Graduation Vacation (Beachside)

We had the absolute best time last week. We did so many fun things; the kids were never bored. It was so wonderful to have our family together and having so much fun. Nearly a hundred times a day I caught myself thinking, "This is the best vacation ever!" Really, everything went so smoothly and perfectly. I loved it!

Here's what our campsite looked like the first morning. We got in around 8:00 on Monday evening, set up camp before it got dark and started raining, and went to bed. It was surprisingly warm, but I still made the kids put on socks under their pajamas, and Brian made fun of me for that. The kids slept great. We put them on an air mattress in the main room, and Brian and I slept in the front entry area. (I got the tent for Brian as a Graduation/Father's Day present, because we want to do a ton of camping this summer and we've outgrown our two man dome tent. This new tent is huge!)

The kids enjoyed their hot cocoa.

Even though it was cold and rainy, the beach was so fun.

My boys

A sand angel. This is only the beginning of Alyssa getting dirty. She had a fabulous time!

Brian dug a hole with our little red plastic shovel. It's a two-kid hole, and it actually went a lot deeper than it looks. Ethan and Marcus just got wedged in the top. Maybe it's not quite a two-kid hole.

I don't know why he lost his pants...Maybe because they were heavy from being wet?

Alyssa loved flying kites.

Brian found these rocks on the beach. "I found this one, and then I found the yellow one next. I put them in my hand, and not too much later, I found their baby." (It might be hard to tell from the picture, but the little one is a perfect blending of the two big ones.) Brian's favorite thing to do on the beach is look for shells and rocks. He can comb the sand for hours and be completely happy.

He is so dang cute. Once again, this picture doesn't clearly show the depth of The Hole. We took this after it had been filled in a bit after we used it to store our kites.

This is the face of a Cheetos and Oreo cookie lunch.

Isn't this beautiful? There was a sand bar about twenty feet out. Brian went wading over to it, and after a little bit we heard, "Whoo! This goes a lot deeper than I thought it would."

This is the entrance to the fort we built to keep out of the rain. Alyssa started the whole project, and about fifteen minutes into it, it stopped raining, and we had beautiful blue skies for the rest of the trip. The girl by Alyssa is Emma, whose family had the site across from ours. They had so much fun together. Her dad sent us some better pictures of them together, but they're on Brian's laptop.

And here's the front side, facing the ocean. Brian made sure we had windows to be able to watch the waves.

They found stick guns, and couldn't help but shoot each other. Guys. The gun Ethan has is made out of drift wood, and it really looked so much like a gun - perfectly proportioned. I tried to find it when we were leaving, but a couple other boys had played with it after Ethan, and it was nowhere to be seen.

Brian and Marcus built a sand castle together. Marcus kept giggling every time Brian turned over and lifted the bucket.

Here's Alyssa dancing around the sand castle.

And Ethan playing in the waves.

Marcus falling asleep.

And this is what out campsite looked liked after we officially "moved in."