Summer Vacation Part III

The beach.  What is it that draws us to it?  Nothing but sand and water (and freezing water at that--the Pacific ain't the Gulf of Mexico).  Still, we were at the beach every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes thrice a day (you don't hear "thrice" all that often in conversation; it's used every fortnight or so...).  I ran on the beach, we walked on the big, built sand-castles on the beach, and just watched the beach.  Watching might have been the most fun.  We saw one of Eileen's neighbors--I don't recall her name, but let's just call her Dee Dee.  She was quite buoyant.

Ashley and I took this shot.  Not the best picture of the two of us, but so what--we were having a lovely time.

Here's a better shot of Ashley in front of the ocean doing her impersonation of an onion (many many layers).  She never grew fond of the ocean breeze or the chilly water.

Bode loved the beach.  One day, Jamie, Locklund, and Dane took Bode out onto the rocks.  Jamie, Locklund, and Dane are four of Aunt Eileen's 23 grand-children.  I think they are Bode's fourth-cousins, but Bode just referred to them as "the friends."  Well, the friends had a grand time scampering on the rocks, looking for little sea crabs and splashing in the waves.  On these vacations, Ashley and I sometimes feel sad when we see the fun Bode has playing with a crowd of kids.  One day, we saw him around 10 am, then not again until 6 pm.  Little dude could not have been happier.

Bode loved hanging out with the McDermott kids (more pictures of more of the clan in later posts).  He also played with Daddy a few times (when he didn't have better options :-)  Ashley went to Target and loaded up on toys.  Bode has a future in construction.

Yup, that's our boy, just lying in the sand.  It gets everywhere, but I think that's part of the fun.  We did go in the water and splashed around in the waves.  The water temperature was a balmy 65--amazingly, we could not convince Ashley to join us.

I surprised myself and went boogie boarding a couple times.  I stayed in for about 30 minutes.  It wasn't too cold when you were in the water, but when you got out, it took a long time to warm up.  I couldn't get Bode to try it--he wanted to ride on my back, which simply wasn't going to happen.  I guess this means we have to go back :-) or maybe even buy a beach house.  If the current administration can get everyone a cell-phone, why can't them get us all beach houses? :-)