Our Day at the Beach

How do I even begin to describe this awesome day we had at the beach!?  We had beautiful weather, and the sun shone brightly.  Unfortunately for Mom & I, the weather was ICY cold; but the kids didn't seem to care or notice!  Mom & I retreated after getting our toes wet, but Serena spent most of her time out in the water.  She could wade out quite a ways, and it would only get to her waist; then she'd come up to a little "hill" where she could run around with the water just lapping at her feet.  We had picked the perfect spot, without even realizing it!  After a while, other people came to play on Serena's hill, too.

When I told the kids that we'd be going to the beach, Serena was especially excited.  She's read a few stories where kids get to go to the beach, and all the beautiful descriptions had her just bubbling over with excitement!  Of course, they were speaking of ocean beaches, but our Lake Michigan beach turned out to be a pretty good stand-in.  It was really clean, and just beautiful.  Blue and sandy, a few sailboats, lots of shells, and no sight of a shore on the opposite side.  We even saw a huge boat way out on the horizon!

As soon as we arrived, we all tried out the water.  Like I said, Mom and I didn't make it very far, but Serena was impervious to the cold and totally fearless in the waves.  Bret was a bit more cautious, and Cody knew his limits and came back to play in the sand.  After running and splashing in the water for a while, Serena came out and started running up and down the beach.  It was like she was trying to soak up each sight, sound, smell, taste, and feeling at once.  It was a captivating sight, watching her!

After a while, Serena and Bret got distracted with finding seagull feathers and floating them in the water.  When we finally convinced them that seagull feathers were gross and to leave them alone ("But can't we take them home?  Can't we wash them?  See, this one's clean!"), they started collecting shells.  This turned out to be really easy once Serena discovered that a little ways into the water, the ground was just covered with them!  She would just go out and scoop up handfulls and put them in the pail.  Later on, we caught Cody shoveling sand into that same pail; but not until after he'd nearly filled it, haha!  So much for the shell collection.  ;)  We built sandcastles, and moats, and lakes, and rivers.  The kids thought it was hilarious to pour water on the castles Mom and I built and watch them wash away!

We enjoyed a picnic lunch, and Bret became the Chief Seagull Scare Away-er.  There was a big grumpy one that would just walk around us about 10 feet away until Bret would start chasing it and make it fly.  Bret thought it was REALLY funny, and wanted to chase all the seagulls then.

Okay, enough talk.  Here's the pictures....

Back at home, storytime with Grammie  :)