Beach Pictures II (May 24–25)

It feels so strange to be writing about this still—like an experience from another lifetime! Since taking these pictures we drove a couple thousand miles, across swamp and desert and mountain. We'll get to those pictures soon. 

In the meantime, yes, I'm still trying to get my thesis finished...so you get beach pictures. And we'll get caught up on our road trip soon. The kids all had travel journals and were supposed to be taking notes about what they observed and felt while we were touring up and down the countryside, so hopefully they'll have some fun things to share as well. I think that really helped me get these beach posts up...and yet, here I am...making more beach posts.

*****

Phoebe really loved this pink chair. Unfortunately for her, we retired this generation of chair after this trip because we purchased them about 10 years ago for $5 each at Kroger. They had served us well, but we really were afraid we were going to rip right through them every time we sat down.

We made a little throne for her (to lord over Chaos Castle).

Here's Zoë working on the castle:

Our cute little sandman sentries:

Here's Grandpa playing with the kids:

Here I am trying to fly our last somewhat functional kite. I missed our big kite flying day (that was the day I was sick and Andrew took the kids to the beach so I could rest) but wanted to try things out anyway. This kite would dive wildly to the left every chance it got.

Here's Rachel trying not to get hit in the face:

Hair has been a battle lately. Zoë likes to let it blow wild and free. It makes her feel adventurous. I'm of the mindset that a good braid or ponytail would save us an incredible amount of time brushing out tangles. I'm not against wearing hair down, necessarily, but I feel that when you are being wild and adventurous you don't need to leave your hair down in order to make yourself feel that way, because you are that way. 

Fortunately, after an incredibly windy day hiking through canyons at Capitol Reef and then spending forever brushing out her horribly tangled hair (this was just a few days ago), Zoë seems to appreciate the idea of tying her hair back. She has let me braid her hair two days in a row.

Here I am with Phoebe. She is also vehemently opposed to having her hair done.

Here's Miriam and Grandpa flying kites:

This dog is an Australian blue heeler—a Bluey dog! Phoebe loves Bluey but didn't understand the connection. She was just happy to pet the dog because it's an animal. But Zoë and Alexander were duly impressed.

Here's everybody getting in the water with Dad:

There was a lot of foam on shore this day (a disgusting amount, in my opinion):

I got some water on the lens and a bunch of my pictures turned out like this:

The good news is that it limited the number of pictures I will share here. The bad news is that I'm fairly certain that there were some otherwise good shots in there (of people boogie boarding, for example). Oh, well.

Here is Phoebe enjoying that foam:

Here is Phoebe ignoring me while I say, "Don't drink that!"

It's possible you're thinking to yourself, "Surely she doesn't have to tell Phoebe not to drink it. She'll only try it once..." Not true! Not for Phoebe! She thought the ocean had an interesting flavour.

Here she is getting knocked over by a swell:

And back up on her feet:

Here's Andrew heading out to do some boogie boarding:

And Grandpa in the ocean with Benjamin, Miriam, and Rachel:

Besides the crab Miriam found and the birds that were all around, the only other living thing we found was this little silver fish:

It got left behind by the tide, so we scooped it up in a bucket to look at for a while before returning it to the sea.

Here's the start of a sandcastle:

And that was about the end of the sandcastle...

I honestly can't remember if we moved farther up the beach or whether we just kept going with the same castle. It's possible these pictures are out of order, as well. Whatever the case, we worked on this castle fo a long time, but the ocean claimed it, just the same.

Phoebe really likes lifting heavy things.

Here's wild-haired Zoë again:

Okay, so I mentioned that we worked really hard on the sandcastle, but that the ocean claimed it anyway. What I did not mention was that the ocean seemed to specifically target us. It was like the tide wanted to destroy our castle. Which...it did. But, look at this! Here's the tide coming in, all the way up to our chairs:

Do you see the wet sand and how the water just rushed up right where we were sitting? Everywhere else along the beach for as far as we could see the waves rolled in much gentler, only reaching about where Grandpa is standing in the picture below. But where we were sitting the waves rolled up much farther!

Grandpa and the big girls in the ocean:

The younger four playing in the sand together:

Here's Benjamin pretending to hang glide (like Link from the Zelda game):

Here's Grandpa and Rachel both trying to avoid being hit by a rogue kite:

These pictures at the end make me feel like all the pictures in this post are backwards because this is Phoebe mourning the loss of her ice cream cone:

Obviously she had to have had one before she dropped it! And there's a picture of that later, so...the pictures must have turned up backwards. Anyway, there was a cute little ice cream shop just down the street from our beach house. We entertained the idea of taking the kids out for ice cream...and then saw the prices and decided that getting ice cream and cones from the grocery store was a much better idea.

Here's a picture of the beach house we stayed in:

And here is a picture looking up the street toward the beach access (I was standing in the very same spot for both pictures):

We were so close to the beach! It was heavenly.

And, look! Here's all the children with ice cream cones!

I think I still have a few "other" posts from this trip to get done, but that's it for beach pictures. We did a couple of nighttime walks on the beach, but I have no pictures of those. The last night we were there we went out with glow sticks to have a beach party (the original plan was to do that on Zoë's birthday, but stomachs churned and plans changed, and we did it on our last night there instead).

We sure had a wonderful time (in spite of, you know, all the vomitig).