer wall

Reid just got his MPA, so he was the overseer of the project. He also did a fair share of Rachel-duty.

Rachel and Grandpa

The castle ended up being quite grand, with a swimming pool, a seaweed garden, and seashell walkways. Several people came to admire it.

Our castle

The interior

Eventually the tide came in too far and we lost our castle to a watery grave. By this time, my family had shown up at the beach, so our attention was diverted to 5 more children, boogie boarding, and paddle ball.


Paddle ball is like 4 squares, only we played with 6 squares. We drew our court in the wet sand at high tide, hoping that the ocean would leave us be. Unfortunately for us, the waves kept coming up and wiping away our court lines. We had to redraw them every few minutes so that we could continue our game. I don't know why the ocean was out to get us so badly! It didn't seem to be coming up that far anywhere else on the beach!


All the little kiddies got a little cold. Kali fell asleep in Mindy's arms all wrapped up in a towel, and Rachel couldn't get enough of Grandma!

Mindy and Kali

It's warm on Grandma's lap!

I'll have to get some pictures from Jenna. I didn't take many pictures of the family because I was too busy boogie boarding, making Kitty (aka Savannah) into a mermaid, and playing paddle ball to get behind the lens much.

Jenna, Alexia, Savannah, Auntie Arlene, and the back of Vance's head

Josie went home with Mindy to spend the night, and everyone else left, too. It's always so hard to say goodbye to family, but we had a great time hanging out at the beach with them all!