The Beach: Wrap Up Post...Finally

No,  we didn't go BACK to the beach...it's just taken me a month to get back to this post.  I finally decided to just finish it...and maybe I can finally start blogging about our daily goings on again...

  On Thursday, we hit the beach again (this time with even MORE SPF70, because Norah was still a little pink from the first trip)

 You might not be able to tell from this photo, but according to Norah, it was "Ariel, sitting on a rock, singing 'Part of Your World'"...

 I think she's reviving her sun-dried tail in a bucket of water in this one. 

 Eli loved digging in the sand.  More accurately, he loved digging in the sand and then throwing it through the air...busted him on that about 30 times that day.  (And yes, he had sand everywhere imaginable when we bathed him...especially in his hair, from all the projectile sand)

 Both kids loved the water and when they were in it, naturally stayed in close proximity to one another.

 That is, until Eli decided to call up a flock of seagulls with a wayward peanut butter cracker.

 They swarmed  him, as seagulls tend to do.  And he spent the good part of 45 minutes (literally) trying without success to catch one.  It was hilarious, and I wish I had a good photo of him stalking them.  The gulls really played with him. They wouldn't fly, just walked a little bit ahead of him, taunting him, as if he could catch them if only he were a little bit faster.

 Playing "jump the wave" was another favorite activity of the day.

 Posing with dad along the shoreline...

 I loved this photo of Eli sitting alongside of Jason.  When he first walked up and sat down, he even had his legs in the same pose as his daddy (I love it when he imitates Jason without saying anything.  You can just see the "I wanna be just like you, Dad" in his actions).

 Norah and Mommy...

 And we built a pretty stellar sandcastle, if I do say so, myself.  (Decorated with the shells and shale that we had all collected that day)

 Alas, the SPF 70 was still not quite enough to keep from baking our fair babes.  (And yes, we did re-apply) Thankfully, just under his eyes were about the only place that burned, and after a good nap, he looked much better.

 That evening, (after a LONG, quiet afternoon of puzzling and naps for the kids) we hit the beach again to fly our kites. 

 Jason and I have always loved flying kites (long before becoming parents, we skipped a college Chemistry class or two to fly them when the weather in B/CS was just too nice to sit inside concentrating on elements and balancing equations)

 Norah's butterfly kite was a Christmas gift from Gramps and Grandad a couple of years ago, and it garnered lots of attention by on-lookers on the beach.

 The delta kite was one that Jason and I purchased on our first wedding anniversary (and our first trip to S. Padre Island) Eli and I flew it together.

 I think Norah's favorite part of kite flying was helping Jason "launch" the kite.  What little girl wouldn't love the feeling of ribbons blowing behind her in the breeze?

 I was pleasantly surprised to find that our sandcastle was still in-tact.  I guess I thought that it would have a big target on it as soon as we vacated our spot on the beach.  But it was just as we'd left it.  (I started to get a big head when I saw a family walking on the beach stop and take photos with it....a small part of me wanted to run up and say, "We built that!  Isn't it pretty?!" But I restrained myself.)

 We decided to go on another crab hunt that night, too.  It's hard to tell from the photo, but Eli is jamming a glow stick down a crab hole, trying to provoke it's  inhabitant into coming out.  (Jason had great success with this technique on our last hunt, yielding our largest crab of the night...he came barreling out of that hole looking for a fight and Jason nabbed him.  Yes, I know that's kind of mean...sorry...but we always let them go at the end!)

 Group photo of the captives just before their release...

 The last day, we hit the local souvenir shops.  We do this each year, and never really buy anything. (I think wound up with a couple super-cheap shirts for the kids this year) It  just seems like the vacation-y thing to do...and it always makes for fun pictures.

 Where else are you gonna find a surfboard bench with fake tattoo-art in the background?

 or a bench shaped like an alligator?

 Jason and I finally finished our puzzle...just in time to say, "Aww that's pretty", then pack it back into the box.

There are some beautiful (I think they're plumeria) bushes outside the place where we stay, and each and every time we pass them, Norah would ask if she could pick one.  Each time, we would tell her, "On the last day".  So, on our way to the car on the morning we left, we made good on our promise.  (I guess this is officially now a tradition, because we  did this last year, too, and that photo came out fuzzy too..I always forget about the way the muggy morning effects my camera lens after it's been sitting inside a nice, cool building) She happily tucked it behind her ear and posed for her close-up, as we said goodbye to the beach for 2010.