Here is the rest of our vacation, mostly in pictures. I’ll add a few descriptions and expansions as I go along. I hope you all like pictures–I just loved seeing pictures of our happy children!
Here’s an afternoon story time just before naps.
Paul and his cousin do some coloring.
There is more to these next two pictures than meets
the eye. Paul and my niece would sit on these chairs
right at the edge of where the waves came up to. We
would say, “Come, water, come!” as a wave was coming.
Then, when the water reached the feet of the chairs,
we would clap and cheer!
This is a sandcastle that Andrew’s brother built,
This is the sand castle that Andrew built. Notice how
there are cannons pointed to his brother’s castle!
Hannah eating an ice cream cone on the deck.
More great fun at the beach.
I spent a lot of time making towers of sand for
little people to knock down.
Someone burning up brain cells on a computer
game during afternoon nap time!
Andrew & Hannah
Hannah gets a boogie board ride!
Here is my persistent son! Andrew’s brother dug
this big hole in the sand as a pool. Paul thought it
was his duty to fill it with water from the ocean,
using his little blue bucket. For at least 45 min. to
an hour, all he did was walk with me back and forth
from that hole to the ocean, carrying one bucketful
at a time and dumping it into the hole. He was
happy as a lark doing it. Finally, I could see that
he wasn’t going to stop until it was full, which was
never going to happen since it drained out the bottom.
At that point, I told him he didn’t have to fill the
hole with water. Then, he was delighted to go
play other things! My wonderful son!
Hannah and her cousin.
More ice cream cones!
Brain cells evaporating as Andrew and his brother
play a video game.
Hannah and Andrew
Hannah & Andrew (I like how you
can see their footprints in the sand!).
Paul, Andrew, & Hannah
Paul & Andrew
Paul, Sally, & Hannah
Andrew made a sand sculpture of the whale.
Paul having fun on the beach.
Our last night at the beach, we took a family walk.
We walked a long ways down to a fishing pier where
the man let us walk out on it for free, even though
there is a fee to walk on the pier (we went back and
paid him the next morning anyway–we didn’t
have any money with us that night). Then, we headed
back. We walked and walked. After a while, I was seeing
things I hadn’t seen before. I told Andrew I thought
we had gone too far and we had already passed our
cross-over. Andrew thought we hadn’t gone far
enough. We walked on. And on. And on. Finally,
we could see hotels in the distance. I was sure I had
never seen hotels from our spot on the beach. By then I
was carrying Hannah, and Paul had long since stopped
his ceaseless chatter that he had been carrying on for
the first hour of our walk. Finally, we decided to walk
to the hotel and I would wait there with the kids while
Andrew jogged back down the beach and looked
for our crossover that we had obviously passed.
It turns out we had gone about a mile too far!
He did find it, by the way. It was not exactly
how we had planned to spend our last evening
at the beach, but it sure was memorable.
Paul and Hannah asleep on a mattress beside our
bed at the beach house on our last night there. Since
we were out so late, we didn’t put Paul up in the
upstairs bedroom with his cousins, where he slept
all the rest of the time.
Thus ends the saga of our vacation. We had a fantastic time. The one big thing I have made a note of is that next time we go to the beach, I will take along my Oreck vacuum. Man, oh man, the vacuum sweeper at that house was most inferior! When vacuuming, the dirt was slinging out the back and getting in my flip-flops and hitting my legs! We ended up using the broom on the hard floors. On the carpets we had to use that horrendous (and boy was it heavy!) machine, but I declare it put down more dirt than it picked up! When I was doing the final cleaning right before we left and vacuuming our bedroom, which was carpet, the dirt was flying out the back and hitting my legs so badly that I just whooshed it over the areas with big dirt, and didn’t bother running it where I didn’t see any obvious dirt. I am sure that whoever comes to clean between the weekly renters brings a real vacuum, and that the one in the closet is just a decoy, or something like that. I’m sure no one uses it to clean, unless they wear closed shoes and long, thick pants, and vacuum with the lights off, or something like that.
So, I hope any other beach-goers have seen how to have fun at the beach from these pictures, and also learned to take along your favorite vacuum cleaner!