Beach Bliss

Yesterday we drove to Wrightsville Beach for a day at the beach! Weather in the 80s, minimal wind, and sunny skies made for the best beach day we've had in years! We spent hours swimming, hours building sandcastles and digging...over five hours of playing together as family. The best part of it was that the kids are all old enough to truly enjoy the beach.Nicole loves being buried in the sand (I have a video at the end of her "coming to life" :-) The kids especially loved burying my feet and seeing my red toes poke out and tickle them.Jacob enjoyed eating chips, scooping sand, and going around to each of us to see what we were up to. He doesn't have a proclivity to wander down the beach like his siblings had at this age, which makes watching him SO much easier! Jim also let me take 20 minutes to boogie board and I had the time of my life- I caught some great waves and my last one even bounced me airborne off the surf and down onto another wave. Hard to describe, I guess, but I had the funnest time and I'm so grateful to Jim for letting me enjoy my inner teenager. It was funny, though, to ride a wave all the way up the shore and see a mom standing nearby smiling at me and then feeling sheepish knowing I was not still a little kid. I missed my siblings riding the waves all together like we used to in California. What a fun day at the beach!Michael is a man of focus. He was digging in the same pit making a sandcastle for over an hour. He also, for the first time, really got into boogie boarding. He grabbed onto the board with all his might while I steered him out where the bigger waves were. As little waves crashed, he just held on and let the water splash in his face. And finally, I gave him a little push to catch a wave and he really rode well, getting some pretty fast rides! Later he tried on his own and did okay....but after three times of literally tumbling head over heels in some waves that were his head height (that he wasn't too afraid of) I sent him back to the beach to dig...he didn't complain- I think he had enough of a saline nasal cleansing for the day. He had sand EVERYWHERE! After getting bowled over by a wave his hair was slicked back, and then dried in this position. He looked hilarious and Jim tried to get some shots of his hairdo.The grand drip castle! This was about an hour into the project, we ended up digging a moat all the way around. The entire right section was Michael's work. Nicole's job was getting water in the bucket so we could make more sand drips.While Jim was surfing we played in the sand and right at the edge of the water. I have such fun kids, we had fun burying our feet in the sand! I loved the feeling of playing with three little best friends of mine in the sun, sand and ocean.Michael was so much fun at the beach, he LOVED boogie boarding and digging in the sand so much- he wouldn't even eat lunch. He seriously didn't eat from breakfast until dinner, he didn't want to take a break! We're still getting sand out from his hair and ears today :-)Nicole loved trying to boogie board and had a little better sense of self-preservation than Michael :-) She let me give her a few rides from the bigger waves then wanted to figure it out herself so I showed her how to jump in at the right time on the wave. She LOVED it! And of course Jim and I were having a blast running around helping them. At the end of the day, Nicole and Michael spent a half hour together sitting in the surf letting waves crash on them and bowl them over. Each time they'd laugh and scream and then sit really close again. Nicole told me later, "Mommy while we were out there I said 'Michael I love you' and then he said back to me 'Nicole I love you.' " They were playing with each other so well and were so kind and happy together. I told Jim this is the best kind of family bonding :-)

Here's the video of Nicole. www.delbifamily.blogspot.com We had all sorts of other adventures like Michael going "in the wild" as Nicole would say it when we couldn't find a pit stop soon enough for him and the many mosquitoes that got in the car when we pulled over. Or the dancing in the car when it was too dark for them to play with toys and I was trying to keep them awake (it worked!). A fun, wonderful Saturday!