At Sweet Pea's request, we went to the beach the week of their birthday. Little Man -- who hates sand and waves -- went along with it, "as long as we don't sit on the beach on our actual birthday." Fine by me!
Furthermore, Sweet Pea suggested we have family pictures taken while we were there. And she offered to come up with the color scheme: yellow and pale blue. When I informed MJ of the plans, he looked at me suspiciously for a while, then said, "Are you punking me?" Ha! No tricks here -- Sweet Pea truly came up with everything on her own. And I was happy to go along with it. We haven't had family pictures taken at the beach since our very first session eight years ago.
In hindsight, it turned out to not be the best week to go to the beach. The week before school starts is when all the pre-school activities happen: open houses, Meet the Teacher nights, walking your schedule, etc. And we missed all of that! (CC was especially concerned, as she starts high school this year and wasn't familiar with the campus. So she and I went to her school the week before our vacation and walked her schedule on our own so she'd be familiar on her first day.)
But a week at the beach was still wonderful, as always. The best part was that Pepere joined us for part of it! We loved sharing all our beach favorites with him, and he was a good sport about riding bikes everywhere and playing 1,326 highly competitive games of Clue. He also took the prize for the amount of trash-talking he did during our mini-golf games. It just about made Sweet Pea's year when she beat him!
Our new challenge this year was a skim board. None of us truly mastered it, but Little Man and Sweet Pea got the closest. Little Man and Pepere even did some research, watching videos and reading up on tips. But I think the kids are still at least a year away from being able to maneuver it "fairly simply" like the videos all assure us.
The condo we rented was a surprising setup: it was actually two separate buildings, with the master bedroom and main rooms in one, and the kids' bedrooms in the other. I was shocked the listing didn't mention that! What would we have done if the kids were still tiny? Fortunately they're old enough to stay across the courtyard from us (although by the end of the week, they were all sleeping in the main house anyway, because there was a bit of a bug problem in the other building!).
There was a little pond just outside our back porch, and on the first day we noticed a small alligator sunning itself on the far bank. No surprise there -- we're used to seeing alligators when we're near the coast. But an extremely outgoing neighbor of ours came out and showed us how alligator eyes reflect light from a flashlight easily -- even from all the way across the pond -- and as we were talking about him, the gator calmly slipped into the water and came over to our side of the pond to check us out. We kept a safe distance, of course! And we made sure Amber stayed inside the condo.
The next day, the alligator did the same thing -- when we came outside and started talking, it swam over near us. We promptly named him Al (very original, I know) and kept tabs on him (her?) the entire week. He was definitely an interesting addition to our beach experience this year.
MJ and I spent some time on the tennis courts, even taking a few lessons from the pros there. CC is starting to be interested in photography, so I was happy to show her a few things on my big camera and let her experiment.
The rest of the week was plenty of rest, good food, long walks on the beach, ice cream, working on our puzzle, and enjoying the togetherness.
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