Vacation!! Monday-Monday…

I just had to start out with yet another cute picture of Joe-boy at the beach. :)

Monday the nice beach weather returned. We decided that we would do Ocean Beach on Monday and Bay Beach on Tuesday. Some of the family don’t like to stay on the beach all day. That’s okay. Personally, I would pack a lunch and stay long into the afternoon if my kids would cooperate but they do like to have time to play with their cousins. Plus as young as they are right now it is hard to stay out for that long. So we do one or the other beach each morning and then break for lunch at the house and then the kids do activities and play for a while before heading to the pool across the street to swim for a little bit before dinner and that’s the way it goes every day. Sometimes the afternoon activity before pool time would be to walk down to the bay beach for a little play time. As far as the pool, the kids love it but I would really rather go to the beach again in the afternoon! When in Rome after all…I’m hard pressed to convince my kids that that is better too. Oh well, maybe when they’re older and wiser. ;)

But Monday…

The ocean waves were a bit rough and the undertow strong so there wasn’t a lot of swimming. But the kids really enjoyed playing in the wake of the waves

 

and playing with their cousins.

This is Joseph and Derek the youngest of the cousins so far and who are only a week apart in age. They had fun looking at and playing near each other.

I love this picture of them:

Here is our little “campsite” for that day. I really love our big colorful umbrella. :)

We’ve learned a lot about going to the beach with young kids over the last 9 years of going to beach week.

One is that the huge red quilt we used to bring, while awesome and big enough to accommodate many of us eventually became too bulky to carry. So we traded it for a sheet that fit into the toy bucket or a backpack.

Two, we needed good shelter. We used a 10x10 canopy for a few years, which also was awesome, but it was too bulky and way too heavy to bring if you’re also toting young kids and toys and all their stuff. And as it turned out, my family was always left to be the ones to bring it back, with all our stuff too. Rarely we had other families want to deal with it even though they had all used it too. It could resurrect itself in a few years once we have teenagers to help carry stuff. I did like the shade it gave and a great place to hang your towels. But the big beach umbrella replaced that and has been a good thing for us right now. We were smart and bought one of those sand anchors to go with it and we haven’t had too much trouble with it blowing over. It gives good shade and it’s much easier to carry. Way better. Add a couple more umbrellas and we’d have great shade too!

Three, we learned that not all the kids like the waves. They’re scary, especially while they’re so young so a little blow up pool was perfect for the beach.

The one in the picture is only big enough for one child but the kids still love to play with it and it’s great for putting an overheated baby into to splash around for a while. We used to have a bigger one that would fit three or 4 kids but it had a puncture and I haven’t found one that size again yet. If I look harder I probably will but I’m always too busy getting other details taken care of.

The other thing with the kiddie pool is we bring our beach toys onto the beach in a large utility bucket which we then use to fill the pool. The kids like the pool to be filled up and then dad has to go back again and fill up the bucket so they have both things to play with. Then when we pack up we have a handy place for the toys.

It’s a lot of fun and we’re working it down to a science! We even learned this year how to get all 6 of us and our gear down to the beach without our beach cart. I was pretty impressed with us!

Here are some other cute pictures from Monday:

He has such a cute grin!

Down for the count!

 

After a fun day with lots of playing we had dinner, ice-cream and then bed. Putting the kids to bed was so easy this year! Either Alan or I put Joseph down…

Aunt Christina read to Samantha, Katherine, Samuel and Levi, who all but Samantha was sharing that room. Samantha and Katherine really loved having their aunt read to them. So cute!

And Gabby, who was sharing a room with Lucy and Samantha took care of putting herself to bed. She and Lucy read together and chatted before turning out the light. Samantha was usually pretty worn out and was out pretty quickly.