Last Beach Day: May 23, 2025

Our last beach day was a beautiful one.

When we got to the beach we found that the shallow waters were filled with jellyfish of sorts, so we were a little hesitant about getting into the water. Eventually we caught one and identified it as a brown comb jelly—so not a jellyfish at all. While jellyfish often have stinging tentacles, jellies are typically harmless. 

Here's Benjamin holding one:

Soon he and Grandpa would head out in the water with a large bucket and fill it with jellies. 

Jellies are rather delicate creatures. They start falling apart when they're removed from the water...and have relatively short lifespan in the water. Fun fact: some jellyfish and some comb jellies can actually reverse their development when stressed, regressing from an adult phase into a larval phase. 

Sometimes when I'm stressed I feel like I've regressed into a larval phase, but evidence shows that I simply continue to age.

Anyway, here are the kids exploring the comb jellies:

Rachel took a long time to be brave enough to hold a jelly. Here she is holding an auger instead:

And here she is bravely holding a jelly:

Here's Miriam and Rachel:

Zoë took a bucket of jellies over to a family with several young children and told them all about them and let them touch them and concluded that she'd like to be a marine biologist and work at SeaWorld with interactive patron exhibits. 

We found so many live augers on Friday morning.

Their little foot looks like a mushroom blossoming out of the shell. 

Here's Phoebe with a collection of Eastern augers:

Here is Benjamin, having draped jellies all over his body:

And here's Phoebe just being cute. I spent a lot of time "shadowing" her on Friday while Andrew played with the bigger kids, so I have a lot of pictures of her.

Here are the kids in the little tide pool—you can see how the waves are breaking quite far from where this little "stream" is:

Here's a bucket with a collection of things—a clam, a sand flea, and a tiny fish that I caught with my bare hands.

Phoebe was a bit of a menace, in an Elmyra-from-Looney-Toons kind of a way.

Here she is kissing a sand flea:

I told her to put the poor sand flea down and then the next thing I know she's got that fish in her hand!

I was like, "Phoebe! Put that fish back in the bucket! It can't breathe out of the water!" 

The poor little thing was flopping around in her hand. We put it back in the ocean, but I wonder about its survivability skills, considering a three-year-old could catch it.

 Oh, and here's Phoebe explaining how the augers look like ice cream cones:

And here's a picture of people enjoying the water:

And now things are about to get rather Phoebe-heavy. Benjamin and Miriam went for a shell-hunting walk together. The big kids were off playing surfminton (or whatever) with Daddy. And I played in the little tide pool with Phoebe.

She's so vibrant in her swimsuit and was in the best little mood—and she'll never be this tiny again—so pardon the ten thousand pictures of her adorableness.

She was even getting brave and lying on her back in the water. For a few brief moments she managed to balance herself just right that she was able to float downstream a little on her back. She doesn't particularly enjoy floating on her back, though, so I was proud of her for choosing to do it on her own!

And here's our final picture on the beach together—Panama City Beach 2025! It was a wonderful trip!