day five (the beach)

This was by far the most awful day of the trip, minus this brief time at the beach. We only spent about two hours at the beach, the rest of the time was spent packing up all of our stuff (before) and driving home (after) for what felt like forever.

We plopped Capri right down into the sand, and she touched it with her fingers and was not pleased. And, oh yes, she let us know it. She would not tolerate being put down after that.

It was not as warm as I would have thought, but it was beautiful. One of the nicest beaches I've been to yet. It wasn't stinky or trashy, like most of the other beaches I've been to.

The kids had been spoiled by their grandma with new Nemo buckets and shovels from-that's right-Disneyland! And they spent their time well by shoveling sand into their buckets, and dumping it into the ocean.

This is what I get for telling Aiden to look at me and smile. I would probably get better results if he weren't even looking my way. He's way too busy for me.

Someone was always snuggling Capri. She wasn't feeling well by this time too, and wasn't a very happy person at the beach.

See those huge waves crashing onto the shore? That was nothing. Those waves got so big, and the water kept rushing up at us so fast. We would go to get close to where we thought the tide would reach, just to get our toes wet, and the waves would come crashing in farther than ever before, and hit up to our knees before we knew what was happening. Good thing none of the kids ventured out too far.

Also...shortly after we got to the beach, Garrett pointed way out into the distance and said, "look, there's some dolphins over there" or something to that effect. I was like "WHAT??" I've heard of such things, but I myself have never seen any kind of ocean life in the wild. Sure, I've seen dolphins and orcas, etc. at Sea World and other aquariums, but nothing this cool. Ever. So, most of the time we were at the beach, I spent looking at dolphins through my telephoto lens. At first they were so far away that all I could capture on camera were fins. Then after a little while, they started swimming right down the length of the coast, right toward me.

Definitely the coolest thing I have ever seen. And there were several of them, just swimming and playing.

I don't think one person in this photo is in focus. Oh, well! It's my claim to fame. Cute, could-have-been shots that are either out of focus, or the light is wrong, or the color, or I couldn't zoom out far enough...sigh.

It was a good time spent at the beach. Followed by a horrendous 10 hour trip home. But we'll just forget about that, and focus on the fun we had that day at the beach.