Edisto Island, Day 5: Doughnut Day and Beach Birthdays

While I was at the optometrist, Daddy took the kids to Wal-Mart and a couple boxes of doughnuts fell into the shopping cart, so we started Wednesday morning with a doughnut breakfast (before Daddy and Grandpa drove off to the mechanic) and then Darla pulled out some big doughnut floats that she likes to bring to the beach and declared that it was Doughnut Day.

The weather was perfect for floating. There was hardly any wind, which mean the waves were more like ripples than like waves.

Here's Andrew (obviously back from the mechanic), helping to anchor Alexander and Zoë:

Here's Miriam putting on some more sunscreen:

We took something like nine bottles of sunscreen to the beach with us. It's true that many of them were only half-full bottles that I'd pulled from the bottom of our swim bags, but still! Nine bottles! Alexander was losing his mind. 

"What do we have this many bottles of sunscreen?!" he asked.

When Andrew came home from the store with two new bottles of sunscreen Alexander brought them to me and huffed, "Can you please ask Dad to stop buying sunscreen?!"

Now, it's true that it's ridiculous that we had so many half-full bottles of sunscreen floating around our house. However, we were all so diligent about applying sunscreen at the beach (and wearing our hats and rash guards) that we not only went through most of those 9 bottles...we also avoided getting any serious sunburns the whole entire week! 

Miriam forgot to apply sunscreen on one of her hands one day. And Andrew burned the tops of his feet a little bit. But we really did great other than that!

We're completely converted to rash guards and sun covers...to the point where we see people on the beach in "regular" swimsuits and just feel sorry for the pain they're sure to experience later. Sunscreen is a pretty cool invention, I suppose (and we go through a lot of it during the summer months especially), but nothing beats an actual physical barrier against the sun's rays. 

*****

Here's Daddy riding up to the shore with Phoebe on his board, Miriam, Zoë, and Benjamin (I think) coming in behind him:

With no way to really get off the island, we were stuck at the beach all day (harsh, right?). That meant we could play in the waves until we were ready for a rest...

...and were free to rest until we were too hot to sit in the sun any longer and then we ran back to the water.

Here are the kids playing in the sand.

We made this big mountain and then dug a tunnel underneath it.

I asked Phoebe and Benjamin to pose with their hands together through the tunnel and for some reason Phoebe refused to turn around, instead insisting on reaching backwards through the tunnel:

Feeling a little chilly, Benjamin asked to be buried in the warm sand:

Here he is uncovering himself:

The beach was filled—especially on Memorial Day—with these new-fangled beach shades called Shibumi. It's a clever idea, really, staking down a piece of material on only two sides so that it blows with the wind (which is ever-constant along the coast). Because it's not staked down on two other sides, it doesn't fill up with wind like a sail, so it doesn't have to be stake down with as much care as, say, a beach umbrella or traditional canopy. But it also costs a pretty penny and you can accomplish similar results by tying a beach towel between two beach chairs...

Here's Zoë with her sand castle just before we went in for dinner.

After our dinner we had cake and ice cream to celebrate Benjamin and Zoë's birthdays. Last year Zoë turned eight at the beach (in Florida) and Benjamin turned eleven in New Orleans. This year we left two days after Zoë's birthday and returned home two days before Benjamin's birthday...so we celebrated them with Grandpa and Darla right in the middle (more or less) of our beach trip!

Getting the candles lit outside was tricky—but it was so nice to have the option to eat our meals outside where we didn't have to worry so much about the mess little kids make of things—but we managed it with many hands blocking the breeze.

Here's Benjamin blowing out his side of the cake:

And here's Zoë blowing out her side of the cake:

Here are these two sweet birthday buddies:

And with Alexander, whose smile was too perfect not to include:

We spent the evening playing games. Here's Rachel dealing out cards for Phase 10 (after we sent the younger kids to bed, apparently):