a sun-kissed monday

(sigh.) we hit the beach today. i normally reserve mondays for weekend-recovery and catching up, but i'm so far behind now, what's one more day!? :) plus i read way too many facebook statuses on saturday about friends going to the beach, and brian and i were cleaning out our garage. fuuuuun fun. somewhere in between throwing away stuff in a forgotten quarantined christmas-tree-bugs box and filling the back of the van with treasures for goodwill, i must have been subconsciously longing for the beach. so when a new church friend susan put the monday-beach-day idea out there to some of us, i was all for it! and it was a gorgeous day. a little breezy... enough to send our umbrellas into a frenzy throughout the day (and in flight at least once!). the water was bone chilling to us mommas, but the kids didn't seem to mind. the sand was tasty, so i've been told by amelia lynn, and the fellowship was sweet. when we weren't breaking up squabbles over buckets, feeding hungry kiddos, or taking multiple shells out of our babies' mouths (oh wait, that was just me!), we enjoyed our time chatting in the sun. i hardly had the camera out today, but i did want to share a few snapshots of our day.

caroline loved spinning around with me on this float. she did not want her body submerged in the water, but she was perfectly content to sit atop this huge float with me doing all the work. :) we spun around and around till mommy got too dizzy to continue! sharing these giggles with caroline was the highlight of my day.


today was amelia's first venture out into the water in a float! she was so content to just kick back and float! she did not seem to mind the chilly water, and she also loved karina pulling her around.


ethan wanted to get in the water but just couldn't do it. (he does not ever remember being at this particular beach, and it is slightly more "wavy" and has a little drop off when you step in the water... not sure if that was the issue or if it was just too stinkin' cold for him!!) he'd stand at the edge and watch us, and i'd encourage him to just get in. that happened off and on for about 3 hours. about 20 minutes before we were ready to leave, he just plopped down into the water and had a ball. so of course, when we were ready to go, he was just getting warmed up... literally! i assured him it would not be long before we'd be back at the beach. here he is thinking it over. aunt kristie snapped these pics of him.


and here is ethan totally excited about being at the beach! kristie and i got a good laugh out of this shot of my silly boy!


God bless the pack-n-play. when our hands are full and we're tired of chasing babies, it's so nice to have them contained for a few minutes. the amelias loved being in there together!


what a great start to our week! see you soon, beach!