A Week At the Beach

It's been a long time since I posted.

We actually went to the beach about a month ago but I'm just now getting around to posting about it. My mom and my brother rented a beach house with us on the Gulf Coast. We visited Surf Side Beach.

Our beach house was right on the beach. Here's our view from our patio:

Our beach house is the brown one in the background. You can see our Suburban parked in front of it.

We went swimming everyday, of course. We played on the beach, found sea shells, took walks and relaxed. It was good times.

Dustin helped us build our first sand castle. Our sand castle was not very well defined. It was amateur work for sure! But we quickly learned how wet the sand needed to be to make the best castle, and that no matter how hard we tried we could not build a functional moat. Every time we dug one it looked great until we poured water into it. Then it would just disappear as all the water and sand would mix and even out.Finished product. See the added sea shells? Those are windows.

Ray literally fished all day long!He brought his catch home to clean and we oohhhed and ahhhed over how different they were from freshwater fish.Nehemiah spent some time fishing with Ray everyday. Sometimes Nehemiah would go out into the water to fish. Ray preferred to stay dry. He found a great place to fish where he didn't have to get in the water and he stayed there.
Ray also experimented with catching crabs. He was quite successful! This is one of the first ones he brought back to show us. We all peered into the bucket to look at the crab. Just then, a truck drove by pulling a trailer with a piece of equipment on it. Mom said, " What is that, a lawnmower?" Samara turned to her and said, "No, Grammie, it's a crab!"Danny showed us how to clean crab. He also told us not to keep the ones who had orange under their butts. That orange stuff is their egg sacks. Oops! Glad he was here to guide us. The crab legs sure were good!

Football Signup and Minicamp

This year Ray is coaching the Flag Panthers. Malachi and Seth are going to play on his team. So will cousin Koda. Jada wants to play too. But for now Ray just wants her to cheer with Samara. This will be my first year coaching. I applied to be the cheerleader coach and Yvette is going to be my assistant.

Isaiah and Trejan will be playing tackle football. They will be coached by Uncle Jack. I guess our days will be long during football season this year!

After signing up, the kids had to run drills while the coaches wrote down their times. This is for the draft so the coaches can pick what kids they want.

Our kids were hot and thirsty after all those drills. And what a convenience, the ice cream truck was in the parking lot. I bought a small popsicle for everyone and they all cooled off in the shade.

Westlake Park

We decided it was time to branch out and try to find a new fishin' hole. Ray did some research and learned that the best local lake for catfish was Lake Lewisville.

We looked at a map of Lake Lewisville and found the name of a park to try. It was great! We went on a Friday so it wasn't crowded at all. We were surprised at how cheap it was, only $3 for all of us! And they even gave the kids complimentary coloring books and crayons.

We found a nice picnic table right by the water and set up. We had lunch and then fished right next to our table. Sweet! We were fishing in the shade! We also looked at some of the books we recently checked out from the library.

After a while, I took the four youngest and we headed to the beach area to swim. It was just a short walk away. We had a blast in the water and it gave Ray and Nehemiah a chance to fish without little "helpers" and constant cries of "I'm snagged!" or "I can't get this fish off my hook!" or "I hooked my own shirt!" or "Help me hook this worm!"
On our way to the water we found a dead fish which we promptly inspected using a stick. We also saw a catfish head. When we were in the water we saw several grasshoppers. Samara and I caught them and put them on our heads. We declared ourselves "Grasshopper Princesses"! All of us looked closely at the grasshoppers and talked about how long their legs are and how far they can jump. We talked about their antennae and how they can sense things compared to how we sense things. We also talked about where grasshoppers live. Seth and Samara assumed they must live in the water since that's where we found them. Isaiah and Malachi knew they lived on land and explained it to the twins. One of the big ones jumped on Seth and scared the crap out of him! Poor baby! He's the most squeamish around creepy crawly things and they always seem to head for him! We saw some minnows swimming around us and wondered what other things were swimming close to us. The kids wanted to know why there were cold spots in the water which was something I couldn't explain. We performed tricks for each other, stuff like handstands and flips. Malachi got some water up his nose and said he wished he didn't have a nose. I laughed and told him that then he couldn't smell and that would be weird! We made jokes about all the situations he might be in where he would hate the fact that he couldn't smell, like smelling good food or cake, or freshly cut grass, or poop! We all had a good laugh about that one.
Since this was only a day use park, we had to leave by 10pm. When darkness came Malachi caught a small toad. Samara loved it and wanted to bring it home with her.

We stayed as late as we could as you can tell. Here's Nehemiah's silhouette still fishing in the dark.

Happy Birthday Jada!

Jada turned 5! To celebrate we went to the Rosemeade Rainforest Pool.

Here's me and Jada standing peacefully.

Suddenly, a downpour!

Caused by this:

Here's the gang hanging out in the lazy river. (Which Jada called the "Lazy Liver". Guess we've been fishing too much lately. She knows Uncle Ray sometimes uses liver for bait.)

I love this pic of Jada and Yvette:

Malachi and Isaiah racing down the slide:

Now it's the girls' turn!

Watch out! Nehemiah will spray you!

Peek a Boo!

Cousins

On Father's Day all the cousins on Ray's side of the family were at Grandma's house.

Nehemiah (14), Jalen (13), Trejan (7), Isaiah (7), Malachi (6), Jada (5), Seth (3), Koda (3), and Samara (3).

Imaginary Play

I love to watch the kids use their imagination. Just the other day they were playing outside with several of the neighborhood kids. I saw some of them on the trailer "casting" out different ropes and dog leashes. They were pretending that the trailer was a boat and they were fishing. Some of the other kids would crawl around on the ground and then tug on one of the "fishing lines" pretending to be fish. They would go through all the motions of trying to reel in the fish. Sometimes they would ride their bikes around in the yard. Isaiah told me they were pretending that the bikes were jet skis!

Cherokee Cycle Park

Last Saturday we drove down to Milano, TX to visit the Cherokee Cycle Park.

The first thing we noticed when we got out of the truck was the dung beetles. All the kids gathered around to check 'em out while Ray and Nehemiah unloaded the trailer.

They are incredibly strong! We saw a single beetle rolling a turd twice the size of himself. And what is really weird is that they turn backwards to roll it, with their front legs and head on the ground and their back legs up against the turd! I tried to get a good picture but this is the best I could do.

Isaiah recently got some new riding gear so using the Hand-Me-Down-Method so common in this family, Seth got some new gear too! We're still working on getting Samara some pink gear. She's waiting patiently. She was so excited to wear this helmet. It was hot outside but she refused to take it off even when she wasn't riding!

Malachi, Seth and Samara, relaxing between rides:

Nehemiah ready to ride his dirtbike:

Nehemiah took Tina for a ride on the 4 wheeler:

This place has lots of trails but not a lot of jumps. Which was ok with me, since I won't be jumping anyway. But the boys had to practice some jumping. I had a little trouble getting the timing right but here's some pics a captured of them on a small jump.


You can only see Nehemiah's front wheel in this one but I like the shadow:

After Ray taught Tina how to ride, she didn't want to get off. Here she's taking Samara for a ride:

While Tina was out riding, Seth took her shades. I had to snap one of him looking cool!

No, Malachi didn't really drive this one. He did go for a ride on it though. But you should have seen him on the Yamaha. (The small white/blue 4 wheeler in the other pics.) He was riding it like I've never seen him ride before. He said he had it full throttle in the field area!

When I saw the twins on the fallen tree, I couldn't resist a snapshot.

We had a lot of fun! It's been a while since we've been riding. And it was fun to go somewhere new!

Since we didn't bring a tent we decided to get a room and splash in the pool to cool off. We stopped at a little cheap motel in Waco. Since I didn't swim, I was able to get a few more pictures. Yay!

Malachi jumping in:

Malachi holding on to the side of the pool:

Seth jumping in:

Two at once:

Tina and Samara:

Nehemiah doing a front flip into the pool. (Yeah, he landed just how it looks he will, on his back! He said he was glad I captured it because he wasn't doing it again! It stung!)

Cannonball!

Splash!

Another cannonball!

Leapfrog, anyone?

And what would a trip to the pool be without someone "playing dead"?