An Evening at the Beach

On Friday, we went to the beach after Kevin got off work. I packed a picnic for dinner. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry so I forgot to make sandwiches for the kids. They were perfectly happy to have chips and grapes for dinner, with the occasional nibble off our sandwiches. After we ate, Kevin got in the water with Maggie and Matthew. They were a lot braver than they have been at the beach in the past. It worried me after walking by the posters about how to get out of a rip current, but the waves were small and they didn't go too far in.

Andrew is still at that age where everything can be scary. Especially a big huge ocean. I tried to get him to put his feet in the water at one point, but once I let go of him, he ran all the way back to the dunes. Here he is sitting on the stairs that go over the dunes. It took some time to convince him to come back down.

A little while later some of our friends joined us. They have really gotten into fishing since moving here and brought their poles. When we first moved here, I couldn't believe that people really fish off the beach, but they do. Here is one of our friends setting up his poles.


The poles are huge and they anchor them into the sand. Kevin got to cast one out into the water. Then he stuck it back into its anchor to wait for a fish.


For bait, we caught sand fleas, which are just little crabs that burrow into the sand. I'd never actually seen one. Matthew especially got a kick out of them--he spent a couple of hours catching sand fleas and watching them dig back under. Here he is with one that he tried to corral by digging a ring around it (it still dug itself into the sand).

And here it is closer. Not so pretty, but kind of neat. . .

Here is Matthew with our one and only catch of the evening. It was a big, huge tank top that got hooked as we were reeling in the line.

The boys had lots of fun just getting sandy. I suppose all little boys have an affinity for dirt.

Our beaches do not have the nice white sand that the gulf coast beaches have. This sand is just ground up sea shells. The little, flat pieces stick really well to your skin. We tried to shower them off before going home, but it really didn't work so well because they were so thoroughly dirty. We had to give them baths at home and I think we still didn't get all the sand off. Here's Matthew wishing he lived in Utah where it snows (he thinks that Utah is the only place that it snows because we have baby pictures of Maggie in the snow there).