Sun and Sand

We just got back from spending a glorious week on the beach in Alabama with two other families in our ward.  Nine kids, six adults, one beach house and SO much fun.  

We've taken the kids to the beach the last 3 summers.  This is the first time that all of the kids LOVED it.  I don't think I've ever seen three happier kids.  They could have played in the sand and water all day long.  They were happy as clams and always sad to leave at the end of the day!

Ryan and Madi found a bunch of tiny clams and spent a long time gathering them up, they took them home and observed them, then I'm pretty sure they all died, oops

walks on the beach

happy little man

the beach house came with a golf cart, which the kids LOVED, we packed as many on as we could each trip!

this is a real live star fish.  it was cool

we celebrated our 8th anniversary while we were there, 

so we went parasailing for the occasion!  It was actually really peaceful and not scary at all, except that at the end we did a quick "dip" into the water, I did kind of freak out because we had just seen sharks swimming around a few yards away, eek!

three little bums on the beach

it takes a lot of work to get all these people to the beach and back, we put the kids to good use helping carry stuff!

Jaxon got a sword as a souvenir, his life is now complete!

this is a big deal for Madi, she literally hated getting in the water last year, I think it helps that we were near a shallow sandbar, so the waves were small and the kids could stand up until about 100 yards out from the shore

mermaid Madi

happily buried kids, let me just say that the only thing I don't miss is cleaning up the sand that inevitable came home every night, no matter how long the kids showered at the beach

super hero Jaxon

sandcastle!

we spent one afternoon jet skiing in an inlet near our beach house, there was a bridge nearby that all the big kids were jumping off of, all of our kids wanted to give it a try, I was surprised at how brave they were!

naps under the umbrella, Colton missed the memo that you are supposed to sleep in on vacation, he was up at 6:45 every morning, so he took a couple of pretty awesome naps on the beach

digging in the sand!

awesome nap #2, notice you cannot see his toes, that's because he is buried in the sand, I buried him, gave him a little pillow, covered his arms and built him a tent with boogie boards, surprisingly he took a nice long nap!