Sunday {Sept 12th} was our first full day at the beach and the weather dawned just gorgeous!
Evie woke up, grabbed the bucket of sand she had lugged back from the beach Saturday night, and commenced playing. Ha!
We had breakfast, settled in to our condo a bit more, were treated to a shrimp boil from our condo owners (thank you Darl & Linda!) and then loaded up our things to head down to enjoy the sand and water.
The children all got to try shrimp!
The condo we rented had a private boardwalk to the beach, so we took it and then walked quite a ways over so that we were at a tide pool, which proved to be absolutely perfect for the children to play in.
Holiday Isle, where we stayed, in the background.
My love, assembling my beach chair.
With the little ones playing at the tide pool, I was able to relax just a bit and feel like I could play with them instead of watching like a hawk. I won't pretend that water doesn't make me nervous - it only takes a second for a water accident so I'm always on guard.
Daddy let them out of the pool into the Gulf. Evalynn and Ameliya are both water daredevils.
The weather at the beach taught me a lot of lessons, the main one being don't take it for granted. Sunday turned out to be our most beautiful day we had on the island and we didn't realize it was going to be that way.
Mike was able to take Zayden, Ameliya, and Natalee out to try boogie boarding, but then a storm blew in quickly and we had to take everyone out of the water. Xavier was upset he hadn't gotten his turn, and I scolded him for fussing and told him we'd have a ton of opportunities. He never did get to boogie board, and that's a sadness I kind of carry, both because I scolded him, and because I dashed his other chance to try it (more about that in Monday's blog).
When the storm pushed us out of the water (when the locals leave, you leave), we headed to the pool. No lightening - just driving rain.
While Mike and I were visiting later on the balcony, and reflecting on our beach time, he said "did you see the middle aged couple sitting on the beach that was watching us? I think they were laughing at us."
To which I chuckled and said, "Oh honey, they had every right to laugh"....and then I told him why....
Picture us.
First of all we have a larger family. Two adults with 5 kids trailing, one of them diva Ev doing her thing. We were dragging a wagon, which many people had cautioned us from taking, but we did it anyways. Plastic wheeled wagons don't roll in the sand. Just don't. Then Mike spent 20 minutes assembling my beach chair, which promptly ripped, rendering it useless (side note - we bought 2 of them at Aldi on a whim when we were grocery shopping and they had a 3 year warranty. I happened to see my ticket laying on the piano when we returned home and those babies went back!). I got out the beach blanket that my cousin lent us since the chairs were bust. As I laid it out and was staking it down in the wind, which was comical in itself, Ev was walking behind me pulling the stakes out - but I didn't know it until I thought I was done and it was trying to fly away. I got mad, rolled it up, and stuck it back away. In the wagon, besides the useless chairs, we had everyone's water bottles plus the 2 gallon water jug for refills. We did not need the water jug. We also had the sand toys & shell hunting nets which I had put in a big mesh bag so the sand would shake out - that turned out to be my best investment - the $5 mesh bag and the sand toys. We had life vests x 5 and snacks and we were a hot mess. I bet we were good for a free laugh or two for sure.
Upon return from this first big beach playing excursion Mike took the wagon, 2 gallon jug, and chairs directly to the bus where they spent the rest of vacation. Ha! I laugh at us, too.
Another chuckle...I collected shells at the tide pool and thought I checked them all thoroughly. I guess I didn't check this one well enough - and it was in my pocket for hours before I took them out!
Ni Night, Evie
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