Beach 2016: Wednesday and maybe possibly also Tuesday

As I mentioned before, I didn't have my DSLR with me, and I didn't want to take my phone down to the beach every day we were there. Soooo, looking back at the collection of pictures I took, it appears that in my camera roll we jump from Monday to Wednesday. But really they all look the same to me, so there may also be some from Tuesday in here.

I KNOW HOW YOU ALL ARE ABOUT THE DETAILS, SO.

When I start a post so powerfully, I'm reminded of the music of Calvin Harris and Nils Sjoberg Taylor Swift: "This is what you came for."

Nathaniel is clearly very impressed.  #beachnap

Anyway. Onward.

By the middle of the week, we were well into our groove.

Many members of our clan were rocking caps by then to protect their faces from the sun, including Matt and Patrice. One of them more effectively than the other, MATT.

Amelia was wearing a cap that clashed with her swimsuit every day to help keep her cheeks from getting burned.

She looked really cute in it.

Although there is a SLIGHT possibility that it was a TINY BIT too large for her.

She did her best to work around it.

And sometimes was more successful than others.

I thought it wouldn't last more than an hour the first time I put it on her.

But she surprised me and wore it the rest of the week.

Gary's cap was Carolina blue. Remember, #thisiswhatyoucamefor.

As always, at low tide the kids did a large degree of digging elaborate castles, moats, et cetera, in the sand.

I mean, I wouldn't accuse any of them of being future architects, but they definitely put in the elbow grease.

In the picture below you can see the little channels the tide left as it went out, channels which became Amelia's favorite thing each day.

The beach filled up with small tidepools every afternoon, and they were so much fun to play in and around.

Many evenings there were boardgames, card games and word games for all ages.

I'll be honest: Because of my healthy-lifestyle-induced bad mood, I couldn't handle the volume of the room when all that was going on, so I usually went to our bedroom or out to the back porch while all that was going on.

It wasn't just the games at the table ... it was wrestling, too.

No judgment here -- you know it's par for the course at our house. It's just, at our house we max out at four of them unless we have friends over.

I went in to check on them on this particular night, but the chaos was mild. Still, my brother-in-law ended up going back in after I did.

Ten minutes later, everybody was like, "WHERE'S GERRY?"

As it turned out, he'd gone in there and just joined in. (I didn't get any pictures of that.) (Sorry.)

 

And I wanted to share some of the pictures we take every year, that we've been taking since the oldest kids were just toddlers. Sweet tradition.

And one of everyone on the trip, most of Grayson's extended family.

While the kids had their shirts on, I think it was Heather and Tiffany who decided they wanted to try to take a picture of them in a circle from above. Of our four kids, Nathaniel cooperated.

And we at least TRIED to get a good family picture on the beach that night. We get points for effort. While I would have preferred to have changed into other clothes, it had already started to rain when we took this one -- changing wasn't an option. The reason Jake was grimacing and Grayson's mouth was open was that raindrops were pelting us and Grayson was saying, "STAY STILL! WE JUST NEED ONE PICTURE. DO! NOT! MOVE!" -- all through his teeth. It was a great night. Character-building.

Believe it or not, I still have more pictures to share. The beach trip that keeps on giving. More soon.