Beach trip

Does this photo capture the wonder and joy of going to the beach or what???

We took a trip to the beach with Andrew's parents and it was awesome. We stayed at a condo right on the beach. It was the same place we stayed with our friends, Greg and Nicolle, back in April.

We ate at our favorite seafood restaurant down there, The Deck House.
Brandon and Whitney ate shrimp. I was so impressed.
I don't even eat shrimp!

The kids were really good. And really goofy, as usual.
Brandon cracks me up. He is so full of life.
It can barely be contained within his body.

This was something new we tried. We rented a paddle boat
and paddled around a little lake. Phew--it was a lot of work.
Barb and I ended up in charge of steering. We were pretty bad.
The craziest thing about this lake--there were jumping fish!
They would jump out of the water 1-2 feet high and 3-4 feet long.
It was CRAZY! Sometimes they would do 3 or 4 jumps in row.

Last night around the dinner table, we all talked about our favorite part of the trip.
Here are the highlights:

Whitney: digging. She still loves the sand!
Brandon: Boogie boarding. He caught some great waves and I don't even think he wrecked this time. (But I took a couple of bad spills--ouch!)
Me: Taking a walk on the beach with Andrew at night while Barb and Dennis watched the kids. The water was SO warm. It was unbelievable. It was a good thing it was warm, because we thought we would just get our toes wet, but a few of the waves caught us off guard and we got soaked!
Andrew: Catching great waves on the boogie boards and our walk on the beach
Dennis: Same as Andrew--boogie boards and night time walk on the beach with Barbara

Barb: Collecting shells. She was so cute and searched for shells with holes in them and then came home and made necklaces and bracelets for Whitney and a "headband" for B-train out of shells and dental floss. The kids loved them.