More from the Beach Trip

I had a few more pictures from the beach trip that I just had to post. (By a "few", I mean, ahem, a lot!)

I love this one of Isaiah and Samara walking along the beach.

And this one of the birds flying in a straight line:

As I was looking through the pictures, I was shocked to see this one of Samara in the water with the mouth of a Great White Shark in the waves not too far away!!! ("It" is in the upper right hand corner where I drew a circle around it.) I kept looking at the picture trying to figure out what it was.

Finally, I realized it was my brother with a white t shirt over his head! Whew!

I was surprised with how much the kids played with the wagon we brought from home. I originally brought it thinking it would help tote things to and from the beach. But it ended up being the best toy we brought! Even better than the boogie boards!

They raced with it, pretended it was a surfboard (it floats), pretended it was a boat and "fished" from it.

In this picture, Samara is on the "boat" and she is "fishing" with a toy shovel as her fishing rod. Seth is the fish.

One day we challenged ourselves to walk to the end of the jetty. It seemed like it was neverending!

It was weird being that far out into the ocean coupled with reassuring signs like these:

Yay! We made it to the end!

We found another family who was willing to snap a group picture of us:

Now for the long walk back!

We were lucky enough to see a couple of ships come in! When we would see them coming in, we would jump in the car and drive down the beach to see them up close.

See that boat behind the ship? That one looks tiny but actually is good sized too! It's bigger than any boat I've ever been on.

The kids began picking up rocks and throwing them into the water. No matter how hard they tried they couldn't pick this one up:

And since my aunt lives in nearby Clute, lots of family members stopped by to visit.

Here's Aunt Ellen and Nehemiah:

My mom, Ellen and Seth relaxing:

Uncle D waiting for a fish to bite:

Shanna, Mom and Ellen:

Jessica, Mom and Shanna:

Laura and her son William:

Laura's son Randall:

Shanna and her husband, Danny:

Shanna's son Riley and daughter Alyssa:

My cousin David brought his family by to visit too. But we were on the beach and for once I didn't have my camera. (See why I like to always have it with me?)

We found lots of shells and rocks. We even found one that looked like poop that we just had to take a picture of!

On our way back home, we stopped at the Sea Center.

It's a really cool place with lots of hands on stuff to do. They have a touch tank with lots of little critters. And the staff was really great too. One of the staff members picked up a blue crab (part of the claw was removed for the touch tank) and explained to us that if their claws are orange then it is a girl. Just imagine that it is fingernail polish. The boys have blue claws. Cool, huh?

There were several aquariums too. Here is a picture of a nurse shark. It is a very unusual shark because it can use its gills to breathe while sitting still. Most sharks have to swim in order to breathe.

There was also an outdoor wetlands area that we walked around hoping to see some wildlife. We saw several birds and turtles and bugs. We were hoping to see a snake but were disappointed. Isaiah really enjoyed looking through the various telescopes in the wetlands area.

Malachi was a little too short so he looked through it backwards and admired the clouds.

And I got a cool shot of this dragonfly.